Building Brands through Online Communities A Rhetorical Analysis of the Case of Benefit Cosmetics

Digital branding is fading traditional marketing approaches and influencing consumer-brand relationships. Consumers' attention is being caught differently, and therefore they have started to rely on interaction and engagement. As little research was conducted regarding digital branding in relation to identification in the always-changing beauty industry, this research focusses on how the digital beauty brand Benefit Cosmetics operates under digital branding and in what ways identification helps to capture the consumers' attention in order to persuade them. Benefit has built a brand community that represents not only their brand identity and value but also the identity of the loyal supporters of the brand. This study puts theories together regarding digital branding, identification, brand identity and brand community, and cultural branding. It aims to answer how Benefit influences their consumer-brand relationship by promoting identification through their digital media channels. The study involved a qualitative research method, namely rhetorical analysis, which was guided by the identification theory to provide more insight into Benefit Cosmetics' communication messages and the context of the brand in the beauty industry. The analysis included 150 Instagram posts (visual and textual elements) from Benefit's Instagram accounts and 25 textual and visual aspects of Benefit Cosmetics' website were added to support triangulation. The main findings included five patterns that were repeatedly exposed throughout the dataset, and therefore, it was anticipated they represented the brand's identity and the community's main values. These patterns were focused around femininity, maintaining and creating friendships, levels of comfort and wealth, laughter being best cosmetic, and creating goodwill. The conclusion highlighted that Benefit Cosmetics influences their consumer-brand relationship through their strong brand-community that is built on trust and loyalty. The community represents explicit values where consumers can identify with on different levels. Benefit approaches the audience through different identification strategies and appeals, but mainly via mechanical identification through similarity while appealing to pathos. Benefit tries to break grounds with normative gender roles and tries to divide focus between external and inner beauty. However, Benefit could become more iconic when implementing more cultural branding tactics in line with the paradigm shift that is happening in the beauty industry. Subsequently, the brand could reach a broader audience, which indirectly would dissociate fewer individuals.