Abstract
Brands are increasingly required to be ‘woke’ and communicate their stance on various divisive sociopolitical issues and to do so particularly on social media platforms. However, research shedding light on the outcome of woke brand communication is in short supply; it does not compare the suasory effects of the latter with those achieved by traditional persuasive appeals; and it provides scant guidance on which brands ought to adopt this strategy. Combining language expectancy theory, the brands-as-intentional-agents framework, and the literature on consumer engagement in social media, this paper aims to fill these gaps by means of a multi-industry, text-mining-based study which investigates both the volume and the semantic virality patterns of traditional vs. woke persuasive appeals adopted by brands on social media platforms. The findings suggest that woke communication generates higher levels of consumer engagement than do traditional persuasive appeals; in particular, woke communication is more effective for warm brands. Moreover, when competent brands undertake woke campaigns, they tend to trigger more polarized reactions in consumers’ comments than warm brands do.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aaker, J., K.D. Vohs, and C. Mogilner. 2010. Nonprofits are seen as warm and for-profits as competent: Firm perceptions matter. Journal of Consumer Research 37 (2): 224–237.
Abitbol, A., and M.S. VanDyke. 2023. Analyzing the nature of self-transcendent emotional elicitors in corporate social advocacy messages. Public Relations Review 49 (4): 102364.
Abitbol, A., N. Lee, S. Lee, and T. Seltzer. 2018. # RaceTogether: Starbucks’ attempt to discuss race in America and its impact on company reputation and employees. Public Relations Journal 12 (1): 1–28.
Aboelenien, A., and Nguyen, C. M. 2023. From Dr. Seuss to Barbie’s cancellation: brand’s institutional work in response to changed market logics. Journal of Brand Management 1–18.
Afifi, W.A., and S. Metts. 1998. Characteristics and consequences of expectation violations in close relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 15 (3): 365–392.
Aggarwal, P., and A.L. McGill. 2012. When brands seem human, do humans act like brands? Automatic behavioral priming effects of brand anthropomorphism. Journal of Consumer Research 39 (2): 307–323.
Ahmad, F., F. Guzmán, and B. Kidwell. 2022. Effective messaging strategies to increase brand love for sociopolitical activist brands. Journal of Business Research 151: 609–622.
Aiken, L.S., and S.G. West. 1991. Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Airoldi, E.M., D.M. Blei, E.A. Erosheva, and S.E. Fienberg. 2015. Introduction to mixed membership models and methods. Handbook of Mixed Membership Models and Their Applications 100: 3–14.
Akpinar, E., and J. Berger. 2017. Valuable virality. Journal of Marketing Research 54 (2): 318–330.
Alalwan, A.A. 2018. Investigating the impact of social media advertising features on customer purchase intention. International Journal of Information Management 42: 65–77.
Alalwan, A.A., N.P. Rana, Y.K. Dwivedi, and R. Algharabat. 2017. Social media in marketing: A review and analysis of the existing literature. Telematics and Informatics 34 (7): 1177–1190.
Althuizen, N. 2021. Revisiting Berlyne’s inverted U-shape relationship between complexity and liking: The role of effort, arousal, and status in the appreciation of product design aesthetics. Psychology & Marketing 38 (3): 481–503.
Aranda, A.M., K. Sele, H. Etchanchu, J.Y. Guyt, and E. Vaara. 2021. From big data to rich theory: Integrating critical discourse analysis with structural topic modeling. European Management Review 18 (3): 197–214.
Araujo, T., P. Neijens, and R. Vliegenthart. 2015. What motivates consumers to re-tweet brand content? The impact of information, emotion, and traceability on pass-along behavior. Journal of Advertising Research 55 (3): 284–295.
Ashley, C., and T. Tuten. 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing 32 (1): 15–27.
Austin, L.L., and B.M. Gaither. 2016. Examining public response to corporate social initiative types: A quantitative content analysis of Coca-Cola’s social media. Social Marketing Quarterly 22 (4): 290–306.
Austin, L., B. Gaither, and T.K. Gaither. 2019. Corporate social advocacy as public interest communications: Exploring perceptions of corporate involvement in controversial social-political issues. The Journal of Public Interest Communications 3 (2): 3–31.
Banks, G.C., H.M. Woznyj, R.S. Wesslen, and R.L. Ross. 2018. A review of best practice recommendations for text analysis in R (and a user-friendly app). Journal of Business and Psychology 33 (4): 445–459.
Barasch, A., E.E. Levine, J.Z. Berman, and D.A. Small. 2014. Selfish or selfless? On the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107 (3): 393.
Barger, V., J.W. Peltier, and D.E. Schultz. 2016. Social media and consumer engagement: A review and research agenda. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 10 (4): 268–287.
Barry, T.E., and D.J. Howard. 1990. A review and critique of the hierarchy of effects in advertising. International Journal of Advertising 9 (2): 121–135.
