Spillover Effects of Brand Safety Violations in Social Media

Abstract

This research examines how a brand’s ad adjacency to offensive content influences consumers’ perceptions, emotions, and behavioral intentions toward the brand. Varying the type of offensive content, we conduct two experiments to demonstrate how offensive association (OA) between social media content and the brand’s ad increases negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) intentions. The two studies show that the seemingly accidental association with offensive content leads NWOM intentions via heightened blame attribution and negative emotions. The results suggest that even a brand’s inadvertent association with offensive content can induce consumers to believe that the brand implicitly approved or overlooked its ad placement. Furthermore, the negative spillover effects of brand safety violations are found only when the perceived ad intrusiveness is high. The present research provides advertisers with the rationale behind their need for being vigilant in safeguarding their ads and sponsorship.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chunsik Lee

Chunsik Lee is an associate professor in the School of Communication at the University of North Florida. His research interests focus on new media advertising effects, consumer online trust and social media. His research has been published in academic journals including Journal of Marketing Communications, Online Information Review, Asian Journal of Communication, International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, etc.

Junga Kim

Junga Kim is an associate professor in the School of Communication at the University of North Florida. Her primary research focuses on information seeking behavior, interpersonal communication on the internet and the effects of interactive advertising. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Journal of Marketing Communication, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Health Communication, Risk Management, Online Information Review, Asian Journal of Communication, etc.

Joon Soo Lim

Joon Soo Lim is an associate professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. With a specialty in statistical modeling, Lim’s research centers around consumer brand engagement on social media platforms. His work has been published in such journals as Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Promotion Management, Telematics and Informatics, Journal of Public Relations Research and Public Relations Review, among others.