Contemporary Branding: Brand Activism & Social Impact
Academic Journal Articles
Mesler, Rhiannon M, Katharine Howie, Jennifer Chernishenko, Mingnan Nancy Shen, and Jessica Vredenburg (2024), “The association between political identity centrality and cancelling proclivity”, Acta Psychologica, Vol 244.
Lee, Zoe, Amanda Spry, Yuksel Ekinci, and Jessica Vredenburg (2023), “From warmth to warrior: Impacts of non-profit brand activism on brand bravery, brand hypocrisy and brand equity”, Journal of Brand Management (ahead-of-print).
Kapitan, Sommer, Joya Kemper, Jessica Vredenburg, and Amanda Spry (2022), “Strategic B2B Brand Activism: Building Conscientious Purpose for Social Impact”, Industrial Marketing Management, 107, 14-28.
Spry, Amanda, Bernardo Figueiredo, Lauren Gurrieri, Joya Kemper, and Jessica Vredenburg (2021), “Transformative Branding: A Dynamic Capability to Challenge the Dominant Social Paradigm”, Journal of Macromarketing, 41(4), 531-546.
Vredenburg, Jessica, Sommer Kapitan, Amanda Spry, and Joya Kemper (2020), “Brands Taking a Stand: Authentic Brand Activism or Woke Washing?” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 39(4), 444-460.
Orazi, Davide C., Amanda Spry, Max N. Theilacker, and Jessica Vredenburg (2017), “A Multi-stakeholder IMC Framework for Networked Brand Identity,” European Journal of Marketing, 5(3), 551-571
Academic Book Chapters
Lewis, Natasha and Jessica Vredenburg (2023), “Contemporary Consumption of Brand Activism”. In K. Bäckström, C. Egan-Wyer & E. Samsioe (Eds.), The Future of Consumption: How Technology, Sustainability and Wellbeing will Transform Retail and Customer Experience (chapter 17), Springer International Publishing.
Vredenburg, Jessica, and Amanda Spry (2022), “Consumer Activism and Social Movements”. In K. Kubacki, L. Parker, C., Domegan, & L. Brennan (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Marketing and Society. Routledge.
Expert Analysis Articles
Lee, Zoe, Amanda Spry, and Jessica Vredenburg (2024), “The Body Shop shouldn’t have failed in an age when consumers want activism from their brands. What happened?”, The Conversation.
Lee, Zoe, Amanda Spry, and Jessica Vredenburg (2023), “When charities engage in ‘brand activism’, research shows they must demonstrate bravery to attract donations”, The Conversation.
Vredenburg, Jessica, Katharine Howie, and Rhiannon M. Mesler (2022), “Brands can be rewarded for social activism – but they also risk losing customers to apolitical rivals”, The Conversation.
Spry, Amanda, Bernardo Figueiredo, Jessica Vredenburg, Joya Kemper, and Lauren Gurrieri (2021), “Consumers are wise to ‘woke washing’ – but truly ‘transformative branding’ can still make a difference,” The Conversation.
Kapitan, Sommer, Amanda Spry, Jessica Vredenburg, and Joya Kemper (2020), “Brand activism is moving up the supply chain — corporate accountability or commercial censorship?” The Conversation.
Vredenburg, Jessica, Amanda Spry, Joya Kemper, and Sommer Kapitan (2020), “Athlete activism or corporate woke washing? Getting it right in the age of Black Lives Matter is a tough game,” The Conversation.
Vredenburg, Jessica, Amanda Spry, Joya Kemper, and Sommer Kapitan (2019), “Post Gillette: other brands are better at matching practice with talk, but don’t get the publicity,” The Conversation.
Vredenburg, Jessica, Amanda Spry, Joya Kemper, and Sommer Kapitan (2018), “Woke washing: what happens when marketing communications don’t match corporate practice,” The Conversation.
TV
Print and Radio
February 15, 2024, Radio New Zealand: Interview with Emile Donovan on ‘Nights’ program on recent co-authored cancel culture research
February 13, 2023, Australian Institute of Management: Transformative branding without crossing the woke washing line
January 17, 2023, Newsroom NZ: NZ's Bed Bath & Beyond pays the price for cheekily nabbing global brand
December 1, 2022, The CEO Magazine: Pure of purpose: Purpose driven marketing or social washing?
August 23, 2021, Radio New Zealand: Expert interviewed on “The Panel” about the All Whites nickname in a changing world (my commentary begins at 13.22).
July 8, 2021, Politics.co.uk: Should brands get involved in politics?
May 17, 2021, Waatea Urban Maori Radio: Discussing my winning entry in the New Zealand Business Translation competition based off of coauthored research on brand activism.
January 27, 2021, AdNews: ANALYSIS: Rebranding calls are getting louder
October 22, 2020, Quartz: If everybody hates wokewashing, why do companies still do it?
March 10, 2019, New Zealand Herald: How did we get so woke? The rise of virtue signalling
June 12, 2019, CBC Radio Canada: The tactic of engaging in activism has a long history, and has evolved as consumerism has become a larger part of our economy. But what is different about brands now engaging with contested social & political issues- or brand activism, and are some of the problems with ‘branding’ social movements? I commented on this for an episode of CBC Ideas titled “Woke Washing: the problem with ‘branding’ social movements (my commentary begins at 32:00).
September 5, 2018, Radio New Zealand: Quoted expert commenting on Nike's new campaign featuring controversial former NFL player Colin Kaepernick. Nike took a calculated risk by taking a stand on a controversial issue. Although this ignited controversy it appears to also have had the intended effect: strengthening its bond with the target consumer.