This thesis investigates top-level executive’s personal branding impact, through social media, on
consumers’ perception of corporate identity. It takes departure in a case study of the Danish apparel
company Hummel and their top-executive Christian Stadil. The personal brand identity of Stadil and
the corporate brand identity of Hummel are established through discourse analyses, with a multimodal
perspective, in an effort to provide an analytical background for the main focus group study. The
focus group session is composed of Hummel’s intended target audience, which has been determined
through a multimodal discourse analysis. Findings suggest that Hummel is dependent on the personal
branding efforts conducted by Stadil on social media.
The study provides evidence of the importance of personal brand identity of executives on consumers’
perception of an organisation’s corporate identity. Thus, arguing that top-executives’ personal brand
influence organisations’ perceived corporate identity and reputation.