New Normal and Social Media Adaptation: Impact of Woke Advertising on Consumer Sentiments Toward Brands

Purpose/Objectives—This paper aims to explore the impact of social media marketing and woke advertising on the digital natives and their perception toward different brands. The new generation of digital consumers is drawn on in marketing content related to the concept of being “woke” (addressing social causes). Historically, the brands have not engaged in sentiments of the consumers related to social causes due to the fear of alienating them. The recent studies have shown many brands globally utilizing the marketing budget to increase the outreach and impact. The paper aims to evaluate the impact of the digital campaigns run by different brands and relate it to the social cause to target the consumer sentiment. The study will focus on how the marketing efforts by several brands through different social media and other digital platforms utilize the concept of woke advertising to reach out to its target audience. The study will explore the advantages and disadvantages of such campaigns by the brands to reach maximum target audience and how it really affects the sentiments of the consumers. Design/methodology/approach—To know the impact of woke advertising and social media marketing on consumer sentiment, descriptive research and convenience sampling techniques were used to collect the data from respondents. Ninety-four youth respondents were included as a sample for the study. Findings/Conclusion—The findings include the use of marketing campaigns related to social causes that can prove advantageous or disadvantageous to the brands. The quest to target the sentiments of the customers through the brands can result in either alienating the customers or earning their loyalty for the lifetime. The study is original in the area of digital marketing and brands utilizing it to reach to the customers through social cause and sentiments. There are very few studies done on this topic of interest in the past. There has been positive and negative for the brands, and the study tries to reveal the use of digital marketing in such perspective. The value of the study is that it will help the brands to understand if supporting such social causes helps it to reach out to its target audience and helps in creating greater brand awareness or has a negative impact through alienating the consumers.