Abstract

This paper investigates how multiple stakeholders understand and navigate the interrelationship between past, present and future time-frames through what is termed omni-temporality. Despite an interest in the phenomenon within the corporate brand heritage literature, a limited understanding persists concerning how omni-temporality shapes stakeholders’ interactions with brands and with each other. These omissions are particularly pertinent in place branding where stakeholders are well-recognised as integral to the branding process. Through case studies of two city brands, our findings reveal tensions that arise when brand stakeholders prioritise the past or strive for a more contemporaneous and future-orientated framing. We identify the ways brand stakeholders navigate these tensions by utilising six (re)framing strategies that range from the reconciliatory to the destabilising. We show how facilitating stakeholders’ expressions of diversity and dissent can produce meaningful brand exchanges, ease the challenges associated with balancing continuity alongside change, and support an iterative form of temporal agency.

Introduction

Time and temporality are relevant to all social phenomena that interest branding scholars and practitioners, and yet until recently much of its discussion was at best limited and simplistic, and at worst, absent (Balmer and Burghausen, 2019, Carlson et al., 2019). Corporate heritage branding represents an exception having explored the multiple ways in which an organisation’s past can be utilised to support its present and future marketing endeavours (Balmer et al., 2007, Balmer, 2011, Balmer and Burghausen, 2019, Spielmann et al., 2021, Urde et al., 2007). Important to these developments is the recognition that isolating past, present and future time-frames is complex since they are inherently interlinked and overlapping. Instead of viewing each in isolation, there are calls to understand these temporal overlaps through an investigation of omni-temporality (Balmer, 2011, Balmer, 2013).

Much of the initial discussion around omni-temporality centres on brand managers’ stewardship of an organisation’s past across concurrent time-frames (Balmer et al., 2007, Balmer, 2011, Balmer, 2013, Urde et al., 2007), whereby “effective management […] calls for them to be not only of the past and the present, but also of the future” (Balmer et al., 2007, p.160). Temporal brand elements, such as history, heritage, memory, tradition, provenance, nostalgia, myth and legacy, are all aspects of the past that brands seek to package into an identity (Balmer & Burghausen, 2019). Brand stewards may face a balancing act in protecting brand heritage traits, while allowing their meaning to evolve, in a process that Balmer, 2011, Balmer, 2013 terms relative invariance. More recently, there are calls to investigate how multiple brand stakeholders act as temporal agents “individually and collectively shaping temporal relations and structures” (Burghausen, 2022, p. 354). These developments reflect a broadening understanding of brand ownership, moving away from a focus on a designated brand owner and recognising stakeholder involvement as a collective process of constructing, sharing and untangling the assortment of meanings associated with the brand (Balmer and Podnar, 2021, Preece and Kerrigan, 2015, Swaminathan et al., 2020).

Conclusion and future research

Even within the field of branding, where a longstanding focus on (re)selling the past exists, research and practice predominately treats time as a backdrop rather than interrogating its nature, meaning and implications. A weakness in the extant literature is the limited application of omni-temporality outside of corporate heritage branding and a nascent understanding of how omni-temporality is influenced by the presence of multiple stakeholders within a diffused notion of branding (Lee and Davies, 2021, Schultz, 2022, Swaminathan et al., 2020, Wilson, 2018). Our research extends the body of knowledge in corporate heritage branding and the field of place branding by advancing understanding of how multiple stakeholders use omni-temporality to shape their interactions with the brand and each other. We unpack the nuance of involving stakeholders in omni-temporality, positing that harmonious and confronting temporal expressions are drawn upon simultaneously to reconcile and confront omni-temporal tensions, which can in turn afford brands a degree of both continuity and change when navigating past, present and prospective future time-frames. These temporal expressions also allow stakeholders to forge, share and embody their experience(s) with the brand and each other, which is indicative of an iterative and organic form of temporal agency that moves beyond a static understanding of monumental time and embraces the fluidity of social time.

As with the bulk of place-specific research, this study has the limitation that findings were derived from one type of place, in this case medium-sized UK cities with over 1000-years of history. Accordingly, the results may be less directly applicable to other city types, for instance, cities with a few hundred years of history, or mega-cities. Nonetheless, some parallels concerning the role of omni-temporality in the creation of place brands and the strategies adopted by stakeholders seeking to temporally reposition their place brand, can be observed in accounts from different types of cities. For example, research into Toronto’s Distillery District mirrors similar searches for consistency through the inclusion of microbreweries; confrontational narratives around the risks of the nostalgic ‘Disneyfication’ of industrial heritage; and a redemptive narrative in which the emphasis on including artisanal and sustainable brands revived the idea of a city in which useful things are produced and consumed (Kohn, 2010). Nevertheless, further research into how omni-temporality impacts branding processes in different types of places is a critical next step to further develop the field.