Adbusting: How advertising altered by activists affects brands

Abstract

A subversive phenomenon is challenging advertisers and brand managers: adbusting, a form of activism that alters existing brand communication (e.g., a billboard ad) to promote social/political issues (e.g., pro-environmental behavior) or denounces the targeted brand (e.g., its labor standards). We conceptualize the effect of adbusting on consumers and provide empirical evidence that adbusting has ambiguous effects on consumers' brand perception. On the one hand, the incongruency of the message with consumers' existing brand schemata raises ad awareness. On the other hand, the effect of an adbust on subsequent cognitive and behavioral outcomes depends on the content of the adbust: if the brand itself is targeted (vs. a social or political issue), brand perception, word-of-mouth, and purchase intention are negatively affected. This negative effect is mitigated if the adbust targets a social/political issue. In a mixed-method design, we use a panel of real-world adbusts (Pilot Study) and four experimental studies (Studies 1–4) to shed light on these effects.