Co-creating Socially Responsible Brands: MTV, Starbucks, and the responsibilization of employees and consumers

Everyday life is increasingly made up of ethical messages and decisions mediated by the brands in our lives. Based on extensive empirical research on the brands Starbucks and MTV, this article examines some of the ways these two brands format corporate social responsibility (CSR). Drawing on Foucault’s (1991) notion of governance and Lury’s (2004) notion of the brand interface, this paper explores the particular modes of social responsibility constituted by the brands and the way CSR is becoming integrated into branding processes. The paper considers how brand-based social responsibility is implicating employees and consumers in the production, framing, and performance of brand and some of the ways in which these are fitting into contemporary forms of exchange. Our findings demonstrate that consumers and employees are not simply identifying the brands through the social causes they support, but are playing an active role in co-creating social responsibility. This relationship is contributing to the responsiblization of those who are most actively engaging with these brand led frames. However, a growing skepticism about such branded forms of social responsibility among consumers and employees also highlights the importance of examining more closely what this means for the agency of consumers and employees as they embrace, passively comply, or even resist such ethical frames.