Whether targeting customers or prospects, marketers sometimes use pronouns that suggest a partnership between their brand and the people they’re talking to. Think of “Together, we can make a difference,” the slogan Whole Foods uses to promote bag reuse, or Wells Fargo Bank’s “Together we’ll go far” slogan. A set of experiments in press at the Journal of Consumer Research, which examined messages from banks and a health insurer, shows that these types of messages do shape attitudes toward brands, but not always as marketers intend.

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