Paper short abstract:

This paper posits self-brands as devices organising work activities. Examining the case of professional athletes engaged in a threefold process of negotiation involving companies, consumers and the self, it explores the practical implications of the collective dimension of self-branding.

Paper long abstract:

For more than two decades, self-branding has been presented and promoted as a key asset to securing work opportunities in the changing labor markets of the new economy. Recent research have argued toward an understanding of self-branding as labor reliant on the self but also on social networks. Engaging with these propositions, this paper examines self-brands as a device organising and shaping work activities. To do so, it draws on multiple years of ethnographic fieldwork in the USA and Western Europe with high profile professional rock climbers. The latter, as athletes sponsored by companies to enhance brands and products, are at the crossroad of a threefold process of negotiation involving their own inspirations, companies expectations and consumers perception and experience of these self-brands. Therefore, when the value-creating activity of consumption work is undeniable, as is the weight of the marketing strategies of companies, in their work of creating and making their self-brands recognisable, meaningful, and valuable, athletes have to carefully acknowledge and manage these possibilities.