Companies, as brand authors, generally manage their brands through a variety of product-related activities using traditional marketing and other tools. Describe how MPR helps firms manage three other types of brand authors

What will be an ideal response?

Companies use MPR to create stories, images and associations for its products within the three brand authors of popular culture, customers, and influencers. When companies host events surrounding the use of a product, initiate contests, or position their products and experts around some larger issue, they are engaging their brands with popular culture. Secondly, customers create stories - consumption stories - about how they use products, then share these stories with people they know through word-of-mouth. MPR emphasizes enabling online technology, such as social networking sites, which allows consumers to share their product experiences. Companies also employ traditional marketing tactics, including referral programs, special promotions, customer testimonials, and publicity stunts. Finally, influencers - people, groups and organizations who act as channels for a marketing message resulting in media mentions and word-of-mouth - are significant brand authors. These connectors might include media outlets, product mavens and other experts, and their power resides in the fact that consumers typically do not consider them to be selling anything. Rather, they are considered influencers providing opinion and analysis. MPR's job is to foster relationships not directly with consumers themselves but between a firm and its influencers, who, in turn, build relationships with the ultimate customer.