Batista, J.M., L.S. Barros, F.V. Peixoto, and D. Botelho. 2022. Sarcastic or assertive: How should brands reply to consumers’ uncivil comments on social media in the context of brand activism? Journal of Interactive Marketing 57 (1): 141–158.
Batra, R., A. Ahuvia, and R.P. Bagozzi. 2012. Brand love. Journal of Marketing 76 (2): 1–16.
Beckers, S.F., J. Van Doorn, and P.C. Verhoef. 2018. Good, better, engaged? The effect of company-initiated customer engagement behavior on shareholder value. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 46 (3): 366–383.
Berger, J., and K.L. Milkman. 2012. What makes online content viral? Journal of Marketing Research 49 (2): 192–205.
Bhagwat, Y., N.L. Warren, J.T. Beck, and G.F. Watson IV. 2020. Corporate sociopolitical activism and firm value. Journal of Marketing 84 (5): 1–21.
Blei, D.M. 2012. Probabilistic topic models. Communications of the ACM 55 (4): 77–84.
Blei, D., and J. Lafferty. 2006. Correlated topic models. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 18: 147–155.
Blei, D.M., A.Y. Ng, and M.I. Jordan. 2003. Latent Dirichlet allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research 3: 993–1022.
Bowen, M., X.H. Wen, and S. Kim. 2022. A lure or a turn-off: Social media reactions to business model innovation announcements. Marketing Letters 34: 1–21.
Boyd, D. 2010. Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In A networked self (pp. 47–66). Routledge.
Brady, W.J., J.A. Wills, J.T. Jost, J.A. Tucker, and J.J. Van Bavel. 2017. Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (28): 7313–7318.
Brady, W.J., M.J. Crockett, and J.J. Van Bavel. 2020. The MAD model of moral contagion: The role of motivation, attention, and design in the spread of moralized content online. Perspectives on Psychological Science 15 (4): 978–1010.
Bravo, O.S.A.C., and J. Lee. 2020. The mediating effects of message agreement on millennials’ response to advocacy advertising. Journal of Marketing Communications 26 (8): 856–873.
Brodie, R.J., A. Ilic, B. Juric, and L. Hollebeek. 2013. Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis. Journal of Business Research 66 (1): 105–114.
Brown, S., R.V. Kozinets, and J.F. Sherry Jr. 2003. Teaching old brands new tricks: Retro branding and the revival of brand meaning. Journal of Marketing 67 (3): 19–33.
Burgoon, J.K. 1993. Interpersonal expectations, expectancy violations, and emotional communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 12 (1–2): 30–48.
Burgoon, M., P.V. Denning, and L. Roberts. 2002. Language expectancy theory. In The persuasion handbook: Developments in theory and practice, ed. J.P. Dillard and M. Pfau, 117–137. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Cao, D., M. Meadows, D. Wong, and S. Xia. 2021. Understanding consumers’ social media engagement behaviour: An examination of the moderation effect of social media context. Journal of Business Research 122: 835–846.
Chatzidakis, A., and J. Littler. 2022. An anatomy of carewashing: Corporate branding and the commodification of care during Covid-19. International Journal of Cultural Studies 25 (3–4): 268–286.
Choi, S., S.Q. Liu, and A.S. Mattila. 2019. “How may i help you?” Says a robot: Examining language styles in the service encounter. International Journal of Hospitality Management 82: 32–38.
Choi, Y., Jung, Y., and Myaeng, S. H. 2010. Identifying controversial issues and their sub-topics in news articles. Pacific-Asia Workshop on Intelligence and Security Informatics: 140–153.
Chu, S.C., H. Kim, and Y. Kim. 2023. When brands get real: The role of authenticity and electronic word-of-mouth in shaping consumer response to brands taking a stand. International Journal of Advertising 42 (6): 1037–1064.
Coombs, W.T., and S.J. Holladay. 2018. Social issue qua wicked problems: The role of strategic communication in social issues management. Journal of Communication Management 22 (1): 79–95.
Cosenza, T.R., M.R. Solomon, and W.S. Kwon. 2015. Credibility in the blogosphere: A study of measurement and influence of wine blogs as an information source. Journal of Consumer Behaviour 14 (2): 71–91.
Cuddy, A.J., S.T. Fiske, and P. Glick. 2008. Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The perception content model and the BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 40: 61–149.
de Oliveira Santini, F., W.J. Ladeira, D.C. Pinto, M.M. Herter, C.H. Sampaio, and B.J. Babin. 2020. Customer engagement in social media: A framework and meta-analysis. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 48 (6): 1211–1228.
de Vries, L., S. Gensler, and P.S. Leeflang. 2012. Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages: An investigation of the effects of social media marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing 26 (2): 83–91.
Dehler-Holland, J., M. Okoh, and D. Keles. 2022. Assessing technology legitimacy with topic models and sentiment analysis–The case of wind power in Germany. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 175: 121354.
Deng, Q., Y. Wang, M. Rod, and S. Ji. 2021. Speak to head and heart: The effects of linguistic features on B2B brand engagement on social media. Industrial Marketing Management 99: 1–15.
