Sincere or exciting? Brand personality and argument quality on brand attitude

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine whether strong arguments provided in a commercial perform the same for exciting and sincere brands. Across three experiments, we vary brand personality (exciting versus sincere brands) and supporting argument quality (strong vs. weak), and find that consumers have more favorable attitudes toward sincere brands when the argument quality is strong rather than weak, but strong/weak argument quality does not influence consumers' attitudes toward exciting brands. The findings contribute to the existing literature on the elaboration likelihood model, sheds new light on the interaction between brand personality and argument quality, and suggest ways for advertising managers to customize content messaging in their commercials depending upon the personality of the focal brand's audience.