Comedians as a Brand - A Bourdieusian approach to the frame alignment between online brand images of Dutch comedians and the evaluations of their audiences

Bourdieu (1984) distinguishes the difference between low cultural capital and high cultural capital. According to Bourdieu, the cultural education of cultural consumers is inherently linked to their motivation to attend certain cultural outings. Within this cultural field, some research has been conducted on the motivations of visitors of comedians (Friedman, 2011; Kuipers, 2001; Kuipers, 2006; Friedman & Kuipers, 2013). However, this sociocultural research has never been approached through marketing-related topics like branding. This thesis will research how the online brand images of four Dutch comedians relate to the motivations and evaluations of their visitors. Labrecque, Markos, and Milne (2011) state how every individual, (un)consciously brands themselves on social media. The notion of embodied cultural capital, which is how cultural capital manifests itself in a person, is comparable to the notion of brand image (Bourdieu, 1986). Both are constructed by internal and external processes that shape one’s place in society. This cross-over between different fields establishes a unique angle to the theoretical discussion of comedic cultural capital. The online brand image is researched through a qualitative content analysis of the most popular social media platforms of four Dutch comedians. This data serves as the starting point for the interviews. The interviews confirm or reject the frame alignment between the online brand image and the perceived brand image by the respondents. Furthermore, their evaluations are related to the comedic cultural capital of the brands. The research mainly confirms the frame alignment, but shows the dangers of frame misalignment to the brand image of comedians. The conclusion confirms the trends set by Kuipers and Friedman of strong symbolic boundaries in comedic fields, but also adds another layer to the strong opposition of high and low comedic cultural capital. The respondents of one comedian show a vastly larger interest than either low or high comedic cultural capital. This mixed method approach therefore extends the diversity of comedic cultural capital in the Netherlands.