Di Domenico, G., J. Sit, A. Ishizaka, and D. Nunan. 2021. Fake news, social media and marketing: A systematic review. Journal of Business Research 124: 329–341.
DiMaggio, P., M. Nag, and D. Blei. 2013. Exploiting affinities between topic modeling and the sociological perspective on culture: Application to newspaper coverage of US government arts funding. Poetics 41 (6): 570–606.
Dineva, D., J. Breitsohl, B. Garrod, and P. Megicks. 2020. Consumer responses to conflict-management strategies on non-profit social media fan pages. Journal of Interactive Marketing 52: 118–136.
DiRusso, C., C. Buckley, P. Diddi, F.E. Dardis, M. Vafeiadis, and N. Eng. 2022. Designing effective corporate social advocacy campaigns using valence, arousal, and issue salience. Public Relations Review 48 (3): 102207.
Dolan, R., J. Conduit, C. Frethey-Bentham, J. Fahy, and S. Goodman. 2019. Social media engagement behavior: A framework for engaging customers through social media content. European Journal of Marketing 53 (10): 2213–2243.
Du, S., C.B. Bhattacharya, and S. Sen. 2010. Maximizing business returns to corporate social responsibility (CSR): The role of CSR communication. International Journal of Management Reviews 12 (1): 8–19.
Dubois, D., D.D. Rucker, and A.D. Galinsky. 2016. Dynamics of communicator and audience power: The persuasiveness of competence versus warmth. Journal of Consumer Research 43 (1): 68–85.
Dwivedi, Y.K., K.K. Kapoor, and H. Chen. 2015. Social media marketing and advertising. The Marketing Review 15 (3): 289–309.
Eigenraam, A.W., J. Eelen, A. Van Lin, and P.W. Verlegh. 2018. A consumer-based taxonomy of digital customer engagement practices. Journal of Interactive Marketing 44: 102–121.
Eigenraam, A.W., J. Eelen, and P.W. Verlegh. 2021. Let me entertain you? The importance of authenticity in online customer engagement. Journal of Interactive Marketing 54: 53–68.
Ertimur, B., and G. Coskuner-Balli. 2021. Brands expressing compassion and care through advertising. Journal of Advertising 50 (3): 230–239.
Feng, Y., H. Chen, and L. He. 2019. Consumer responses to femvertising: A data-mining case of Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” on YouTube. Journal of Advertising 48 (3): 292–301.
Feng, Y., H. Chen, and H.Y.A. Ahn. 2021. How consumers react to woke advertising: Methodological triangulation based on social media data and self-report data. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 15 (4): 529–548.
Fiske, S.T., A.J.C. Cuddy, P. Glick, and J. Xu. 2002. A model of (often mixed) perception content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82: 878–902.
Folse, J.A.G., M. Porter III., M.B. Godbole, and K.E. Reynolds. 2016. The effects of negatively valenced emotional expressions in online reviews on the reviewer, the review, and the product. Psychology & Marketing 33 (9): 747–760.
Förster, J., J. Marguc, and M. Gillebaart. 2010. Novelty categorization theory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4 (9): 736–755.
Fournier, S. 1998. Consumers and their brands: Developing relationship theory in consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research 24 (4): 343–373.
Fresneda, J.E., T.A. Burnham, and C.H. Hill. 2021. Structural topic modelling segmentation: A segmentation method combining latent content and customer context. Journal of Marketing Management 37 (7–8): 792–812.
Gambetti, R.C., and S. Biraghi. 2023. Branded activism: Navigating the tension between culture and market in social media. Futures 145: 103080.
Garimella, K., G.D.F. Morales, A. Gionis, and M. Mathioudakis. 2018. Quantifying controversy on social media. ACM Transactions on Social Computing 1 (1): 1–27.
Gershon, R., and C. Cryder. 2018. Goods donations increase charitable credit for low-warmth donors. Journal of Consumer Research 45 (2): 451–469.
Grazzini, L., D. Acuti, and G. Aiello. 2021. Solving the puzzle of sustainable fashion consumption: The role of consumers’ implicit attitudes and perceived warmth. Journal of Cleaner Production 287: 125579.
Grewal, D., A.L. Roggeveen, R. Sisodia, and J. Nordfält. 2017. Enhancing customer engagement through consciousness. Journal of Retailing 93 (1): 55–64.
Grimmer, J., and B.M. Stewart. 2013. Text as data: The promise and pitfalls of automatic content analysis methods for political texts. Political Analysis 21 (3): 267–297.
Guha, M., and Korschun, D. 2023. Peer effects on brand activism: evidence from brand and user chatter on Twitter. Journal of Brand Management, 1–15.
Gummerus, J., V. Liljander, E. Weman, and M. Pihlström. 2012. Customer engagement in a Facebook brand community. Management Research Review 35 (9): 857–877.
Gvili, Y., and S. Levy. 2018. Consumer engagement with eWOM on social media: The role of social capital. Online Information Review 42 (4): 482–505.
