“Annex brands”:

Amsterdam is a creative city that stimulates the implementation of innovational ideas in the cultural field. Nowadays several cultural organizations in the city have developed new ways to engage their potential audience and as a result are working with new brands targeted exclusively for the young potential audiences of Amsterdam. Such is the case of the Stadsschowburg, the Concertgebouw, Foam, the Dutch National Opera and Ballet, the Stedelijk Museum, the EYE Film Institute and the Holland Festival, which respectively work with the brands SSBA-Salon, Next, Foam Lab, Fidelio, Young Stedelijk, Exposed and HF Young. These new brands which at a first glimpse seem to be brand extensions of the cultural organizations that host them also appear to resemble to advertising agencies because they develop activities to engage the young audiences in the city toward cultural consumption. However, certain characteristics that these brands have, suggest that their role goes beyond the aims of other types of cultural intermediaries. Hence, this research aims to understand if these new brands are in fact new cultural intermediaries and to evidence their innovative structure as a new type of intermediary denominated “annex brand”. To prove so, this research proposes the implementation of a methodology based on semi-structured interviews to the directors of the seven studied brands, web research on the web pages of the cultural organizations and some quantitative data about the brands. The expected result is to provide a detailed characterization of the seven brands as new cultural intermediaries and, through the information gathered, explain the role these brands play and the underlying added value they give to their host cultural organizations and the targeted young potential audiences in Amsterdam.