Brands Taking a Stand: Authentic Brand Activism or Woke Washing?

Abstract

In today’s marketplace, consumers want brands to take a stand on sociopolitical issues. When brands match activist messaging, purpose, and values with prosocial corporate practice, they engage in authentic brand activism, creating the most potential for social change and the largest gains in brand equity. In contrast, brands that detach their activist messaging from their purpose, values, and practice are enacting inauthentic brand activism through the practice of “woke washing,” potentially misleading consumers with their claims, damaging both their brand equity and potential for social change. First, the authors draw on theory to inform a typology of brand activism to determine how, and when, a brand engaging with a sociopolitical cause can be viewed as authentic. Second, a theory-driven framework identifies moderate, optimal incongruence between brand and cause as a boundary condition, showing how brand activists may strengthen outcomes in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Third, the authors explore important policy and practice implications for current and aspiring brand activists, from specific brand-level standards in marketing efforts to third-party certifications and public sector partnerships.

Covid-19 and Advertising: The Case for a Paradigm Shift

“…Research on brand activism is just beginning to emerge with researchers examining issues such as woke-washing (Vredenburg et al 2020), brand activism in a political world (Moorman 2020), effectiveness of brand activism (Mukherjee and Althuizen 2020), and the virality of brand activism messages on social media (Lee and Yoon 2020) among other things. Opportunities for research here exist in investigating the consumer reception and perception of brands engaged in social and environmental activism; modeling and understanding the antecedents and consequences of engaging in social and environmental activism; the interaction of product category, consumer involvement or relevance, and other variables with brand activism; the role of advertising agencies in persuading clients to engage in brand activism; the financial impact of engaging in social and environmental activism for both brands and advertising agencies; and the potential implications of not engaging in brand activism.…”

Seeing the invisible: brand authenticity and the cultural production of queer imagination

“…Despite their efforts to convey an "authentic" representation of queer imagination (Figure 1), the advertisement could face backlash if it fails to reintegrate the imagery it conveys into brand praxis. Vredenburg et al (2020) refer to this as woke-washing. However, such contributions to the commodification of queer life can still compromise normative political ideology by disseminating and normalizing queer imaginaries.…”

Marketing’s Role in Understanding Political Activity

“…Although countries define the boundaries of legal political engagement by businesses differently, globally there is growing perception that firms should actively manage the political environment in which they operate. This has resulted in growing and diversifying actions by firms in the political realm (see Eilert and Nappier Cherup 2020; Vredenburg et al 2020). For example, in the United States, companies spend billions of dollars each year on lobbying or through political action committees to influence government policies, elect particular candidates, or shape political issues (e.g., Martin et al 2018).…”

“…One broad overview of this interface examines brand activism with citizens and consumers as keen evaluators of firm authenticity. Introducing the concept of “woke washing,” Vredenburg et al (2020) advance that how consumers view brands’ political stance on varied issues is measured relative to the firm’s internal, authentic embodiment of aligned values. Taking this typology a step further, the authors explain that a zone of optimal incongruence between brand stance and core values helps the message realize the greatest impact with interested citizens.…”

“…This framework is novel in its explication of the firm’s interaction with the institutional environment through activism. Taken together with notions of authenticity described in Vredenburg et al (2020), this special issue provides robust conceptualization of company/brand activism and citizen response. However, company brand activism can have unintended citizen responses as well.…”