What some CMO's get wrong when picking a spokesperson for a social stance
By Lingwei Wan
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Executive Summary
According to Deloitte research, 29.1% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) believe their company should express their stance on the contentious social issues and 24.7% think it is good for their brand to have key executives do so.
Research published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing suggests the more distant the source of information from the official corporate structure (e.g. brand ambassador instead of corporate spokesperson or CEO) the greater the mitigation against negative effects on the brand attitude from consumers who disagree with the company's stance on a contentious issue.
Companies are encouraged to challenge their assumptions that corporate officials are good brand ambassadors in all cases and test which representative is best for their social activism.
Implications: CMOs mixed on executives as social-issue ambassadors
Ideological polarization is slowly becoming recognized as more of a problem for companies. According to the March 2023 CMO Survey by Deloitte, 7.7% of companies considered ideological polarization as the biggest challenge for their company over the next twelve months (more than natural disasters or the COVID pandemic). In that same series of Deloitte CMO Survey, the percent of marketers that believe their brand should express a stance on political-charged issues has increased from 18.5% in February 2020 to 27.7% in February 2021 and has reached 29.1% in March 2023. Brand activism is not just encouraged but expected from the consumer side as well: a recent study conducted by the public-affairs firm Global Strategy Group revealed that 78% of Americans expressed agreement that companies should play a role in tackling critical societal challenges.
However, the idea of executives or CEOs as appropriate sources for representing the brand or conveying the brand's stances persists as well. In Deloitte’s February 2021 CMO Survey, 24.7% of the respondents thought having executives speak out on political issues was appropriate for their brand, and in a March 2023 CMO Survey, 76.9% of marketers strongly agreed to somewhat agreed that CEOs and senior leaders are key brand representatives.
The trends thus present a potential recipe for disaster for unwitting CMOs - with the polarized ideology and expectation for companies to proactively address the social-political issues on the rise, a poorly chosen source of expressing the brand’s stance (say the CEO) matched with the wrong brand identity (the social-issue) may not always be optimal. With some many more options available to the CMO, is there a systematic way to make that decision to optimize brand attitude while minimizing blowback in consumer attitudes from the issue’s opponents.
Research: consumer response mitigated by who delivers the statement
In the present era, the global environment has greater ideological polarization amongst the general public than witnessed in the preceding two decades. Companies and organizations are encountering increasingly intricate hurdles concerning public relations and determining the appropriate stance to adopt regarding contentious social or political matters. A recent paper published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing explored how much gain brand activism may bring and how to mitigate the potential blowback.
One of the studies in the paper examined how the source of the stance would impact the consumers’ attitudes. In the pre-test, the perceived relatedness of three sources of corporate information was determined amongst the participants in the study. The “brand spokesperson” was considered the strongest association to the brand, scored 5.7 out of 6 perceived relatedness to the brand, followed by the “CEO as a private citizen” scored 5.4 out of 6, and finally the “brand ambassador as a private citizen” scored 4.8 out of 6. Participants were prescreened with half self-identified conservatives and half self-identified liberals. An advertisement from an unnamed chocolate brand was shown to the participants followed by a comment advocating the mass deportation of illegal immigrants from the three different sources mentioned above. A control condition, with no information about the brand’s stance, was also included. Finally, the participants’ brand attitudes were measured on a scale of 1 (indicating the lowest preference) to 6 (indicating a highest preference).
For consumers who agreed with the company's position, the brand attitude scores were statistically identical to the control group (average of 5.8) regardless of who was the source of the statement. However, for consumers who disagreed with the company’s position, the attitude towards the brand was significantly lower when the comments were made by the brand spokesperson (average of 3.5), than when the comments were made by the CEO (average of 4.5) or the brand ambassador as private citizen (average of 4.9). Interestingly, when the comment was made by the brand ambassador, the difference in the brand attitude between the agreement group (average of 5.4) and disagreement group (average of 4.9) was minor (and nearly not even statistically significant), making brand ambassador essentially better in all circumstances.
Recommendation: test the message AND the messengers
The paper points out potential ways for companies to mitigate the risk of brand activism and provides insight into what Chief Marketing Officers need to consider when their brands are taking a stance on a social or political issue. Several strategies are highly recommended:
Day One: Encourage managers and CMOs to read the original paper to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the topic as they challenge their past assumptions.
After: Research brand activism in the industry and assess how consumers received brand information in the past. How brand attitude changed when the consumers received the information from different sources could be determined from already existing data.
Finally: Conduct focus groups to test the best representative, particularly adding company-specific factors (e.g., actual consumer groups, actual socio-political issues, actual brands, actual information sources, etc.).
It should be noted that the original study investigated the short-term effects of a single act of brand activism on consumer attitudes. The long-term effect on the consumer attitudes of companies that are constantly engaging in controversial issues is unknown. The effect of prior brand attachment and the sales impact of changing brand attitudes were not investigated in the study. Companies are recommended to explore these ramifications further in their own market research as well.
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Lingwei Wan is a PhD student in Plant Pathology at Cornell University and a member of the Cornell Graduate Consulting Club. The research applications proposed in this article are solely the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the original academic journal article authors nor any individual member of our Editorial Board.