Hang, H., L. Aroean, and Z. Chen. 2020. Building emotional attachment during COVID-19. Annals of Tourism Research 83: 103006.
Hannigan, T.R., R.F. Haans, K. Vakili, H. Tchalian, V.L. Glaser, M.S. Wang, and P.D. Jennings. 2019. Topic modeling in management research: Rendering new theory from textual data. Academy of Management Annals 13 (2): 586–632.
Heinberg, M., C.S. Katsikeas, H.E. Ozkaya, and M. Taube. 2020. How nostalgic brand positioning shapes brand equity: Differences between emerging and developed markets. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 48 (5): 869–890.
Heinonen, K. 2011. Consumer activity in social media: Managerial approaches to consumers’ social media behavior. Journal of Consumer Behaviour 10 (6): 356–364.
Hilton, J.L., J.G. Klein, and W. von Hippel. 1991. Attention allocation and impression formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17: 548–559.
Hollebeek, L. D., Sharma, T. G., Pandey, R., Sanyal, P., and Clark, M. K. 2021. Fifteen years of customer engagement research: a bibliometric and network analysis. Journal of Product and Brand Management. In press
Hovland, C.I., I.L. Janis, and H.H. Kelley. 1953. Communication and persuasion. Yale University Press.
Hu, N., T. Zhang, B. Gao, and I. Bose. 2019. What do hotel customers complain about? Text analysis using structural topic model. Tourism Management 72: 417–426.
Humphreys, A., and R.J.H. Wang. 2018. Automated text analysis for consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research 44 (6): 1274–1306.
Hung, K.H., and S.Y. Li. 2007. The influence of eWOM on virtual consumer communities: Social capital, consumer learning, and behavioral outcomes. Journal of Advertising Research 47 (4): 485–495.
Hydock, C., N. Paharia, and T.J. Weber. 2019. The consumer response to corporate political advocacy: A review and future directions. Customer Needs and Solutions 6 (3): 76–83.
Hydock, C., N. Paharia, and S. Blair. 2020. Should your brand pick a side? How market share determines the impact of corporate political advocacy. Journal of Marketing Research 57 (6): 1135–1151.
Iglesias, O., and N. Ind. 2020. Towards a theory of conscientious corporate brand co-creation: The next key challenge in brand management. Journal of Brand Management 27 (6): 710–720.
Ismagilova, E., E. Slade, N.P. Rana, and Y.K. Dwivedi. 2020. The effect of characteristics of source credibility on consumer behaviour: A meta-analysis. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53: 101736.
James G, Witten D, Hastie T, and Tibshirani, R. 2017. An introduction to statistical learning: With applications in R. 1st ed. 2013, Corr. 7th printing 2017 edition. Springer.
Jensen, M.L., J.M. Averbeck, Z. Zhang, and K.B. Wright. 2013. Credibility of anonymous online product reviews: A language expectancy perspective. Journal of Management Information Systems 30 (1): 293–324.
Johnen, M., and O. Schnittka. 2019. When pushing back is good: The effectiveness of brand responses to social media complaints. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 47: 858–878.
Johnson, Z.S., Y.J. Lee, and M.T. Ashoori. 2018. Brand associations: The value of ability versus social responsibility depends on consumer goals. Journal of Brand Management 25 (1): 27–37.
Jungblut, M., and Johnen, M. 2021. When brands (don’t) take my stance: the ambiguous effectiveness of political brand communication. Communication Research 1–26
Kabadayi, S., and K. Price. 2014. Consumer – brand engagement on Facebook: Liking and commenting behaviors. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 8 (3): 203–223.
Kantar. 2021. Kantar BrandZTM Most Valuable Italian Brands, 6 May, http://www.kantar.com/campaigns/brandz/italy
Karpen, I.O., and J. Conduit. 2020. Engaging in times of COVID-19 and beyond: Theorizing customer engagement through different paradigmatic lenses. Journal of Service Management 31 (6): 1163–1174.
Kervyn, N., S.T. Fiske, and C. Malone. 2012. Brands as intentional agents framework: How perceived intentions and ability can map brand perception. Journal of Consumer Psychology 22 (2): 166–176.
Kervyn, N., S.T. Fiske, and C. Malone. 2022. Social perception of brands: Warmth and competence define images of both brands and social groups. Consumer Psychology Review 5 (1): 51–68.
Kim, J.E., and K.K. Johnson. 2013. The impact of moral emotions on cause-related marketing campaigns: A cross-cultural examination. Journal of Business Ethics 112: 79–90.
Kim, D.H., L. Spiller, and M. Hettche. 2015. Analyzing media types and content orientations in Facebook for global brands. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 9 (1): 4–30.
Kim, S., and H. Rim. 2019. The role of public skepticism and distrust in the process of CSR communication. International Journal of Business Communication 1–21.
Klostermann, J., C. Hydock, and R. Decker. 2021. The effect of corporate political advocacy on brand perception: An event study analysis. Journal of Product and Brand Management 31 (5): 780–797.
