Doubling down on brand activism: A multilayered framing contest following brand-initiated provocation

While brands are often drawn into social controversies, the public debates that follow brand‑initiated provocations remain understudied. We examine how public debate evolves when activist brands engage in conflict framing—intentionally casting an issue as a conflict of frames. Based on a frame analysis of a public debate that followed a brand’s attempt to provoke deliberation about entrenched societal practices with significant climate impacts, we develop a model of brand activism as a multilayered debate. The model shows, on one hand, stakeholder reactions that criticize the brand activism campaign across multiple layers of frames and, on the other hand, the brand’s steadfast commitment to foreground its conflict frame—milk as an environmental and sociopolitical issue. We advance theorizations of framing and engagement strategies in contested contexts by showing how brand–stakeholder interactions change following conflict framing grounded in defiance, and we identify four doubling-down tactics: rebutting, retaliating, redirecting, and rebelling.