In this article we examine how brands express compassion and care through their advertising amid the Covid-19 crisis. Drawing from organizational theory research, we theorize how brands enact compassion organizing, which refers to the process of noticing, feeling, and responding to human suffering in a coordinated manner. We employ a grounded theory inspired Gioia methodology to analyze more than 200 pandemic-related ads that were released in the United States over a six-month period. The findings reveal three main themes of compassion organizing—solidarity, trust, and resilience—and showcase how brands may use advertising to address care deficits in times of crisis. The study underscores the institutional role of advertising and brands and informs extant research on corporate advertising and cultural branding.

Traditionally, the production and distribution of advertising material has relied on human effort and analog tools. However, technological innovations have given the advertising industry digital and automatic tools that enable advertisers to automate many advertising processes and produce “synthetic ads,” or ads comprising content based on the artificial and automatic production and modification of data. The emerging practice of synthetic advertising, to date the most sophisticated form of ad manipulation, relies on various artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as deepfakes and generative adversarial networks (GANs), to automatically create content that depicts an unreal, albeit convincing, artificial version of reality. In this article, a general framework is constructed to better understand how consumers respond to all forms of ad manipulation. It is anticipated that this article will help explain how consumers respond to the more sophisticated forms of synthetic ads—such as deepfakes—that are emerging at an accelerating rate. To guide research in this area, a research agenda is developed focusing on three manipulated advertising areas: ad falsity, consumer response, and originality. Furthermore, the implications for theory and industry are considered.

Events and experiential marketing are a standard for many brands in practice, but they remain relatively underaddressed in the academic literature. While advertising and marketing scholarship has examined some experiential marketing and branded events, it is not typically done from a tourist consumer perspective. Thus, through the theoretical lens of the Mehrabian–Russell (M-R) model and the concept of perceived value, the current research examines event marketing and branded experiences using two field studies conducted in a leading U.S. tourist destination city (an aquarium experience, n = 340, and a retail brand–sponsored fashion show, n = 396). Study 1, with a tourist sample, takes a pre-event perspective. Findings demonstrate that prior to experiencing the event, consumers’ affective evaluation of the event environment impacts both expected event entertainment (EEE) and perceived event quality (PEQ). However, only PEQ enhances tourists purchase intentions (PI) toward the event sponsor. Study 2 adopts a post-event perspective and demonstrates a boundary condition of tourist type (locals, domestic tourists, and international tourists). Findings suggest that the relationship between actual event entertainment (ACEE) and PI is stronger for international tourists, but the effect of product knowledge on PI is stronger for domestic tourists and locals (versus international tourists).

This research investigates the interaction between ego depletion (a state of reduced self-regulatory resources) and different types of charitable message appeals upon subsequent charitable support. Three experiments compare the time donation intent and actual monetary donations of depleted (vs. non-depleted) individuals who have been exposed to either a self-benefit message, highlighting the gains to be accrued to donors themselves, or an other-benefit message which focuses on the welfare of beneficiaries. The results show that when people are depleted, self-benefit messages are more effective than other-benefit messages in generating charitable support. When people are not depleted, the opposite pattern is observed. It appears that generosity among depleted people is self-seeking. As a processing mechanism, we show that depleted individuals perceive self-benefit messages as more appealing than the other-benefit messages. This research demonstrates that charities can maximize donations by advertising other-benefit messages in the morning and then self-benefit messages in the evening, given that depletion occurs naturally over the course of the day.

Unlike the extensive scholarship on leadership in related disciplines, research on leadership in advertising is almost nonexistent. This study investigates practitioner views on attributes and styles of effective agency leaders in the US, UK, and Australia using GLOBE’s (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) Culturally Endorsed Leadership Theory. All three regions are part of GLOBE’s Anglo cultural cluster. The research examines whether the theory’s central proposition—that leadership in global contexts has universally endorsed elements but is also culturally contingent—is valid in an advertising setting. Using a mixed-method approach, data were collected from agency staff and leaders via 255 survey responses and 40 in-depth interviews. Findings indicate that the best leaders are seen as people-focused, collaboration-driven, and future-oriented. Integrity, vision, and inspiration are top leadership attributes, with collaborative and performance-oriented leadership styles considered the most effective. Views were fairly consistent across regions, with some nuanced differences. One interesting difference from main GLOBE findings is the emphasis on soft skills as a core component of effective leadership. Future research should examine this further, as well as the relationship between leadership and agency culture, millennial and gender differences, and leadership training challenges and also examine advertising leadership across other GLOBE cultural clusters.

