BRANDING IN THE DIGITAL ERA

The digital revolution is bringing about profound change in terms of consumers, markets, business models, marketing, communication and brands. The trajectories of change are hyper-connectivity (Vernuccio e Ceccotti, 2015) and openness (Tapscott, 2012). Hyper-connectivity is based on the reticularity (Gummenson, 2009; Vernuccio, 2013) and interactivity (Liu, 2003) inherent to digital contexts (as opposed to linearity, hierarchy and unidirectional systems). Here, all market players (including brands) become digital (Negroponte, 1996), interacting in a global network that is always on. Each of them possess a digital identity, which can be defined as their “networked self” (Papacharissi, 2011) o “digital extended self” (Belk, 2013).