“We’re seeing these brands break along partisan lines just as the rest of the culture is,” says Sebastian Buck, CEO of Enso, a L.A.-based brand marketing agency that commissioned the research. “Brands operate in a social context and people make choices about brands every day within the context about what’s happening.”
The online survey of 3,000 people measures “how people perceive a brand’s purpose, how closely it aligns with their own values and motivations.” It’s not, in other words, a measure of actual do-gooding, but rather of how people perceive the mission and purpose of organizations (some nonprofits are included).