Korschun, D. and Smith, N. C. 2018. Companies can’t avoid politics and shouldn’t try to. Harvard Business Review (Digital Article), https://hbr.org/2018/03/companies-cant-avoid-politics-and-shouldnt-try-to
Korschun, D., Rafieian, H., Aggarwal, A., and Swain, S. D. 2019. Taking a stand: Consumer responses when companies get (or don’t get) political. Available at SSRN 2806476.
Kralj Novak, P., J. Smailović, B. Sluban, and I. Mozetič. 2015. Sentiment of Emojis. PLoS ONE 10 (12): 1–22.
Krippendorff, K. 2018. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage publications.
Kronrod, A., A. Grinstein, and L. Wathieu. 2012a. Enjoy! Hedonic consumption and compliance with assertive messages. Journal of Consumer Research 39 (1): 51–61.
Kronrod, A., A. Grinstein, and L. Wathieu. 2012b. Go green! Should environmental messages be so assertive? Journal of Marketing 76 (1): 95–102.
Kübler, R.V., A. Colicev, and K.H. Pauwels. 2020. Social media’s impact on the consumer mindset: When to use which sentiment extraction tool? Journal of Interactive Marketing 50: 136–155.
Kumar, A., R. Bezawada, R. Rishika, R. Janakiraman, and P.K. Kannan. 2016. From social to sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. Journal of Marketing 80 (1): 7–25.
Lang, A. 2000. The limited capacity model of mediated message processing. Journal of Communication 50 (1): 46–70.
Leak, R.L., O.P. Woodham, and K.R. McNeil. 2015. Speaking candidly: How managers’ political stances affect consumers’ brand attitudes. Journal of Product & Brand Management 24 (5): 494–503.
Lee, J.K. 2021. Emotional expressions and brand status. Journal of Marketing Research 58 (6): 1178–1196.
Lee, S.Y., and S. Chung. 2023. Publics’ views of corporate social advocacy initiatives: Exploring prior issue stance, attitude toward a company, and news credibility. Management Communication Quarterly 37 (2): 281–309.
Lee, Y.H., and C. Mason. 1999. Responses to information incongruency in advertising: The role of expectancy, relevancy, and humor. Journal of Consumer Research 26 (2): 156–169.
Lee, C.H., and H. Yu. 2020. The impact of language on retweeting during acute natural disasters: Uncertainty reduction and language expectancy perspectives. Industrial Management and Data Systems 120 (8): 1501–1519.
Lee, D., K. Hosanagar, and H.S. Nair. 2018. Advertising content and consumer engagement on social media: Evidence from Facebook. Management Science 64 (11): 5105–5460.
Li, J.Y., J.K. Kim, and K. Alharbi. 2022. Exploring the role of issue involvement and brand attachment in shaping consumer response toward corporate social advocacy (CSA) initiatives: The case of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick campaign. International Journal of Advertising 41 (2): 233–257.
Liadeli, G., F. Sotgiu, and P.W. Verlegh. 2023. A meta-analysis of the effects of brands’ owned social media on social media engagement and sales. Journal of Marketing 87 (3): 406–427.
Lindstedt, N.C. 2019. Structural topic modeling for social scientists: A brief case study with social movement studies literature, 2005–2017. Social Currents 6 (4): 307–318.
Lou, C., and S. Yuan. 2019. Influencer marketing: How message value and credibility affect consumer trust of branded content on social media. Journal of Interactive Advertising 19 (1): 58–73.
Love, E., Sekhon, T., and Salinas, T. C. 2022. Do well, do good, and know your audience: the double-edged sword of values-based CSR communication. Journal of Brand Management: 1–17.
Lucisano P, and Piemontese, M.E. 1998. GULPEASE: a formula to predict readability of texts written in Italian language. In School and Town, La nuova Italia, Brescia (Italy), pp. 3–31.
Luo, X., M.A. Wiles, and S. Raithel. 2013. Make the most of a polarizing brand. Harvard Business Review. 91 (11): 29–31.
Mafael, A., S.A. Gottschalk, and H. Kreis. 2016. Examining biased assimilation of brand-related online reviews. Journal of Interactive Marketing 36: 91–106.
Magee, R.G. 2022. Understanding worldview beliefs to allay skepticism toward CSR advertising. Journal of Brand Management 29: 1–18.
Mangiò, F., G. Pedeliento, and D. Andreini. 2021. Branding rhetoric in times of a global pandemic: A text-mining analysis. Journal of Advertising 50 (3): 240–252.
Maryott, K. 2021. Polarization – why, for brands, it’s a good thing. WARC. January 22, https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/opinion/polarization--why-for-brands-its-a-good-thing/en-gb/4022
McShane, L., E. Pancer, M. Poole, and Q. Deng. 2021. Emoji, playfulness, and brand engagement on twitter. Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (1): 96–110.
Merchant, A., and G.M. Rose. 2013. Effects of advertising-evoked vicarious nostalgia on brand heritage. Journal of Business Research 66 (12): 2619–2625.
