Corporate errors are nothing new. Whether it's an environmental or financial scandal, or a PR crisis, people tend to distance themselves from the company in their aftermath, voting with their wallets, being critical social media, or criticizing the company among friends.
Still, no matter what the scandal is, we've all seen people leap to defend brands in comment threads, on Twitter, and elsewhere. New research profiled at Kellogg Insight from Angela Y. Lee, Wendi L. Gardner, and Monika Lisjak of Northwestern University explores the reasons why that happens.
We defend our families and favorite objects because we think of them as parts of ourselves. The authors wanted to see if we do the same for brands.
In a series of experiments, they looked at people's feelings about Facebook and Starbucks, both not strangers to controversy. People were tested for self-esteem, quizzed about Starbucks, then encouraged to reflect on themselves, which tends to make people respond more strongly to perceived attacks. After that, they read an editorial critical of the company, and were asked to rate the company again:
“If you believe that a brand is part of you, and you read something negative about it, how are you going to react?” Lee asks. “Are you going to stop using it? Or do you use it even more?” Sure enough, after crunching the numbers, Lee and her colleagues found that self-conscious, low-self-esteem subjects who said they liked Starbucks initially actually rated the coffee company more favorably after they had read the critical editorial.
The authors tried different methodologies and a different company in Facebook, and found the same effect. It's a fascinating result, that people integrate something as intangible as a brand into the way they think about themselves.
It takes a very strong brand and relationship to get that far. Some brands are so well known that a bad day or any criticism can produce that kind of reaction. That may get you some defenders, but it's unlikely to dampen the effects of a real scandal for any length of time.
Read more about the research here
