Effects Of Polarized Advertising On Consumers

Nike’s recent advertisement highlighting former NFL quarterback and Black Lives Matter figurehead Colin Kaepernick was met with deep sentiments of polarization (Green, 2018). This polarization resulted in some consumers declaring that they would never buy a product from Nike again, and other customers increasing their purchases from Nike to show their support for the company (Trotta, 2018). Despite these boycotts Nike enjoyed a large surge in press, profit, and stock price (Meyer, 2018). Although this ad campaign was met with polarized reactions, it’s hard to dispute the success of their campaign (Meyer, 2018). Their use of controversial advertising sets a strong example that other companies may soon follow. While other companies may be inspired by Nike’s use of Kaepernick to incite controversy for the sake of increasing positive perceptions and profit, they should also be weary of campaigns that were largely unsuccessful. In recent memory, Pepsi’s use of Kendall Jenner sharing a can of Pepsi between “Black Lives Matter” protestors and police officers to make amends between the two groups was met with bipartisan public outcry (Maloney, 2017). While this campaign may not have been polarizing in the sense that Nike’s advertisement was, it was met with polarized responses amongst their consumer base. (Green, 2018) These two examples show the large contrasts in results that can occur from controversial advertisements.

The use of controversial advertising to create an us versus them perspective amongst regular consumers may have its merits (Cikara, Botvinic, & Fiske, 2011). If a company sees that their consumers share a similar identity, they may try to create a sense of us versus them to see if they can get further support from their consumer base (Cikara, Botvinick, & Fiske, 2011). It is common for consumers of branded products to closely identify with the brand as an expression of themselves and the lifestyles they wish to lead (Catalin & Andreea, 2014). Consumers may develop a sense of us versus them because of this desire to identify with specific brands rather than others (Catalin & Andreea, 2014). When this feeling of us versus them is created it promotes in-group social cohesion while also nourishing more intergroup competition (Cikara, Botvinick, & Fiske, 2011). With these changes in behavior, individuals feel pleasure when their group wins, and other groups lose, but also displeasure when their group loses, and other groups wins (Cikara, Botvinick, & Fiske, 2011).

These feelings of intergroup competition aren’t just a measure of the consumers devotion to a brand, the feelings of us versus them also stems from the consumers own virtues, ethics, and morals which can heavily influence purchasing decisions and habits (Katz, 2011). Often these purchasing decisions are expressed “through buycotting (intentionally purchasing) or boycotting (intentionally abstaining from purchasing) of particular products or companies”. (Katz, 2011, p. iii) The act of boycotting goods can indicate to a company that consumers are unhappy with their decisions to engage a certain activity and wish to distance themselves from that product, while through buycotting consumers can indicate that they support and identify with their decisions (Katz, 2011; Catalin & Andreea, 2014). When enough people boycott a product, it may incite that company to make changes to their business model (Yuksel & Mryteza, 2009). As of late an increasingly popular field of research is the polarization of American citizens. The differences between Republican and Democrat voters has become significantly more pronounced with “an average 36-percentage-point gap between Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and Democrats and Democratic leaners. In 1994, it was only 15 points” (Doherty, 2017, p. 1).

The same study noted that differences between voters was larger than the differences between other demographic identifiers (Doherty, 2017). It has yet to be determined if polarization in advertising is currently being used as a method to further polarize consumers or if it should be used to address the demands of their consumers. When companies use advertisements as a means to rally support for their cause, or to cause controversy for the purpose of driving sales it is important that they measure the outcome of their ad campaigns. Companies should be aware of the effects of driving wedges between their consumer bases. Measuring advertising campaign effectiveness can be done in a few different ways namely through the use of traditional advertising metrics e. g. Nielsen ratings amongst newer methods such as conversion rates on the internet, social media consumer engagement, and other advertising metrics (Danaher, 2017). Although Nielsen ratings can be used to measure campaign success, the immediacy of data gleaned from the internet and social media provides the added benefit of knowing when marketing campaigns are successful or not (Xu, Frankwick, & Ramirez, 2015). With the use of social media researchers were able to find that there was “strong positive correlations between social media controversy and sales performance across multiple datasets” (Zhang & Li, 2010, p. 1). If this same principle idea were to be studied further there may be similar results across a variety of different marketing channels. In addition to social media data mining, advertisers can also turn to online blogs to measure sentiment amongst their consumer base (Kerr, Mortimer, Dickinson, & Waller, 2012). Reliable measurements can be made on the effectiveness of controversial advertising; however, it still needs to be determined if controversy drives sales or if it has the opposite intended effect. Polarizing consumers into an us versus them mindset is a side effect of controversial advertising that may or may not lead to negative consequences (Taylor, 2017).

Assuming controversy increases profit amongst other business measures it would be beneficial to understand what kinds of campaigns work better than others. In addition, it would be essential to understand if controversial advertising hinders not only profit, but also perceptions of the company. If controversy drives sales and improves perceptions surrounding companies, controversial marketing tactics should be further studied. Further study should also look into methods used in the past to combat backlash against controversial ad campaigns. Finally, if it is found that controversy is a net gain for a company, studying methods to consistently create effective controversial advertisements should be looked into further as well.