Cancel Culture Impacts on Brands and Celebrities (PDF)

**INTRODUCTION** In the last few years, cancel culture has become a very controversial topic, gaining attention from researchers because of its role in changing the dynamics between customers and brands. Cancel culture is both a term and a phenomenon that has gained great prevalence on social medi...

**INTRODUCTION** In the last few years, cancel culture has become a very controversial topic, gaining attention from researchers because of its role in changing the dynamics between customers and brands. Cancel culture is both a term and a phenomenon that has gained great prevalence on social media, having become a topic of discussion across media, culture, and politics. It is a socio-political movement that works towards punishing financially and ostracizing a single person or a company as a consequence of a transgression committed by these entities. It is increasingly important to have a deeper understanding about this concept since both celebrities and brands are becoming progressively vulnerable to its effects. The literature on this topic is still in its early stages. Although some of cancel culture's possible implications have been addressed in the literature, there's still a lot of confusion about the outcomes of this phenomenon. That being said, the purpose of this dissertation is to address this gap in the literature by focusing solely on the impacts of cancel culture. in this sense, the following research questions were formulated: RQ1: How lasting are cancel culture's impacts on brands and celebrities' careers?\ RQ2: What are the potential positive outcomes of cancellation for brands and celebrities? RQ3: How do the outcomes of cancel culture differ for brands and celebrities? 2. **LITERATURE REVIEW (2min)** The cancellation is the total withdraw of support from those whose actions or sayings can be deemed highly problematic or even unacceptable, with the goal of making the cancellation targets accountable for their wrongdoings and punishing them through public shaming and rejection, with the ultimate purpose of causing permanent damage to the cancellation targets There are a lot of different views and debate surrounding this topic. On one hand, critics argue about its dangers for suppressing free speech and open debate or even disregard completely its existence. On the other hand, supporters claim it is a technique of civil resistance that holds powerful people accountable, while also empowering and giving a voice to marginalized groups. Cancelling generally occurs publicly, and it is made easier by social media platorms which facilitate the initiation or participation in the cancelling, while also expanding the reach to a bigger audience. The outcomes of cancel culture and cancelling itself aren't well understood, since it doesn ́t have a reasonable scale of transgression. Cancellations can have temporary consequences such as online public condemnation and shame, and more permanent ones such harmed reputations, damages to brand positioning, cancelled contracts and loss of revenue. Besides the negative effects, it is proved in the literature that cancel culture can also have positive outcomes after the initial backlash. Celebrities are more vulnerable to successful cancelation attempts. Consumers find it easier to invalidate them rather than brands, because they realize that if a brand is powerful and well estabilished in its field, complete deligitimization is unlikely. 3. **CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK** I elaborated this conceptual framework to give a clearer view of the whole process that leads us to the outcomes of this phenomenon. It innitiates with the brand or celebrity transgression, then we have the transgression factors that can affect public response, which is the type and severity of the transgression. Then, we have the factors related to the celebrity or brand that affect public response, such as the prior history of transgression of the brand or celebrity. The consistency of transgression: it refers to how consistent the transgression is with the celebrity or brand's past behaviors. And the popularity of the brand or celebrity in question among the public. Another factor that can influence the public's response is the existence of an atempt to apologize and repair the damage. Considering all the factors mentioned, the public responds and, if the public response is positive, the celebrity or brand will be forgiven, which is a possible positive outcome. However, if the transgression is deemed irreparable, the public will attempt to cancel the celebrity or brand. The cancellation attempt can lead to long lasntig impacts, or short- lasting impacts and these short lasting impacts can lead to positive outcomes. 