Too woke or not too woke, that is the question: Brand responses to culture wars

Abstract

Culture wars are conflicts between two groups with polarized beliefs about politics and other cultural phenomena. Of late, culture wars have moved to brands, marketing, and corporate activism. In modern brand culture wars, opposing groups will assemble on social media with the express purpose of either damaging a brand’s value or defending brands. Brands are then left in the precarious situation of navigating between two powerful factions in determining strategy moving forward. This manuscript explores the relationship between brand communities and corporate brands, addressing culture wars on a variety of hot-button topics. We scraped data from X—formerly known as Twitter—to analyze the impact of culture wars on social media behavior and sentiment. Drawing from the analysis of the data from X, as well as an examination of extant literature, we then propose a typology and offer a decision tree to guide brands dealing with culture wars levied at their corporations.