In the context of accelerating digitalization, social media platforms have reshaped branding and advertising practices, encouraging entertainmentoriented communication strategies. Focusing on Vietnam and its digitally engaged Generation Z audience, this study examines how cue-specific attention to branded music videos (BMVs) on YouTube is associated with brand awareness, operationalized as two memory-based brand-identification outcomes: aided brand recognition and contextual brand retrieval (recall-proxy). A crosssectional survey was administered to Vietnamese Generation Z respondents who regularly use YouTube and reported familiarity with at least five of ten preselected BMVs (n = 305). Using descriptive statistics and multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with robust standard errors in STATA, the study tests whether self-reported attention to specific BMV elements, particularly lyrics and slogans, is associated with the two brand-identification outcomes. Results suggest an asymmetric pattern across the two dimensions of brand awareness. Attention to slogans shows a positive and statistically significant association with contextual brand retrieval (p < 0.05), whereas attention to lyrics shows only marginal evidence of association with aided brand recognition (p < 0.10). Other measured visual and narrative elements do not demonstrate statistically significant associations in the models, and overall explanatory power is modest. Taken together, the findings indicate that verbal/auditory cues may be more closely linked to brand-identification outcomes than other elements in musicoriented, multitasked YouTube consumption contexts. By integrating brand awareness theory and music video theory, this study contributes empirical evidence from a non-Western market and offers practical implications for designing BMVs aligned with specific branding objectives (retrieval-oriented vs. recognition-oriented awareness).
Huong Dang Thi Thu (2026) studied this question.