Marguerite Darlington

In the fall of 2014, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom O’Guinn, professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business and co-author of one of the most influential papers in the brand marketing and management space, “Brand Communities.”

He’d just won a long-term contribution award from the Association of Consumer Research (Journal of Consumer Research) for the enduring impact this paper has had on the field of marketing. It’s the first time that the idea of customers co-creating a brand was introduced into the academic realm, and it’s been cited on Google Scholar more than 3,000 times since it was published.

We were able to cover the award from a couple of important perspectives: a newsroom article about the win itself and then a magazine feature story on the nature of the research.

The feature article was published in the Spring 2015 issue of Update magazine, the alumni magazine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Wisconsin School of Business.