The postmodern consumer: consumers’ impact on advertising, branding and digital marketing through social media

The advertising industry has been through rapid changes throughout the decades, with consumer culture moulding and evolving alongside it. With the introduction and now growth of social media platforms, our role as the consumer have become increasingly more active, we often contribute to the meaning making process and are a crucial part of the brand experience. This essay will critically discuss the challenges and benefits of modern consumers’ influence on a brand, its image and its impact on their branding and promotional media practices.

In November 2022, luxury fashion house Balenciaga found itself tangled in a series of controversies in relation to their latest ad campaigns. The brand released images of children holding teddy bears wearing black leather harnesses and silver chains, which many people associated with BDSM themed bondage gear. Issues of inappropriate child sexualisation and potentially illegal child pornography arise. Audiences around the world have quickly voiced their disdain and complaints for the brand. Some who are originally fans of Balenciaga have even publicly stated their boycott of the fashion house. Former avid fans and followers of Balenciaga have also noticed that earlier this year, the brand’s July ad campaign featured a print out of a Supreme Court ruling of child pornography document. Consumers quickly pointed out the possible connections of these two ad campaigns on various different social media apps. With videos and photos posted on Tiktok and Twitter being the most viral and wide spread. Social media platforms are becoming increasingly used to influence the use and adoption of various products and services. They are also becoming a vital source of information that can stimulate the trial and ratification of new technologies (Subramani and Rajagopalan, 2003, p. 300). One of the most effective ways to spread the word is through viral marketing, also known as buzz marketing. With the amount of user generated content online, social media not only acts as a marketing channel, it actively encourages and facilitates word of mouth. 

Although Web 2.0 media provides marketers with numerous communication and sales opportunities, it also brings a potential lack of control over the messages that are being sent (Miller and Lammas, 2010, p. 3). In light of Balenciaga’s recent campaign controversy, a street artist has been leaving graffiti with the repeated words ‘pedophilia’ and a parody of the fashion house’s logo on its London Bond Street flagship store windows. As seen on Tiktok, people have been posting and spreading short videos of the store being vandalised by protesters, with the hashtags #stopbalenciaga and #savethechildren in the caption. Even without social media, the location of the protest display being in the heart of London’s tourist hotspot will undoubtedly raise a great amount of awareness. Consumers who might not be up to date online will be able to see the message and be aware of the controversy. The virality of this campaign on social media created convergence, which strongly amplifies the backlash Balenciaga has already been receiving, in turn tainting not only its reputation but also brand image as a whole. 

The notion of any press is good press is not foreign to us. Both producers and audiences often argue that we deliberately pay extra attention to negative news in comparison to positive news. As suggested by Stuart Soroka, the human brain is neurologically inclined to focus on negative information presented to us, because the possible consequences of negative information significantly exceed the possible rewards of positive information (Soroka, 2006). The City Reporter, a local news website based in Rostov-on-Don conducted an experiment in an attempt to debunk the ‘bad news myth’, in which they only published positive headlines for one day. As uplifting as this sounds, the results were disappointing. The local newspaper site saw their online traffic, clicks and readership plummeting. “It looks like almost nobody needs them (good news). That's the trouble.”, the company’s deputy editor Viktoriya Nekrasova wrote. However, in today’s age of social media dominance, there has been a shift in the way audiences consume news content. Instead of a stable, traditional way of receiving news such as cable TV, radio, and broadsheet newspapers, now there is a rise of young audiences who solely rely on social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter for their daily source of local and worldwide news. “Most young users get the news on their mobile devices as part of being on platforms like Facebook or Twitter. They encounter the news, rather than looking for it.” (Boczkowski, Mitchelstein and Matassi, 2017, p. 1785). The concepts of ‘encountering the news’ and ‘looking for the news’ are fundamentally different. Although our brains may still prioritise and gravitate towards negative news, there is an increase of evidence which illustrates that the medium of social media as a communication tool is changing this. Arianna Huffington from Huffpost suggests that the “if it bleeds, it leads” point of view is outdated and misguided. She stated that positive, wholesome news and stories are more likely to be spread amongst users on social media platforms. This trend of sharing proves that lighthearted and positive news is desired online.

Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo developed the Elaboration likelihood model in 1986. According to their model, there are two ways to attempt persuasive messaging: the central route and the peripheral route. The two routes have three determining factors: audience factors, processing approach and persuasion outcome. The central route targets active audiences that are highly involved personally or situationally. This route assumes that consumers have high motivation, ability and opportunity (MAO) (Ölander and Thøgersen, 1995) for processing communication, and are able and willing to apply adequate cognitive processing effort. This is called high elaboration likelihood. (Cho, 1999, p. 34) An example of the central route of persuasion advert is from L’Oreal. The brand produced a print advert for red lipsticks, featuring bold typography explicitly stating that “This is an ad for men” as well as statistics stating that women company leaders have the ability to generate 15% higher revenue compared to men. At first glance, this ad appears to be counter intuitive, but through deep processing and focusing on the quality of the message arguments the audience can understand that this is an ad trying to sell consumers a social product. This message for the gender pay gap issues and gender equality could create lasting change that resists fading and counterattacks in consumers’ minds. Any potential customers, especially women who align with this message will associate L’Oreal with good brand ethics and values, possibly developing eventual brand loyalty. 

