Pragmatist, evangelist, or sensualist? Emotional branding on sina weibo

Gobe (Emotional branding: The new paradigm for connecting brands to people. Allworth Press, New York, 2009) emphasizes the significance of emotional branding and identifies stages of emotional branding as including the “evangelist” age and the “sensualist” age. According to Gobe, the “evangelist” age of branding emphasizes ideals of building businesses for the people and the planet, representing philosophies of justice, equality, and sensitivity to the environment, whereas the “sensualist” age orients toward hedonism, glamour, fame, and individual expressions. This paper attempts to apply the notions by Gobe to examine the process of emotional branding by top Chinese corporations in China in the changing Internet landscape. Various types of corporate presentations and promotions by the top Chinese corporations on the different Internets of China such as Weibo and Facebook will be collected and examined. A combination of linguistic and multimodal analysis will be attempted to manifest the epresentational structures of “evangelist” and “sensualist.” Finally, this paper will conclude with a discussion of the particular Chinese characteristics as well as the universal psychological principles that govern emotional branding in China.