Middleton, K., and S. Turnbull. 2021. How advertising got ‘woke’: The institutional role of advertising in the emergence of gender progressive market logics and practices. Marketing Theory 21 (4): 561–578.
Milfeld, T., and D.J. Flint. 2020. When brands take a stand: The nature of consumers’ polarized reactions to social narrative videos. Journal of Product and Brand Management 30 (4): 532–548.
Mirzaei, A., D.C. Wilkie, and H. Siuki. 2022. Woke brand activism authenticity or the lack of it. Journal of Business Research 139: 1–12.
Mohammad, S.M., and P.D. Turney. 2013. Crowdsourcing a word–emotion association lexicon. Computational Intelligence 29 (3): 436–465.
Moorman, C. 2020. Commentary: Brand activism in a political world. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 39 (4): 388–392.
Moro, S., G. Pires, P. Rita, and P. Cortez. 2020. A cross-cultural case study of consumers’ communications about a new technological product. Journal of Business Research 121: 438–447.
Mukherjee, S., and N. Althuizen. 2020. Brand activism: Does courting controversy help or hurt a brand? International Journal of Research in Marketing 37 (4): 772–788.
Muntinga, D.G., M. Moorman, and E.G. Smit. 2011. Introducing COBRAs: Exploring motivations for brand-related social media use. International Journal of Advertising 30 (1): 13–46.
Nelson, S.K., K. Layous, S.W. Cole, and S. Lyubomirsky. 2016. Do unto others or treat yourself? The effects of prosocial and self-focused behavior on psychological flourishing. Emotion 16 (6): 850.
Nunes, J., and C., Ordanini, A., and Giambastiani, G. 2021. The Concept of Authenticity: What It Means to Consumers. Journal of Marketing 85 (4): 1–20.
Pancer, E., V. Chandler, M. Poole, and T.J. Noseworthy. 2019. How readability shapes social media engagement. Journal of Consumer Psychology 29 (2): 262–270.
Panigyrakis, G., A. Panopoulos, and E. Koronaki. 2020. All we have is words: Applying rhetoric to examine how social media marketing activities strengthen the connection between the brand and the self. International Journal of Advertising 39 (5): 699–718.
Parcha, J.M., and C.Y. Kingsley Westerman. 2020. How corporate social advocacy affects attitude change toward controversial social issues. Management Communication Quarterly 34 (3): 350–383.
Parhankangas, A., and M. Renko. 2017. Linguistic style and crowdfunding success among social and commercial entrepreneurs. Journal of Business Venturing 32 (2): 215–236.
Park, K. 2021. The mediating role of skepticism: How corporate social advocacy builds quality relationships with publics. Journal of Marketing Communications 28: 1–19.
Phillips, N., T.B. Lawrence, and C. Hardy. 2004. Discourse and institutions. Academy of Management Review 29 (4): 635–652.
Pimentel, P. C., Bassi-Suter, M., & Didonet, S. R. (2023). Brand activism as a marketing strategy: an integrative framework and research agenda. Journal of Brand Management: 1–23.
Pletikosa Cvijikj, I., and F. Michahelles. 2013. Online engagement factors on Facebook brand pages. Social Network Analysis and Mining 3 (4): 843–861.
Ramírez, S.A.O., C. Veloutsou, and A. Morgan-Thomas. 2019. I hate what you love: Brand polarization and negativity towards brands as an opportunity for brand management. Journal of Product and Brand Management 28 (5): 614–632.
Reisenbichler, M., and T. Reutterer. 2019. Topic modeling in marketing: Recent advances and research opportunities. Journal of Business Economics 89 (3): 327–356.
Ren, S., S. Karimi, A.B. Velázquez, and J. Cai. 2023. Endorsement effectiveness of different social media influencers: The moderating effect of brand competence and warmth. Journal of Business Research 156: 113476.
Rietveld, R., W. Van Dolen, M. Mazloom, and M. Worring. 2020. What you feel, is what you like influence of message appeals on customer engagement on Instagram. Journal of Interactive Marketing 49: 20–53.
Rim, H., Y. Lee, and S. Yoo. 2020. Polarized public opinion responding to corporate social advocacy: Social network analysis of boycotters and advocators. Public Relations Review 46 (2): 1–10.
Roberts, M.E., B.M. Stewart, D. Tingley, C. Lucas, J. Leder-Luis, S.K. Gadarian, and D.G. Rand. 2014. Structural topic models for open-ended survey responses. American Journal of Political Science 58 (4): 1064–1082.
Roberts, M.E., B.M. Stewart, and D. Tingley. 2019. Stm: An R package for structural topic models. Journal of Statistical Software 91: 1–40.
Rocklage, M.D., and R.H. Fazio. 2020. The enhancing versus backfiring effects of positive emotion in consumer reviews. Journal of Marketing Research 57 (2): 332–352.
Saxton, G.D., L. Gómez, Z. Ngoh, Y.P. Lin, and S. Dietrich. 2019. Do CSR messages resonate? Examining public reactions to firms’ CSR efforts on social media. Journal of Business Ethics 155 (2): 359–377.
