Better Early Than Late: The Timing of LGBT+ Brand Activism
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we speak with Kshitij Bhoumik (University of Leeds) to discuss his article, “How the Timing of LGBT+ Brand Activism Affects Consumer Responses: Better Early Than Late?” coauthored with Maximilian H. E. E. Gerrath (University of Leeds), Alessandro Biraglia (University of Leeds), Aulona Ulqinaku (University of Leeds), and Giampaolo Viglia (University of Portsmouth), published in the March 2026 issue of JAR. Kshitij explains the question driving the paper: the brand activism literature has covered what brands should say, which brands are suited to it, and how consumers respond, but not when a brand should take a stand, and it wasn’t obvious that the pioneering advantage documented for product and service innovation would carry over to campaigns that can divide and alienate consumers. Across seven studies, the team first used WARC and LexisNexis to identify 15 LGBT+ campaigns spanning 12 years and analyzed roughly 27,000 tweets, finding more positive sentiment toward brands that launched earlier. Experiments then established causality, including a lab choice study in which students read that either KitKat or Kinder Bueno had been the pioneer in supporting the LGBT+ community; 63 percent chose the pioneer and left with the chocolate they picked. Perceived effort emerged as the strongest mediator, with early brands seen as having worked harder for the cause, and talking up financial resources strengthened that perception for early brands but did nothing for followers. The practical takeaway is that timing belongs in the activism strategy alongside message and media: if a brand wants to support a cause, don’t wait, but don’t jump on every cause either, since the support has to be substantial and the specific effort behind it communicated rather than left at a social media post. Not every brand can be a pioneer, and a post hoc study found that a follower showing high effort, such as cutting ties with suppliers who don’t support the cause or changing employment policies, earned responses on par with a pioneer making moderate effort. Our conversation also digs into the project’s origins in a brainstorming session about whether long-time supporters like Ben & Jerry’s actually reap an advantage, the challenge of narrowing from brand activism broadly to a single cause when each carries its own history and level of divisiveness, and where Kshitij is headed next: other sociopolitical contexts and marginalized communities, consumers’ own political ideology as a moderator, and longitudinal work on whether sustained visible effort eventually matters more than having been first. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2485414 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page: / @journalofadvertisingresearch And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/
