The Selective Politicization of Diversity Advertising

Corporations increasingly feature minority families in mainstream advertising, positioning themselves as inclusive civic actors. Yet whether audiences read such representation as ordinary marketing or as a political statement—and whether all minorities are read alike—remains unclear. We field a pre-registered survey experiment in the Netherlands (N≈1,500), randomly exposing respondents to a supermarket advertisement depicting a control (white, heterosexual), Muslim, or same-sex family. Minority-family advertisements are perceived as substantially more political than the control and shift perceptions of the brand to the ideological left, both in abstract placement and in concrete party association. These effects are markedly selective: the Muslim-family advertisement is read as roughly twice as political as the same-sex advertisement, and is the only condition to lower purchase intention, and does so precisely through the perception that it is political. Issue attributions are domain-specific: the same-sex advertisement moves perceived brand support for LGBTQ+ rights, the Muslim advertisement perceived support for immigration—and, contrary to expectations, these reactions are broad rather than confined to right-wing consumers. The findings reveal a selective politicization of corporate inclusion, in which ethno-religious diversity is politicized and commercially penalized while sexual-orientation diversity is comparatively normalized.