Schaefers, T., T. Falk, A. Kumar, and J. Schamari. 2021. More of the same? Effects of volume and variety of social media brand engagement behavior. Journal of Business Research 135: 282–294.
Schmidt, H.J., N. Ind, F. Guzman, and E. Kennedy. 2021. Sociopolitical activist brands. Journal of Product and Brand Management 31 (1): 40–55.
Schmiedel, T., O. Müller, and J. Vom Brocke. 2019. Topic modeling as a strategy of inquiry in organizational research: A tutorial with an application example on organizational culture. Organizational Research Methods 22 (4): 941–968.
Schneiberg, M., and E.S. Clemens. 2006. The typical tools for the job: Research strategies in institutional analysis. Sociological Theory 24 (3): 195–227.
Schneider, I.K., and N. Schwarz. 2017. Mixed feelings: The case of ambivalence. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 15: 39–45.
Shahbaznezhad, H., R. Dolan, and M. Rashidirad. 2021. The role of social media content format and platform in users’ engagement behavior. Journal of Interactive Marketing 53: 47–65.
Shan, Y., and K.W. King. 2015. The effects of interpersonal tie strength and subjective norms on consumers’ brand-related eWOM referral intentions. Journal of Interactive Advertising 15 (1): 16–27.
Shoenberger, H., E. Kim, and Y. Sun. 2021. Advertising during COVID-19: Exploring perceived brand message authenticity and potential psychological reactance. Journal of Advertising 50 (3): 253–261.
Sobande, F. 2019. Woke-washing:“Intersectional” femvertising and branding “woke” bravery. European Journal of Marketing 54 (11): 2723–2745.
Sobande, F. 2020. ‘We’re all in this together’: Commodified notions of connection, care and community in brand responses to COVID-19. European Journal of Cultural Studies 23 (6): 1033–1037.
Sprout Social. 2023. The Sprout Social Index, Edition XVII: Accelerate. August 28, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/index-accelerate/
Song, B., and Choi, M. 2023. Testing Publics’ Perceptions of Corporate Social Advocacy Messaging: Linking Organizational and Social Outcomes. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 1–20.
Stubbersfield, J. M., Dean, L. G., Sheikh, S., Laland, K. N., and Cross, C. P. 2019. Social transmission favours the ‘morally good’over the ‘merely arousing’. Palgrave Communications 5(1).
Suddaby, R., and R. Greenwood. 2005. Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy. Administrative Science Quarterly 50 (1): 35–67.
Sundar, S. S. (2008). The MAIN model: A heuristic approach to understanding technology effects on credibility, 73–100 MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative
Swaminathan, V., A. Sorescu, J.B.E.M. Steenkamp, T.C.G. O’Guinn, and B. Schmitt. 2020. Branding in a hyperconnected world: Refocusing theories and rethinking boundaries. Journal of Marketing 84 (2): 24–46.
Swaminathan, V., H.A. Schwartz, R. Menezes, and S. Hill. 2022. The language of brands in social media: Using topic modeling on social media conversations to drive brand strategy. Journal of Interactive Marketing 57 (2): 255–277.
Swani, K., and Labrecque, L. I. 2020. Like, Comment, or Share? Self-presentation vs. brand relationships as drivers of social media engagement choices. Marketing Letters 31(2): 279–298.
Swani, K., and G.R. Milne. 2017. Evaluating Facebook brand content popularity for service versus goods offerings. Journal of Business Research 79: 123–133.
Tafesse, W., and A. Wien. 2018. Using message strategy to drive consumer behavioral engagement on social media. Journal of Consumer Marketing 35 (3): 241–253.
Taylor, C.R. 2020. Editorial: Advertising and COVID-19. International Journal of Advertising 39 (5): 587–589.
Tellis, G.J., D.J. MacInnis, S. Tirunillai, and Y. Zhang. 2019. What drives virality (sharing) of online digital content? The critical role of information, emotion, and brand prominence. Journal of Marketing 83 (4): 1–20.
Thomas, V.L., and K. Fowler. 2023. Examining the outcomes of influencer activism. Journal of Business Research 154: 113336.
Thompson, C.J., and A. Kumar. 2022. Analyzing the cultural contradictions of authenticity: Theoretical and managerial insights from the market logic of conscious capitalism. Journal of Marketing 86 (5): 21–41.
Tirunillai, S., and G.J. Tellis. 2014. Mining marketing meaning from online chatter: Strategic brand analysis of big data using latent Dirichlet allocation. Journal of Marketing Research 51 (4): 463–479.
Tromble, R. 2021. Where have all the data gone? A critical reflection on academic digital research in the post-API age. Social Media+ Society 7(1): 2056305121988929.
Tsai, W.H.S., and L.R. Men. 2013. Motivations and antecedents of consumer engagement with brand pages on social networking sites. Journal of Interactive Advertising 13 (2): 76–87.
Unnava, V., and A. Aravindakshan. 2021. How does consumer engagement evolve when brands post across multiple social media? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 49 (5): 864–881.
