Arkiverad identitet : En kvalitativ studie om företagsarkiv som redskap för att synliggöra företagsidentitet via varumärke och kommunikation

Sammanfattning: This thesis will examine how corporate archive can be used by companies in branding and communication. The main question is: How can corporate archives be used to emphasize and shape corporate brands and identities? Taking the overall issue into consideration, the thesis looks at any archival materials from the corporate archives that the corporate uses to reproduce their history and corporate identity, and how different archival types of materials interact on the corporates websites. Furthermore, this thesis compares the use of archival material on each corporates historical sites. The source material consists of sites that six different corporates in collaboration developed with the Centre for Business History (CfN) were the different types of records used to present the corporate and its history. My starting point is that corporate archives and marketing in a compound is not specifically represented in research linked to the field of research of archival science. Therefore, this thesis combines corporate archive opportunities with theories of organizational framework of Corporate Identity as well as the relatively new concept History Marketing. Corporate archives can be connected with these concepts in order to increase the impact beneficial to the corporates communication and marketing. Images are the archival objects the get the most space and appear more frequently, on the websites. They are more accessible in the way they produce different things at the same time the viewer is free to interpret them. Even text documents and films are represented in the corporate archives by choice. By using archival materials, older advertising campaigns can be produced in contemporary light, with original material. Movies and photos can describe the same events and provide a broader perspective. Combined, they can complement each other in an article. Since archival material consists of different types of materials, older advertising campaigns can be reconstructed and shown again. Some sites use a picture to describe a sequence of events while others use multiple images. This study shows how corporates have chosen to emphasize and promote their brand and identity by launching websites on which the information is based on corporate archives. Corporates varied activities play a role in which archival materials you choose and why. The archive material becomes part of the corporate identity both on internal organizational plan and external stakeholder consciousness.