Brand-Activistic Videos on YouTube: The Effectiveness of Character Facial Emotions and LGBTQ Focus on Popularity

Abstract

Brands’ positions on sociopolitical issues have a digital impact on their social media presence. While previous studies concentrated on text-based platforms to unravel the digital impact, less attention was given to video-based platforms. This research explores whether brand-activistic videos are more popular than nonactivistic videos on YouTube. Furthermore, this research examines which facial emotions increase a video’s popularity, a topic limitedly addressed in the prior literature. Compiling two data sets of YouTube videos (NStudy1 = 174 videos; NStudy2 = 666 videos), this research finds that activistic video ads are more popular than nonactivistic video ads on YouTube. Activistic video ads with higher amounts of sadness, anger, and fear expressed as facial emotions have greater popularity. This finding may be because activistic videos are created around social issues, and when actors convey these issues empathically these videos stimulate actionable behaviors. Moreover, the results show that videos focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues are more popular than non-LGBTQ video ads. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail.