Nerd Alert: When Brand Nicknames Help or Harm

Welcome to Nerd Alert, a series of special episodes bridging the gap between marketing academia and practitioners. We’re breaking down highly involved, complex research into plain language and takeaways any marketer can use.

In this episode, Elena and Rob explore how consumer-created brand nicknames can backfire when brands adopt them officially. They reveal why "nickname branding" hurts performance across key metrics and shifts power dynamics in ways that damage brand perception.

Topics covered: 

• [01:00] "BMW is Powerful, Beamer is Not: Nickname Branding Impairs Brand Performance"
• [02:00] What nickname branding means and why brands do it
• [03:00] Speech Act Theory and power dynamics in marketing
• [04:00] When trying to be cool backfires spectacularly
• [06:00] Competent vs. warm brands and nickname effects
• [07:00] Transactional vs. communal messaging with nicknames 

 





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Resources: 
Zhang, Zhe, Ning Ye, and Matthew Thomson. 2024. “BMW Is Powerful, Beemer Is Not: Nickname Branding Impairs Brand Performance.” Journal of Marketing 89 (1): 135–??. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429241266586 
 

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