Brand Signals — Vista's Warmth, Competence & Morality Under Fire

A four-round, intermediate brand-and-sustainability marketing simulation set inside Karst Foods d.o.o., a Slovenian food-and-beverage company whose €95M premium plant-based brand Vista sells across Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and northern Italy on an 18% price premium. On 2 June 2026 a viral consumer-watchdog post accuses Vista of “premium prices, vague green claims,” days before its autumn launch and against a transparent challenger, Polje, that publishes audited sustainability data. The brand-tracker tells the real story: warmth is strong at 72, but competence sits at 58 and morality has slid to 49 (down 9 points in two waves), while stated purchase intent has fallen from 62% to 55%. If intent is not stabilized above 60% and morality lifted before the autumn review, finance will cut the €14M marketing budget by 20% and reposition Vista to mid-tier. Playing the brand team, the learner manages Vista through Žabkar's (2022) framework — that corporate sustainability investments shape specific brand impressions (warmth, competence, morality), which in turn drive purchase intention. Round 1: diagnose which impression is the binding constraint (morality, under attack), which segment is most at risk (the under-35s), and how the chain spend → impression → intent is breaking. Round 2: plan the investment-to-impression map — choosing a sustainability initiative (third-party-audited transparency and certification move morality and competence; community/cause work moves warmth) and a communication channel, learning that communication without substance reads as greenwashing and lowers morality. Round 3: commit the €14M across substance and communication under a hard cap, discovering that ungrounded amplification triggers a greenwashing backlash and that proof must be sequenced before the message. Round 4: a journalist fact-checks the new claim and Polje cuts price 8% — the learner must show morality survives verification, defend the premium on perceived superiority rather than discounting, and present a defensible ROMI to a CFO who judges return, not reach. The math rewards targeting the binding morality constraint, mapping each euro to the impression it buys, grounding communication in verifiable substance, sequencing proof before amplification, and defending the premium on perception — and punishes the five classic errors: amplifying contested claims without substance, feeding the already-strong warmth dimension, undifferentiated green spend, price-matching the challenger, and chasing reach over ROMI. Final KPIs track warmth, competence, morality, purchase intent (%) and ROMI.