The three social media waves of the Black Lives Matter movement – and how they impact marketing in this moment

The Black Lives Matter movement is actually comprised of three waves, which were formed not just by incidents of violence – and murder – against Black people, but also by how social media helped propagate awareness of BLM; they are the Martin Wave, the Brown Wave and the Floyd Wave.

Brand activism in the Black Lives Matter era

This article is part of a series of articles from the WARC Guide to brand activism in the Black Lives Matter era. Read more.

Data-driven, modern targeting and messaging techniques notwithstanding, the most effective marketing messages are empathetic. Organic. Human. We take cues from society’s prevailing cultural winds, embed those cues into emotional messages, and hope those messages drive a person to action. On rare occasions – when the perfect message meets the perfect moment, like Gatorade’s “Be Like Mike” – our work has the potential to drive culture. Those who drive...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands