Riding the Wave: How and When Public Issue Salience Impacts Corporate Social Responsibility Advertising

An increasing number of consumers expect brands to engage in important societal issues. Brands like Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, and Gillette have launched ads promoting their stances on highly salient issues in public discourse. While corporate social responsibility (CSR) advertising research has explored issues such as skin cancer, heart disease, and abortion, this research stream has yet to investigate how an issue's salience in society influences consumer response. Because salient (versus nonsalient) issues make information more accessible and generate debate, the advertising context (i.e., public issue salience) may influence consumer response to CSR ads. Applying the salience theory of party competition to CSR advertising, this research shows how an issue's consensus level and individual issue importance differentially impact brand attitudes and purchase intentions when an issue is salient. Through a series of four experiments with real ads, the present investigation shows how and when public issue salience affects marketing outcomes. This research adopts an issue-centric view and contributes to CSR advertising scholarship by (a) opening a new theoretical corridor, (b) demonstrating empirically how the advertising context (public issue salience) influences marketing outcomes, (c) providing a more holistic, comparative advertising perspective on issue selection, and (d) generating new insight into individual issue importance.