Co-Brand Activism: Girls’ Empowerment in Sports

Brands increasingly become advocates of sociopolitical issues by aligning brands’ purposes and values with prosocial practices, a strategy defined as brand activism. Recent research on the theoretical construct of brand activism calls for an investigation of the construct from the multiple stakeholders involved in the development and execution. Drawing from the premises of brand activism and femvertizing, the study explores how a co-brand activism campaign on girls’ empowerment in sports was developed and communicated through the collaboration of two activist brands, Dove, and Nike. Data was collected from the official websites and Instagram accounts of the activist brands, the internet website of the activist practice and the media news that resulted from this collaboration. Identified themes explain the process for the formulation and communication of the co-brand activist strategy – body confident sport program and #KeepHerConfident respectively. Research findings contribute to brand activism, femvertising and co-branding literatures by providing evidence for the dynamic interactions that shape the development and execution of co-brand activist strategies and the multiple-fit drivers that make this possible in the intersection of multiple female identity categories.