BRAND COMMUNICATION RESILIENCE UNDER CONDITIONS OF WAR AND CONSUMER INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Abstract
The article examines brand communication resilience under conditions of consumer information overload, limited actual attention, growing cognitive fatigue and heightened audience sensitivity to the tone and moral acceptability of advertising messages. The relevance of the topic stems from contemporary brands operating in an environment of digital signals, algorithmic content selection, competition for attention and rapid erosion of trust. For Ukrainian business, this issue is intensified by the wartime context, in which commercial communication reaches consumers who live amid anxiety, economic uncertainty, news saturation, loss and the need for psychologically acceptable contact. The article focuses on how a brand can preserve its presence in the consumer’s life without amplifying information noise or converting socially sensitive themes into instruments for capturing attention. It considers the limits of conventional approaches to marketing communication effectiveness, where attention is often equated with reach, frequency or the number of contacts. Attention is paid to brand memory, contextual relevance, evidentiality, trust and ethical restraint in the use of rhetoric related to strength, resilience, support and recovery. Internal marketing research is addressed as a way to check audience reactions and detect fatigue, distrust, inappropriateness or excessive communication pressure. The article outlines the need to combine cognitive economy of the message, empathetic relevance, local sensitivity, evidence-based social responsibility and regular verification of communication decisions. It also examines the relationship between the consumer’s emotional state, the perception of advertising tone, expectations of responsible business conduct and the brand’s ability to communicate without intrusiveness, dramatisation or symbolic appropriation of wartime experience. This framing allows brand resilience to be understood as the capacity to maintain trusted, relevant and psychologically acceptable contact with the consumer in a complex informational and wartime environment while avoiding excessive pressure and the loss of trust in the advertising message.
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