You've no doubt heard about the recent problems Anheuser Busch, Target, Kohl's, and the LA Dodgers are having because of some biased and unpopular marketing decisions made recently. Given the severe drops in value of the first 3 of those, I wondered today if the shareholders have grounds to sue the Boards of Directors for financial malfeasance. Wouldn't life be a lot easier if this were the way things worked?
Imagine a beer company that just wanted to make good beer and sell it to you. Imagine if that company wanted to sell beer to everyone but didn’t feel that its job was to make you more accepting of transgender individuals, any more than it felt its job was to warn you about the national debt or teach you the value of standardized testing in public schools or warn you about North Korea’s intercontinental-missile program. Imagine a beer company that liked its existing customer base and didn’t feel a need to reeducate those customers and get them to give up their “fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor.”
Imagine an everything store like Target that wanted everyone to shop there, but that had the good sense to realize that partnering with a brand that had “Satanist-inspired merchandise” was not the way to win over shoppers in a country that is still roughly two-thirds Christian. (Also note that almost every faith has a devil figure, so there’s no reason to think non-Christian religious customers are big fans of Satanic branding, either.) You want to put rainbows and “PRIDE” on your merchandise, go right ahead. It’s a free country. But if you partner up with a “Satan Respects Pronouns”* designer, don’t be shocked when lots of people choose to shop elsewhere.
Imagine a sports team that declared everyone was welcome but didn’t formally and publicly roll out the welcome mat for the quasi-pornographic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. (Is the promotion worth it if you’re alienating your team’s star pitcher?) Last year, the Los Angeles Dodgers led Major League Baseball in attendance; with the exception of 2020, the Dodgers have led MLB in attendance for the past nine seasons. Marketing the Dodgers in Los Angeles is like marketing water in the desert. The Dodgers don’t need to reach out to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence fanbase; they’re choosing to reach out, because someone in the organization likes that message. The irony is that a significant chunk of the attending fans, as well as the players, are Christian.
Hey, does any gay-rights group want to dress up as Muslim imams? Nah? Okay. We know the score. It’s safe to pick on Catholics, because Catholics are going to turn the other cheek and ignore you or offer mild protest. Dress up in drag to mock Muslims and there’s a good chance you’ll get firebombed. We saw this with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, we saw this with the Muhammad cartoons, we saw this with Charlie Hebdo magazine over in France, and we see it now. What those who enjoy mocking Christianity ought to fear is the day that certain Christians look at the Muslims and realize intimidation, threats, and violence are an effective way to make their faith un-mockable. American society is perfectly okay with threats of violence in response to blasphemous speech, but we only tolerate it for certain faiths. There are good reasons to doubt that double standard is sustainable.
As Michael Jordan probably didn't really say but the quote still gets attributed to him, "Even Republicans buy shoes." Just sell your product and make money.
Update, 6/21/23: Did I call it?
Corporations that wrecked their images in woke marketing campaigns could pay a price for decisions that cost shareholders money.
On May 30, America First Legal took to Twitter on a fishing expedition looking for disgruntled shareholders who have seen their investments flow down the drain faster than a barrel of Bud Light since the beer’s embrace of transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney led to a weeks-long boycott that shows no sign of stopping.
“ATTENTION: Are you a shareholder of @Target @Kohls @abinbev, or other companies that are promoting transgender, LGBTQ and PRIDE products and diminishing shareholder value? We want to hear from you,” the law firm posted...
Newsweek wrote that the strategy appears to be to sue the companies over decisions that led to massive stock declines.
4 comments:
Everyone who has stocks or mutual funds should be checking to see if their managers have adjusted stock holdings to keep them from losing money. While conventional investing says hold onto long time stocks, this may be something that leads to Anheuser Busch being bought out. Target may survive this storm, but Kohls will not. I've been in my local Kohl's and I KNOW that there's less backstock and fewer selections in many departments. Just as you can tell a grocery store ready to go under by the smell of rotting produce left in place, you can see which stores are struggling by empty shelves, or worse, shelves made to appear full by stocking products from other departments. Kohls used to have wall displays with merchandise for sale, they have taken those down. The much pushed Sephora department adds are still filled with clearance items. Walmart too has some questions to answer on these issues. Stop pushing agenda. Make a good product, offer customer service and SELL THE PRODUCT not the image.
Boycotting a business over politics is silly.
I'm sure you watch FoxNews on a regular basis.
I don't boycott Target because of politics, but due to business decisions. If they want to push certain items to certain age groups, go ahead, but I will be taking my business elsewhere.
Besides, wasn't Rosa Parks boycott over politics?
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