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Nike’s 2018 ad featuring Colin Kaepernick sparked a backlash on social media. Credit: Saiid Kermani, Peter Darke, Theo Noseworthy
A Nike ad starring Colin Kaepernick caused a huge uproar on social media in 2018. Kaepernick, a former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, first made headlines in 2016 when he knelt during the American national anthem to protest police brutality.
People who viewed Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem as unpatriotic expressed outrage and called for a boycott of Nike. Despite initial concerns about the financial impact of Nike’s decision, the ad proved to be a success for the company, with Nike earning his $6 billion in revenue from this campaign.
One explanation for this success is that Nike’s existing customers outnumbered the outraged customers and rallied behind the brand. However, social media conversations at the time suggested that another phenomenon was occurring.
Some people expressed support for Nike in response to this outrage, but not because they were already loyal customers of the brand. This is because people who shared Kaepernick’s concerns supported Nike in the wake of the online outrage as a way to symbolically defend or support their beliefs about racial equality and police brutality. Suggests.
Seeing this example and realizing that more and more brands are addressing social issues through their marketing campaigns, we decided to undertake a research project. Our aim was to investigate whether brands that take such positions benefit from the ensuing outrage from opposing consumer groups.
positive anger
We conducted five studies using real-life examples of brands that took a stance on social issues and faced online backlash. Participants were presented with tweets expressing anger or disapproval of a brand’s social message. We then measured how connected participants felt to the brand being attacked and what their intentions were to buy from that brand.
Across all five studies, we found that participants who shared the values promoted by a brand felt more connected to the brand and more motivated to purchase its products when they saw angry tweets. Ta. This was true not only for the brands that were specifically attacked, but also for other brands with similar social values.
The underlying psychological reason for this positive anger effect was that participants perceived the anger as a threat to their personal social values.
This is consistent with existing theory suggesting that public expressions of anger can be seen as a threat to people’s beliefs and values. Individuals respond to such threats by performing symbolic acts to protect the threatened values.
Importantly, this feeling of threat and subsequent positive brand impact occurred under specific conditions. That is, positive outcomes occurred when anger was expressed by members of groups with opposing values, such as political opponents, or when that anger received viral support online.
Management impact
From a business perspective, brands have been reluctant to take sides on controversial social issues, partly because of the risk of online outrage. However, consumers increasingly expect companies to speak up about social issues that are important to them.
Our research offers optimism, showing that outrage can benefit brands by strengthening support from people who share the values being promoted. . These are the customers that companies should be reaching with their marketing efforts.
However, you need to be careful. Brands should be mindful of the risk of alienating consumers with opposing views on the social issues in question, especially if a brand’s customer base has diverse social values. When brands actively address social issues, they risk alienating customers and losing profits.
This highlights the importance of ensuring that such social marketing campaigns align with the existing values of a brand’s core customer base. By doing so, brands can avoid the potential risk of alienation while maximizing the potential benefit of provoking outrage.
social impact
As influencers, brands have the power to take a stance on social issues and inspire social change. To bring about change, an idea must spread and gain sufficient support among the public.
Brands can play a key role in helping make this happen by uniting people and organizations around social issues through marketing campaigns.
While anger from opposing groups can benefit brands, intentionally stirring up such controversy can also have a negative impact on society. One concern is that this type of marketing could increase the risk of political polarization.
Polarization can lead to the rise of parallel economies of conservatives and liberals. The growing trend of companies in the United States positioning themselves as “anti-wake” is an example of this development.
However, more research is needed to fully understand the positive and negative impacts these marketing activities have on society. For example, to better understand this topic, it is important to study how consumer backlash affects other organizations, such as a company’s employees, policy makers, and investors.