Brand value

This paper enquires into the nature of brand value. It argues that what contemporary trade mark law actually protects is the right to appropriate a value stream from a socialised production process in which consumers create symbolic and affective wealth around brands in their everyday communicative interaction. It argues that the autonomous nature of this communicative production process also causes legitimacy problems for trade mark law. The more brand managers outsource the production of brand value to the social life of consumers, the more difficult it becomes to legitimise their exclusive rights to derive value from it.