PROJECTING CORE AND EXTENDED BRAND IDENTITY THROUGH INSTAGRAM ADVERTISING: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PAKISTANI CLOTHING BRANDS

Abstract

Instagram advertising has become a powerful marketing tool through which clothing brands promote their products and project multifaceted brand identities. This paper investigates how selected Pakistani clothing brands project core and extended brand identities through Instagram captions. Critical Discourse Analysis is used as an analytical tool, with a specific focus on the second-dimension of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, namely discursive practice. The data comprise fifty captions which is taken from the official Instagram pages of five popular apparel brands. The analysis examines various discursive practices through which brands’ messages are circulated, particularly in relation to product attributes and customer-acquisition strategies. The findings indicate that online advertising help brands to reach a diverse customer base through well-crafted descriptions and creative marketing strategies. Drawing on Aaker’s Brand Identity Structure (1996), the study aligns the ‘brand as product’ with core identity and ‘brand as person’ with extended identity, resulting in an unprecedented consolidation between the concepts of brand identity and online advertising.