On the other hand, the peripheral route of persuasion targets audiences with low MAO, consumers who are either unable or not willing to devote a high amount of processing effort (Cho, 1999, p. 34). In this case, adverts are usually created with the foundations of superficial processing qualities such as how visually stimulating, aesthetically pleasing or catchy they are. The adverts will also centre around surface features such as attractive models, striking colour palettes or extravagant packaging. This route of persuasion often results in a temporary attitude change. For example, consumers may gain a sudden burst of interest for the brand, leading to one time purchases or impulse buying. Though it would most likely not alter consumers’ view of the brand’s core value and ethics in the long run. Following Petty and Cacioppo’s model, it can be argued that Balenciaga’s recent bondage teddy ad campaign was intended to target consumers using the peripheral route. The images relied on associations with creativity - detailed art direction, coherent colour palette, careful use of props; and materialism - Balenciaga branded cushions, blankets and glasses plastered all over the set, use of gold and silver hardware connoting wealth. 

It can be argued that had this campaign been released 30 years ago, before the age of social media, it would not have been nearly as negatively impactful. As stated earlier, user generated media content is a widely used marketing tool, however it can be risky due to a brand’s inability to control the message (Miller and Lammas, 2010, p.5). User generated media contributes to the creation of new meanings for a brand, which leads to an altercation of the brand experience. New potential customers would be able to view those content created by existing customers or fans of the brand and associate them with the brand, merging brand image and brand identity, whether consciously or subconsciously. The relationship between a brand and its consumers are not clear binary oppositions. With more consumers becoming active participants in the brand space, both the brand and the audience hold the power to influence each other, creating a circular influencing dynamic (Veloutsou, 2007, p. 10-13). According to Saussure, signs are arbitrary, meaning there is no inherent or logical relationship between the signifier and the signified (Branston. 2010, p. 12-13). One advert can be interpreted many ways depending on each individual consumer. However, because of social media providing convenient and expeditious forms of communication, it is much easier for consumers to discover a general consensus of the public’s opinion. A brand’s original aims and objectives of one campaign can be easily flipped by consumers through social media, unfortunately for Balenciaga, its active audiences have made their voices heard and deemed this campaign problematic and unacceptable, causing controversy which ultimately leads to a failed campaign. 

In recent years, cancel culture has become increasingly more prominent in the digital space, developing into a socio-cultural phenomenon. The term originated from the hashtag #cancelled, which originated in the black Twitter space in 2015. Essentially, cancel culture refers to an audience’s withdrawal of all kinds of support, such as social media follows, spectatorship, endorsed product purchases etc, for brands or celebrities whose actions are deemed to have been unacceptable or problematic, usually in relation to social and cultural contexts especially issues related to racism, sexism and homophobia (Ng, E., 2020). Ever since Balenciaga’s campaign controversy, the brand’s official Instagram account has suspended their comments feature and deleted all previous posts. Five days after the controversy broke out and went viral on social media, the brand’s account lost almost 50 thousand followers. Bella Hadid, one of today’s most influential supermodels has also unfollowed the account. According to a fashion watchdog blog @diet_prada on Instagram, “Susan Scafidi of Fordham's @fashionlawinstitute believes the blame is strategically misplaced. If Balenciaga were primarily interested in monetary compensation for the advertising disaster, it probably would have taken time to negotiate a quiet settlement. Instead, Balenciaga filed an immediate, media-worthy lawsuit in order to disavow the campaign in the strongest possible terms and offer the public a different pair of villains in the form of the production company and set designer.” This statement sparked conversation amongst active members of the fashion community, because of Balenciaga’s deletion of Twitter before the campaign, some argued that Balenciaga intended for this controversy to happen all along, in an attempt to garner attention and take advantage of the power of cancel culture, brand repairment and consumer forgiveness. The disadvantages of the consumer-brand relationship includes brand hate, brand dislike, and brand avoidance (Abbasi et al, 2022, p. 2). However, it is possible for a brand to repair and reestablish damaged consumer trust after unfavourable publicity. According to Coombs (1995), there are five strategies for handling PR crisis situations: suffering, distance, denial, ingratiation, and mortifica-tion. In contrast to the previous defensive strategies, another commonly used strategy is the apologetic strategy. Demna Gvasalia, CEO of Balenciaga recently released an apology on both his personal and the brand’s Instagram, he stated, “I want to personally apologize for the wrong artistic choice of concept for the gifting campaign with the kids and I take my responsibility. It was inappropriate to have kids promote objects that have nothing to do with them.” The role of consumer forgiveness mediates the links between the public’s perception of a company’s trustworthiness when it comes to responding to negative news or press, and the overall post-trust between consumer and brand. (Xie and Peng, 2009, p. 586). 

In short, modern consumers have undoubtedly become more active when it comes to the overall brand experience, consumers’ engagement in a brand's promotional media campaigns have the potential to open up numerous marketing opportunities, and while positive engagements such as user generated content, viral marketing and convergence can be beneficial, it has many unpredictable qualities such as a lack of control of messages, the ‘bad news myth’ and cancel culture. Depending on the levels of participation, consumers hold the power to completely reinforce brand experiences positively or negatively in a way which is out of the brand’s control.  

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