Making Sense of Red Bull's Marriage Equality Discourse on Facebook

In 2013, energy drink brand Red Bull surprised fans on its Facebook page by advocating for marriage equality. Its "Energize Equality" post inspired 629 comments, which are analyzed qualitatively in this article to gain understanding of how audiences make meaning of brands' political messaging. Findings indicate that audiences take pragmatic routes to message processing, focusing on the issue, the product, or the "dual drive" of issue/product. From this, a model of issue-brand relationship emerges, specifically "escalation" (the issue improves evaluation of the brand) and "depreciation" (the issue diminishes evaluation of the brand). These findings provide a blueprint for brands planning political messaging within their marketing communications.