Cultural Mediations of Brands

10From Event Management to Patrimonialization

The relationship between heritage and brands is not recent and often takes the form of sponsorship, which is useful to counterbalance commercial information. Institutional communication gives philanthropic reach to companies whose vocation is to produce profits and dividends.

Other forms of communication have emerged, a little different, with brands that are not simply seen as mere providers of funding, but as the main instigators of cultural operations. Multiple exhibitions and even museums have been set up in recent years by different brands, mainly luxury brands.

The variety of deployments is reminiscent of the phenomenon observed in the first part of the book on the media. This is another form of social claim with the manifestation of the desire to pre-empt the cultural space and to address audiences directly.

The heterogeneity of the representations of brands associated with the objects shown in the museum spaces testifies to the opportunities that professionals seize, the creativity they demonstrate, the richness of the symbolic activity deployed around the brands, and the semiotic possibilities thus opened up.

But the heterogeneous nature of certain museum appropriations cannot hide, alongside their peripheral and rather insignificant nature, the strong social ambition of certain brands, in search of a heritage that is commensurate with their desire for hegemony.

10.1. A museum event

Some initiatives have flourished, for ...