Exploring Brand Activism Strategies: The Role of Narrative Transportation, Consumer-Brand Identification, and Brand Reputation

This experimental study examined how design elements and narrative transportation factors may influence consumer evaluation of brand activism messaging addressing two social justice issues. A lab-based experiment ( N = 332) and an online experiment ( N = 406) show that the Black Lives Matter ads were rated less favorably than the Stop Asian Hate ads on perceived consumer-brand identification (CBI), brand reputation, and brand attitudes across both studies. Findings also confirmed CBI and brand reputation mediated the positive effect of narrative transportation on brand attitudes. Moreover, multimedia design and narrative content were found to induce transportation in how brand activism messages were evaluated.