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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 January 2025
Moomin Characters Ltd CEO Roleff Kråkström told us enthusiastically:
‘In contrast to the big players who create products and develop assets, Moomin is not manufactured for entertainment. Moomin is a body of art. This is where Tove Jansson's legacy is crucial. Her reason for creating the Moomins was not to generate massive amounts of cash. Tove processed her relationship with the world, her love, agony, freedom, bravery, inclusiveness, friendship, and tolerance. She addressed all the core values of humanity in her work.’
Today, Moomin is a valuable brand. Moomin Characters operates a copyright and licensing business based on registered trademarks, which is about developing and selling the Moomin brand and protecting it from wrong uses and associations. The management constantly works on positioning Moomin in the market and differentiating it from competitors and other players. Coherence and clarity are crucial in branding and storytelling about the Moomins.
Put simply, a brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that helps distinguish a product, service, or company from others. Branding, as activities and practices, refers to efforts, conscious and unconscious, or intentional and unintentional, that help make those distinctions.
Proponents take branding for granted and critics scorn it. As the communication scholar Dennis K. Mumby argues, branding is a constitutive feature of organizing in contemporary capitalism. It is ubiquitous and ‘hidden in plain sight’. This means that we are advised to be healthily suspicious of everything done in the name of brands – and of how brands start to steer our thinking and behaviour.
In this chapter, the focus is on the Moomin brand as an interface with consumers as clients. The Moomin ecosystem is characterized by managing what we consider to be a universally local brand, while staying true to its roots.
“Tove Jansson expressly stripped Moomin of all references to any political system, religion, country or place in the world,” Roleff Kråkström reflected. “The Moomins have a huge appetite for life, and they live happily in the Moominvalley. They are completely unaware of their creator being a Swedish- speaking Finn.”
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