4. **CONTEXTUALIZATION** In this study, we will use two cases of celebrities and two cases of brands that have been cancelled previously. The celebrities chosen are rapper Kanye West and author J.K Rowling, and the brands are H&M and Goya. In the case of Kanye West, the transgression he committed was offensive speech during a visit to TMZ's office in 2018, where Kanye made the controversial statement that "slavery was a choice". Regarding J.K Rowling, the transgression the author committed was transphobic speech. The issue started in 2019, when the author voiced her support for a woman with history of transphobia. In the case of H&M, the brand's transgression was offensive advertisement. The brand released an ad that featured a black child wearing a sweatshirt with the phrase "coolest monkey in the jungle" written on its front. Goya is a latin brand, and the transgression was committed by its CEO, in 2020, when he praised former United States President, Donald Trump, during a White House meettng. Leading the Latin community to express their dissatisfaction with the brand, because of Trump's previous offenses to Latin immigrants and citizens 5. **METHODOLOGY** The method chosen for this study was a qualitative content analysis, using secondary data from the social media platorm X, formerly known as Twitter. X was the social media platorm chosen because it is a central platform for cancellations and it has also been used in previous studies. The collection of data was done by scrapping tweets from the time of the cancellation incident, up to 6 months after the transgression, in order to analyze the impacts the cancellation has over time. To analyze the collected content, an automated text analysis was conducted using Leximancer. It is a computer assisted qualitative data analysis software that produces concept maps, that represent the main concepts from the text and the relationships between them. Additionally, magazine articles were also analyzed, in order to get more insights on the impacts on the sales numbers post cancellation event. 6. **RESULTS AND DISCUSSION** **KANYE** Regarding Kanye West, Leximancer identified twelve themes, we can see in the hit map the twelve themes ordered by most hits to less hits. After analyzing the concept map, four groups were created according to what the themes and concepts relate to: the transgression group, the public response group, the work group and the personal life group. In the case of Kanye West, it is hard to analyze how long the cancelation effects last because he keeps committing new transgressions, that lead to new cancellation attempts. However, even though he keeps getting cancelled, each cancellation attempt has short lasting impacts, because the public moves on to discussing the next transgression. These cancellation attempts do not affect his sales and plays on streaming platorms. **J.K ROWLING** Leximancer identified twelve themes, as we can sse in the hit map. In this case, three groups were created:the transgression group, the public response group and the work group. In the case of J.K Rowling, the conversation about the transgression has not only lasted the six months, but also increased in the last month. Which can relate to the non-existence of apology and reparations attempts. This led to the cancellation attempt that, in this case,had long lasting impacts on her reputation. However, the impacts of the cancellation attempt on the author's sales were short lasting. **H&M** Leximancer identified eight themes. Three groups were created: the transgression group, the public response group and the brand group. In the case of H&M, the topic of transgression was discussed heavily on the first month of collection, and then lowered significantly in the following months, being almost nonexistent in the last month of collection. Besides the short-lasting impacts on reputation, there was no impact on the brand's sales. According to H&M's annual report of that year, their sales increased in comparison to the prior year and so did their store number. **GOYA** Leximancer identified eleven themes. In this case, only two groups were created: the transgression group and the public response group. There is no brand related group, since the public only mentions the brand and the products in response to the transgression. In the case of Goya, similarly ro H&M, the topic of transgression was heavily discussed during the first month of collection and significantly decreased in the following months until it was almost non existant. Besides the short lasting impacts on reputation, there were no negative impacts on sales, on the contrary, sales increased with the counter movement and the endorsement of the United States President at that time, Donald Trump. This effect was temporary, however, since sales and brand awareness increased, we can consider that there was a positive outcome that came from the cancellation attempt. **DISCUSSION** **Regarding RQ1, *how lasting are cancel culture's impacts on brands and celebrities' careers?*** The results suggest that the impacts on reputation can be longer lasting, especially for celebrities but, the overall impacts and success of the cancellation attempts are short lived. Regarding the celebrities cases, there were long-lasting impacts on reputation for both. However, in both cases there was little to no impacts on the way these celebrities make a living. Regarding the brands, we can state that the impacts on reputation were short lived. In both cases, the discussion around the transgression didn't last the whole six months of collection. Besides that, there were no financial impacts for any of the brands. Regarding **RQ2, *what are the potential positive outcomes of cancellation for brands and celebrities?