Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing has surged in popularity, yet faces increasing politicization and scrutiny. This paper argues that current ESG marketing problematically overlooks moral pluralism and complexity. We conceptualize ESG marketing as the supply side of ESG morality, less studied than the demand side (investor preferences). A mixed-methods study, including topic modeling, qualitative categorization and close reading of 99 ESG marketing documents from top global asset managers was conducted. Principal results show that ESG marketing emphasizes environmental (E) themes, particularly climate change risk mitigation, being more cautious about controversial social (S) issues. Moral arguments in ESG marketing often center on safety for investors provided by ESG risk management, largely disregarding moral pluralism and the now-polarized nature of ESG. Marketing downplays complex ethical trade-offs and often claims moral neutrality despite inherent value judgments. We argue that this simplified morality may contribute to ESG backlash and suggest that acknowledging moral pluralism through what we term moral diversification is vital if moral considerations are brought into investing practice.

Abstract The rise of financial influencers, or “finfluencers”, on social networks like Instagram and their impact on consumer financial decision-making (especially investing) has raised concerns about their quality considering increasing cases of fraudulent investment promotions and financial misconduct. Thus, taking a mixed-methods approach, we establish a multidimensional finfluencer quality (FinQ) framework comprising 40 FinQ indicators to tackle quality uncertainty and provide a complementary solution to economically costly regulation. Our methods involve in-depth qualitative analysis of 12 semi-structured expert interviews and a subsequent multiple-case study of five German-speaking finfluencers on Instagram. We argue that the FinQ framework supports (corporate) stakeholders in navigating the world of finfluencers and simultaneously promotes more informed decision-making. While contributing to the professionalization of strategic partnerships, our study also supports consumer protection beyond regulation. However, our exploratory research is limited by (1) the dynamic regulatory and technological environment and (2) its small qualitative sample. Therefore, we motivate research using other (quantitative) methodologies or larger samples to enhance, validate, or even generalize our findings. Ultimately, our study seeks to enable managers to engage in strategic partnerships with credible finfluencers, especially for financial services marketing, but also to support government financial literacy initiatives.