is Lecturer in Marketing at Essex Business School, University of Essex in Colchester, UK. He has extensive industry experience having worked for Allianz of Germany (Insurance), among others, in different managerial and non-managerial roles before his move into academia. He holds a PhD (Brunel) and his general research interests are within the nascent fields of corporate marketing and corporate heritage scholarship (and related areas ABSTRACT The notion of heritage branding orientation is introduced and explicated. Heritage branding orientation is designated as embracing both product and corporate brands and differs from corporate heritage brand orientation which has an explicit corporate focus. Empirical insights are drawn from an in-depth and longitudinal case study of Ach. Brito, a celebrated Portuguese manufacturer of soaps and toiletries. This study shows how, by the pursuance of a strategy derived from a heritage branding orientation, Ach. Brito -after a prolonged period of decline -achieved a dramatic strategic turnaround. The findings reveal how institutional heritage can be a strategic resource via its adoption and activation at both the product and corporate levels. www.palgrave-journals.com/bm/ Moreover, the study explains how the bi-lateral interplay between product and corporate brand levels can be mutually reinforcing. In instrumental terms, the study demonstrates how heritage can be activated and articulated in different ways. For instance, it can reposition both product and/or corporate brands; it can be meaningfully informed by product brand heritage and shape corporate heritage and can be of strategic importance to both medium-sized and small enterprises.

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In this article, the purpose is to develop a consumer-focused understanding of authenticity within corporate heritage research. Our research question is as follows: “What makes a corporate heritage brand authentic for consumers?” We employ Peirce’s semiotic concepts of icon, index and symbol to analyse consumers’ perceptions of the Finnish corporate heritage brand Fazer, founded in 1891. Our study shows that childhood memories, consumer experiences and expectations as well as shared social conventions make the corporate heritage brand authentic for consumers. Thus, our research empirically advances the understanding of authenticity as socially constructed. Importantly, our study highlights the temporal dimension of this construction and advances the current knowledge on corporate heritage brands by showing that uniqueness, credibility and consistency over time are key dimensions of corporate heritage brand authenticity assessments. This understanding is fundamental for corporate heritage management practice, especially for developing the strategic positioning of corporate heritage brands in the markets by harnessing the assessments of authenticity.

Organizational difficulties in attracting talent should alert to the need of employer brands to present characteristics differentiating them from competitors. Employer branding is a fusion area between human resources and marketing, which aims to build an organization’s reputation as a great place to work. The future of organizations depends on the quality of the workforce they can attract (Chhabra & Sharma, 2014) and people, as brands, are the most important assets in a company (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004). This research aimed to conceive and test a talent attraction model of graduated engineers for a large business group with decades of experience in industry and automotive sectors, in Portugal. Action research was performed in two cycles, consisting in focus group, intervention (detailed organizational presentation) and a final survey with 6 questions about organizational attractiveness of the organization in study. The Employer Attractiveness Scale by Berthon, Ewing and Hah (2005) was used as a guiding paradigm. Twenty recent graduates and finalists participated, with an average age of 23, male, from Mechanical, Automotive Mechanical and Industrial Management Engineering degrees of two Oporto Schools (Portugal). Data was collected personally, by researchers on campus. NVivo Content analysis and descriptive statistics were used, and intervention improvements were introduced before the second cycle. Results showed that: (i) The most valued dimensions by participants were development and economic; (ii) Before the intervention, students didn’t know the organization well, neither in terms of business areas or size; (iii) Post-intervention, participant’s opinion about the organization improved, with an average of 6.4 (1-7 lickert scale); (iv) After the intervention 90% would consider the organization as their employer. Based on the two cycles and organizational information, a model for engineer attraction was proposed, however, it’s overall principles might be adapted and applied to other areas of talent and different organizations facing similar challenges.