Act your age to engage: field evidence on parent versus brand extension

Abstract Brand managers have to allocate limited resources between developing new brand extensions and supporting parent brands. We contribute by demonstrating how social media engagement can be optimised by creating a fit between social media language and extensions versus parent brands. This is important given that literature suggests that (a) extensions and parent brands should use the same social media strategy and (b) establishing fit between extensions and parent brands should be the focus of brand managers. This study contributes by analysing over 40,000 tweets made by 26 Google-branded twitter accounts (i.e. @google, @gmail). Results show for brand extension (vs. parent brand) and use of locomotion (vs. assessment) language produce regulatory fit and increase engagement. A 10% increase in locomotive language increased favouriting by 19% and retweeting by 11%. Alternatively, for parent brands, a 10% increase in assessment language increased favouriting by 9% and retweeting by 4%.