Social media influencers (SMIs) are now a significant element in organizations’ marketing mix. However, there has been little attention paid to how SMIs might change the way people process a commercial specifically designed to enhance corporate reputation. Three studies were conducted to understand possible influencer impacts on how people respond to commercials designed to enhance corporate reputation. In Study 1, we found that when a commercial was introduced by an influencer, message attitudes and perceived corporate reputation were more positive via reduced persuasion knowledge (PK), as compared to the impact of the commercial presented by itself. In Study 2, the influencer enhancement effect disappeared when sponsorship was disclosed, again as mediated by increased PK. The findings are consistent with prior research; however, this research is the first to explore disclosure effects in the context of corporate reputation with video stimuli. In Study 3, the style of the influencer’s message (narrative versus nonnarrative) influenced response to the corporate commercials, with a narrative introduction engendering more favorable message attitudes and corporate reputation perceptions through decreased PK. However, the positive effect of an influencer’s narrative introduction occurred only when sponsorship was not disclosed.

Of all the technological advances in advertising, none are perhaps more exciting than artificial intelligence (AI). However, couched within this excitement is a multitude of questions: What is AI a...

The cost of sponsoring high-profile events is rising rapidly, making it increasingly important to evaluate the effectiveness of sponsorship arrangements. The present study examines the impact of sponsoring the Olympics on brand valuations measured by the formulary approach. Estimates show that Olympic sponsorships raise brand value over time, an effect which is driven by summer games and compatible with defensive action for brand maintenance. The study contributes to the literature by properly dealing with potential endogeneity in sponsorship outcomes, studying the impact of sponsorships on brand value, and conducting longitudinal analysis on the effect of sports sponsorships.

The authors propose a creative advertising system (CAS) for the generation and testing of advertising creative ideas, founded on artificial intelligence (AI) principles. The proposed system emerges from a conceptual framework where advertising creativity is more broadly defined as a search process, the outcomes of which should be evaluated based on a set of rules. This broader definition provides a generative perspective and extends current approaches to advertising creativity that are mainly based on outcome measures such as perceived novelty and appropriateness (value). The framework is flexible enough to accommodate existing advertising concepts such as advertising templates and explain why executional advertising elements are not consistently effective across different ads. The proposed system can be used both as a reflection and a generation tool for advertising creators and offers promising opportunities for interdisciplinary research. Fundamentally, it can help aspiring and established creators understand that creativity is not an elite privilege but rather a systematic process which can be aided by data and computation.

Practitioners and scholars increasingly employ social media listening platforms (SMLPs) driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to extract actionable insights from large amounts of social media data informing research questions and brand strategy. Due to their proprietary nature, AI tools within SMLPs are “black boxes” that force users to accept results on blind faith, a source of concern in industry and academia. This study seeks to provide greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of SMLPs by assessing the AI-based results of leading SMLP Crimson Hexagon (now Brandwatch Consumer Research) against those of a standard human content analysis and an analysis conducted using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Analyzing a random 10,000-post sample of the conversation around the Nike “Dream Crazy” ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, findings reveal Crimson Hexagon’s AI tools to be woefully unreliable in terms of brand identification as well as detection of post and brand sentiment polarity, specific emotions, and brand outcomes, demonstrating the hazards of blindly relying upon conclusions drawn from black-box social media listening platforms. Findings highlight the need for researchers to examine algorithm documentation and training data sets, as well as assess AI-generated data prior to use in research models and decisions.