Paul Harrigan

Purpose: Many influencer marketing campaigns feature smiling influencers. However, whether smiling is always beneficial, and under which circumstances it might not be, remains underexplored. This paper aims to examine how an influencer’s smile (vs no smile) affects consumer engagement with influencer posts. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a field study and several online experiments. In the field study, they analyzed 802 influencer campaigns with a total of over 125 million consumer interactions (i.e. liking and commenting). In the experiments, participants viewed influencer posts featuring commonly promoted products such as headphones (nStudy2 = 192, nStudy4 = 231), sunglasses (nStudy3 = 304) and protein bars (nStudy5 = 236, nSupplemental = 247). Findings: The authors show that a smile (vs no smile) in influencer posts can backfire. Smiling can lead to lower engagement by reducing perceived authenticity. However, this negative effect is contingent upon influencer type (micro vs macro) and sponsorship presence (sponsored vs. non-sponsored). Research limitations/implications: While Instagram was the authors’ focus, smile effects may be different on other platforms. Although they focused on engagement, other marketing outcomes may exhibit different patterns. Finally, other contextual factors may influence whether smiling backfires or not. Practical implications: Marketers and influencers should carefully consider the use of smiles when endorsing products on social media. While smiling may enhance engagement for micro influencers, it can have the opposite effect for macro influencers. However, for macro influencers, smiling may still boost engagement when the product recommendation is not sponsored. Originality/value: In revealing a negative effect of smiling in influencer posts, along with an underlying mechanism and boundary conditions, the authors’ study advances the influencer marketing literature. The authors show that a smile can increase engagement and purchase likelihood for some influencer types and campaigns, while it can decrease it for others. Thus, they provide a nuanced picture of the importance of smiling in influencer marketing on social media.

Research on CEOs’ social media communication as a leadership instrument remains scarce. The current study addresses this gap by exploring the relationship between CEOs’ leadership‐oriented language and user engagement (i.e., sharing behavior). Based on an automated text analysis of 24,719 posts from 172 CEOs of Global Fortune 500 companies on X, one of the largest social media platforms previously known as Twitter, this research examines how CEOs’ leadership‐oriented language influences users’ sharing behavior. In particular, it focuses on transformational leadership (TFL), a crucial approach in social media contexts. Utilizing hierarchical linear modeling, the findings revealed that CEOs’ use of linguistic indicators reflecting TFL affects users’ sharing behavior in partially unexpected and contradictory ways. Specifically, using positive emotional language and exclusive words in social media posts can diminish users’ sharing behavior. Conversely, content‐rich posts, replies that open a dialogic loop, and posts reflecting psychological closeness all positively influence users’ sharing behavior. These findings underscore the complex nature of leadership‐oriented language and provide novel insights into its effectiveness on social media. The current study offers specific guidelines for how CEOs can effectively utilize TFL‐oriented language to engage their audiences while minimizing the risk of unintended negative consequences.

The growth of influencer marketing has been accompanied by heightened risks for partner brands when influencers face public scandals. This study examines negative brand engagement (NBE) as a key consequence and identifies three mitigating factors: brand forgiveness, perceived brand authenticity, and immediacy of brand response, framed through signaling theory. Data from 254 consumers who had “cancelled” an influencer yet purchased a brand endorsed by them were analyzed using PLS-SEM. Results highlight the central role of brand forgiveness in reducing NBE. Forgiveness of the influencer indirectly decreases NBE via brand forgiveness, while brand authenticity directly fosters forgiveness and indirectly reduces NBE. Moreover, authenticity’s positive effect on forgiveness is strengthened when the brand responds rapidly to the scandal. The study advances influencer marketing literature by shifting focus from drivers that exacerbate NBE to factors that mitigate it, and by applying signaling theory to explain forgiveness mechanisms. For practitioners, the findings underline the importance of acting swiftly and authentically after an influencer scandal, and of facilitating forgiveness toward the influencer to promote brand forgiveness and limit NBE. Future research should explore additional antecedents of influencer and brand forgiveness, given its pivotal role in protecting brand relationships during crises.

The climate crisis and other global challenges make it clear that not only are new value cocreation practices (VCPs) needed, but some current VCPs must be discontinued. Prior service literature assumes that VCPs can be disrupted by reforming the institutions that govern them. However, empirical observations show that VCPs may persist even when targeted by institutional work, and recent organizational research points to contested practices that continue to be enacted even when challenged or criticized. To understand this phenomenon in value cocreation, we conducted an embedded case study of exotic pet-keeping—a set of VCPs that continue despite intervention efforts. Our findings reveal that when exotic pet-keepers became reflexive of contestation in the symbolic elements of their VCPs, they modified their material elements, leading to four types of contested VCP reconfiguration. Two of these types—conforming and confining—resulted in the dissipation of the contested VCPs, while the other two—converting and circumventing—led to their persistence. We contribute to service research by introducing the concept of contested VCPs and developing a typology and a theoretical framework of their reconfiguration. Our work offers practitioners and policymakers a new approach to designing interventions to discontinue VCPs and evaluating their outcomes.

Previous research has focused on the content differences of functional versus experiential advertisements. The current research instead investigates graphic-design differences. The authors first conducted an observational study to observe graphic-design differences in real-life functional and experiential advertisements. Afterwards, they experimentally investigated how the effectiveness of functional and experiential advertisements might be enhanced through two key graphic-design elements: color (in terms of evoked emotions: pleasure, arousal, dominance) and design complexity. The authors’ findings provide guidance to advertising designers for matching content graphics with design elements.

Marketing is one of the fastest-growing employment areas within commerce. Most of the growth lies in the role of digital technologies and in promoting sustainability rather than consumerism. However, students with mostly theoretical knowledge, even if in these areas, may not necessarily satisfy this demand, nor will students armed with strategic knowledge that is not required in entry-level jobs. There is increased demand from the marketing industry for job-ready graduates with both technical and multidisciplinary soft skills. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to reflect on the relevance of marketing education in universities in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region. At the beginning of this new decade and following a global health pandemic that has severely impacted the university sector, the time is right for such a reflection. Specifically, we reflect on how we teach and what we teach. Under how we teach, we consider two main issues: online learning and the role of industry certifications. Under what we teach, we consider three main issues: content relevance, soft skills and industry experience. We conclude with key questions for individual educators and marketing departments, and we provide some recommendations as to how, collectively, we can deal with the question we pose.