What's Said, What's Meant:

In recent years, corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) has become a prominent and often contested element of brand communication, especially in industries tied to identity and cultural expression. The beauty sector, with its image-driven narratives and symbolic consumption, has seen an increasing number of brands publicly supporting humanitarian and political causes via social media. As this trend evolves, authenticity has emerged as a central lens through which consumers, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, evaluate whether a brand's activism is genuine or merely performative. While CSA is attracting more scholarly attention, most existing research focuses on utilitarian sectors, leaving open the question of how activist messaging operates in emotionally and symbolically rich domains like beauty branding. This thesis addresses that gap by examining how message type (advocacy vs. product-focused) influences perceived brand authenticity and how corporate motive framing (value-driven vs. profit-driven) moderates this relationship. Drawing on attribution and framing theories, a 2×2 between-subjects experiment (N = 209) exposed participants to simulated Instagram posts from a fictional beauty brand. Authenticity was measured using a concise, multidimensional scale spanning credibility, integrity, symbolism, and continuity. Although the manipulations were pre-tested for clarity, the motive framing manipulation failed to create a clear interpretive differentiation, and no significant main or interaction effects appeared at the overall authenticity level. However, a deeper analysis across dimensions revealed that advocacy messaging significantly boosted perceptions of credibility and integrity, two dimensions linked to sincerity and ethical alignment, even though symbolism and continuity remained unchanged. These results imply that activist messaging can selectively influence trust-based impressions while falling short of shifting deeper perceptions tied to brand heritage or identity. Moreover, consistently high baseline authenticity scores and the limited perceptual impact of motive cues underline the constraints inherent in digitally mediated messaging environments like Instagram. Overall, these findings highlight the need to treat brand authenticity as a layered construct that does not respond uniformly to single-message interventions. While brief activist content can enhance moral perceptions, it is unlikely to affect broader authenticity judgments without sustained narrative coherence and clear motivational transparency. For beauty brand strategists, this means that meaningful CSA cannot stop at singular, brief statements. Instead, it must be woven into a long-term, relationship-driven branding strategy.