This comprehensive book features recent works on leveraged marketing communications (LMC)—an intentional pairing of a brand to benefit from the associations the target audience has with the object. LMC conceptually binds a wide range of marketing communication strategies previously studied in isolation: celebrity endorsements, sponsorship, product placements, cause-related marketing, and cobranding. LMC strategies assume that an entity (e.g., Michael Jordan) can be paired with a brand (e.g., Nike) to evoke associations that ultimately enhance brand awareness and evaluations.

The collection of chapters in this book examines the association between brands and entities, ideas, and contexts and combines theory and practice to offer new perspectives to help academics, practitioners, and policymakers better understand and apply LMC research. The chapters collectively provide a theoretical framework for building brand equity via linking brands to people, places, and things; examine how marketers can best leverage brand alliances; explore ways to maximize the effectiveness of sponsorship, product placement, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and cause-related marketing; and summarize our knowledge of the various forms of LMC.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the International Journal of Advertising.