*** There was only one case in this study that had a positive outcome after the cancellation attempt, which was an increase in sales, that was provoked by a big increase in brand awareness. Therefore, The results suggest that a potential positive outcome for the cancellation attempt can be an increase in sales, as we've seen in the case of Goya, however this positive outcome is very rooted in the increase in awareness that comes from the cancellation attempt. **Regarding RQ3, *how do the outcomes of cancel culture differ for brands and celebrities?*** the results suggest that brands have fewer negative outcomes than celebrities and the outcomes for brands are short lived when compared to celebrities' outcomes. In the case of celebrities, we observed longer lasting impacts on reputation for both cases. On the contrary, for brands, the impacts on reputation were short lasting for both cases. This helps the possibility of positive outcomes, that were not possible in the celebrity cases analyzed. Besides that, the results showed that there were no significant financial impacts for either brands or celebrities. Therefore, the cancellation attempts were not very successful, since the aim is to cause permanent damage to the cancellation target. 7. **CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS** **THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS** The findings of this study contribute to the literature on cancel culture and further extend previous studies by showing that the complete delegitimization of the brands and celebrities is unlikely, although reputation impacts may be longer lasting, financial impacts are short lasting, and the brand awareness that comes from the cancellation attempt can lead to positive outcomes for the cancellation targets. Furthermore, this study uses data from the social media platorm, X, further exploring the use of this platorm as a data source in cancel culture studies. **MANAGERIAL CONTRIBUTIONS** The findings of this study can be extremely important for managers, because it shows that the image repair strategies employed for celebrities shouldn't be the same for brands in the case of a cancellation attempt. Although complete delegitimization is unlikely in both cases, managers should attempt to repair the damage by considering the factors that lead to the cancellation attempt, both present in the brand or celebrity or in the transgression itself. In addition, managers should also consider the potential positive results that can come from the increase in brand awareness, especially in the cases of brands, and take that factor into account in their repair strategy. **LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS** Some limitations were identified throughout the process that can serve as a foundation for future research. The choice was to use secondary data from X and, although it proved to be an invaluable tool, the data from this platorm is very hard to collect nowadays, which limited this study because data couldn't be collected after November of 2022. Future research could use a different method of data collection that is allowed by the plaform, or even analyze the discussion on other social media plaforms. The choice of cases to analyze was made based on only one factor, that these entities had suffered cancelation attempts previously. Although it provided interesting results, future research could make the choice of the cases based on the factors that lead to the cancellation attempt, in order to further analyze how these factors influence the impacts of the cancellation. It was opted for studying both brands and celebrities, in order to be able to compare the impacts between the two. This choice can represent a limitation because it decreased the number of cases that could be studied for each one. Therefore, future research could focus deeply on only one of these subjects, utilizing more study cases to further explore the phenomenon on that subject. Lastly, this study's research context was shaped mostly by American culture, future research can choose celebrities or brands from different countries and focus on how cancel culture happens there, since the study of this phenomenon is so concentrated in the United States. Furthermore, these findings provide a better understanding of the impacts of cancel culture while also considering the factors that lead to the cancellation attempt, and consequently, impact the outcomes for celebrites and brands. Therefore, it provides managers with knowledge that can help them be more prepared and craft successful repair strategies for future cancellation attempts, in order to mitigate the negative effects of cancel culture. Cancel culture shares some conceptual overlaps with other concepts such as calling out, online shaming, trolling, doxing, and boycotting. However cancel culture involves the target's past actions while call-out culture tends to focus on the present actions. It's a very unpredictable and unmediated phenomenon. while it may be aimed at doing good, it may also help maintain the problems it targets, since cancelling can focus more on the individual or institution it is targeting rather than its actions. Power is a recurring theme around this topic, in specific power imbalances, since the subject of cancella\*on is usually perceived as being in a place of power and influence who has abused it in some way, therefore cancel culture can be seen as a way to correct those imbalances by giving common social media users a pla\_orm where they can have a voice