The mirrors of consumer identity: articulating the meanings of “Terzani international literary prize” culture of consumption (Italy)

This article investigates the social process of branding and the collective value creation within a brand community. Brand is “secular ritual” and branding is a sign strategically produced and transmitted. The brand emerges as an interplay of several social forces “engaged in a perpetual game of discovering, creating, translating, transforming, and reconfiguring meaning” (Sherry 2005: 40): institutions (i.e., cultural organizations, policy makers), consumers (audience as individual actors) and collectives of consumers (i.e., opinion leaders, audience of cultural events, “fans”) (O’Guinn, Muñiz 2005). The study proposes an ethnographic analysis of the community and cultural events dedicated to an Italian writer, Tiziano Terzani (TT), and of the role and constituent parts of the subculture expressed by the community of his readers in shaping not only an event (the vicino/lontano Festival) but a real brand in cultural productions (such as a festival and literary prize, books and media productions), and reinforcing the brand with a mirroring effect with respect to the original Terzani’s writings. The analysis proposes a Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) reading of the TT phenomenon as a cultural productions one, articulating it in the constituent parts of what we identify as Tiziano Terzani Brand Community (TTBC).