How persuasive is woke brand communication on social media? Evidence from a consumer engagement analysis on Facebook

Brands are increasingly required to be ‘woke’ and communicate their stance on various divisive sociopolitical issues and to do so particularly on social media platforms. However, research shedding light on the outcome of woke brand communication is in short supply; it does not compare the suasory effects of the latter with those achieved by traditional persuasive appeals; and it provides scant guidance on which brands ought to adopt this strategy. Combining language expectancy theory, the brands-as-intentional-agents framework, and the literature on consumer engagement in social media, this paper aims to fill these gaps by means of a multi-industry, text-mining-based study which investigates both the volume and the semantic virality patterns of traditional vs. woke persuasive appeals adopted by brands on social media platforms. The findings suggest that woke communication generates higher levels of consumer engagement than do traditional persuasive appeals; in particular, woke communication is more effective for warm brands. Moreover, when competent brands undertake woke campaigns, they tend to trigger more polarized reactions in consumers’ comments than warm brands do.