Transcendent Brand Activism Advertising: Explicating the Roles of Color and Message Framing in Advertising Effectiveness

Abstract

Brands have been increasingly speaking up on sociopolitical issues (so-called brand activism advertising) to showcase their nonneutrality and drive meaningful societal changes. Yet little is known about how brands can strategize brand activism advertising to effectively engage consumers and benefit companies. Drawing upon the frameworks of transcendent media experiences, color, and message framing theory, this research examines the interplay between a visual element (i.e., image color: black-and-white [BW] versus color) and a verbal element (i.e., message framing: promotion framed versus prevention framed) in the effectiveness of brand activism advertising. Across two experiments, we found that brand activism ads that use BW (versus color) images, when paired with promotion-framed (versus prevention-framed) messages, led to more favorable attitudes toward the ads and elicited higher purchase intentions. We argue that brand activism ads trigger consumers’ transcendent experiences to a varying degree and identify consumers’ perceived inspiration upon viewing the ads as an underlying psychological mechanism. These findings advance current literature by examining brand activism advertising from the perspective of transcendent experiences and explicating the key factors and mechanism that affect consumer experiences and advertising effectiveness.

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a Tier 1 grant from Singapore’s Ministry of Education (M4012201.060) and a Social Science and Humanities Research 2025 (SSHR2025) seed grant from Nanyang Technological University.

Notes on contributors

Xuan Zhou

Xuan Zhou (MS, University of Edinburgh) is a doctoral candidate, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.

Chen Lou

Chen Lou (PhD, Michigan State University) is an associate professor, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.

Xun (Irene) Huang

Xun (Irene) Huang (PhD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) is an assistant professor of marketing at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University.