Vallaster, C., and S. von Wallpach. 2013. An online discursive inquiry into the social dynamics of multi-stakeholder brand meaning co-creation. Journal of Business Research 66 (9): 1505–1515.
Van Doorn, J., K.N. Lemon, V. Mittal, S. Nass, D. Pick, P. Pirner, and P.C. Verhoef. 2010. Customer engagement behavior: Theoretical foundations and research directions. Journal of Service Research 13 (3): 253–266.
Villarroel Ordenes, F., D. Grewal, S. Ludwig, K.D. Ruyter, D. Mahr, and M. Wetzels. 2019. Cutting through content clutter: How speech and image acts drive consumer sharing of social media brand messages. Journal of Consumer Research 45 (5): 988–1012.
Vlachvei, A., Notta, O., and Koronaki, E. 2021. Effects of content characteristics on stages of customer engagement in social media: investigating European wine brands. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing. Vol. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-12-2020-0275.
Voorveld, H.A. 2019. Brand communication in social media: A research agenda. Journal of Advertising 48 (1): 14–26.
Vredenburg, J., S. Kapitan, A. Spry, and J.A. Kemper. 2020. Brands taking a stand: Authentic brand activism or woke washing? Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 39 (4): 444–460.
Wang, S.W., and A.C. Scheinbaum. 2018. Enhancing brand credibility via celebrity endorsement: Trustworthiness trumps attractiveness and expertise. Journal of Advertising Research 58 (1): 16–32.
Wang, Y., M.S. Qin, X. Luo, and Y. Kou. 2022. Frontiers: How support for black lives matter impacts consumer responses on social media. Marketing Science: In press.
Wannow, S., Haupt, M., and Ohlwein, M. 2023. Is brand activism an emotional affair? The role of moral emotions in consumer responses to brand activism. Journal of Brand Management, 1–25.
Weber, T.J., J. Joireman, D.E. Sprott, and C. Hydock. 2023. Differential response to corporate political advocacy and corporate social responsibility: Implications for political polarization and radicalization. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 42 (1): 74–93.
Weinzimmer, L.G., and C.A. Esken. 2016. Risky business: Taking a stand on social issues. Business Horizons 59 (3): 331–337.
Westerman, D., P.R. Spence, and B. Van Der Heide. 2014. Social media as information source: Recency of updates and credibility of information. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19 (2): 171–183.
Wojciszke, B., R. Bazinska, and M. Jaworski. 1998. On the dominance of moral categories in impression formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24 (12): 1251–1263.
Wu, L., Shen, H., Fan, A., and Mattila, A. S. 2017. The impact of language style on consumers′ reactions to online reviews. Tourism Management: 590–596.
Xie, C., R.P. Bagozzi, and K. Grønhaug. 2019. The impact of corporate social responsibility on consumer brand advocacy: The role of moral emotions, attitudes, and individual differences. Journal of Business Research 95: 514–530.
Yang, A., A. Saffer, and Y. Li. 2020. Managing stakeholder expectations in a politically polarized society: An expectation violation theory approach. Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research 3 (2): 275–299.
Yang, J., P. Chuenterawong, and K. Pugdeethosapol. 2021. Speaking up on Black lives matter: A comparative study of consumer reactions toward brand and influencer-generated corporate social responsibility messages. Journal of Advertising 50 (5): 565–583.
York, J.G., S. Vedula, and M.J. Lenox. 2018. It’s not easy building green: The impact of public policy, private actors, and regional logics on voluntary standards adoption. Academy of Management Journal 61 (4): 1492–1523.
Zarantonello, L., S. Romani, S. Grappi, and M. Fetscherin. 2018. Trajectories of brand hate. Journal of Brand Management 25 (6): 549–560.
Zawisza, M., and C. Pittard. 2015. When do warmth and competence sell best? The “Golden quadrant” shifts as a function of congruity with the product type, targets’ individual differences, and advertising appeal type. Basic and Applied Social Psychology 37 (2): 131–141.
Zhao, P., Z. Ma, T. Gill, and C. Ranaweera. 2023. Social media sentiment polarization and its impact on product adoption. Marketing Letters 34: 497–512.
Zhou, X., Lou, C., and Huang, X. 2023. Transcendent Brand Activism Advertising: Explicating the Roles of Color and Message Framing in Advertising Effectiveness. Journal of Advertising, 1–17.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank all participants for their involvement in this research and colleagues as well as attendees at the 15th Global Brand Conference 2022 (4th–6th May 2022, Sheffield Hallam University) for comments on earlier versions of this research. The empirical sections are partly based on data collected for the first author’s (unpublished) PhD dissertation at the University of Bergamo, XXXV graduate programme in Business and Law.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest.
On behalf of all the authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Mangiò, F., Pedeliento, G., Andreini, D. et al. How persuasive is woke brand communication on social media? Evidence from a consumer engagement analysis on Facebook. J Brand Manag (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-023-00347-4
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-023-00347-4