In the Wake of the Woke: Reinvigorating Brand Conversation at the Crossroads of Policy and Politics M&M's Superbowl 2023 Campaign

Abstract

This paper proposes exploring the contemporary transformations of so-called “conversational” forms of brand communication on social media in the theoretical framework and methodological approaches presented above. After almost 20 years of brand presence on social media promoting conversation between brands and consumers, this type of communication, like all forms of advertising, must have reached a stage of maturity and diminished capacity for differentiation. To analyze this phenomenon, we chose to focus on the communications proposals of M&M's brand, which, in early 2023, created a communications “event” on its social media with strong social and political commentary.

We will then try to understand how the claim to a social and political voice can be part of the tactics of reinvigorating Brand Conversation by playing on the life of the city (policy) as much as on political opinions and victimizations (politics) currently alive in the USA. We will examine the possible strategic aims of this hyperadvertising and its legitimacy to intervene in the public arena by making social judgments and political statements.