I have to wonder if the C-level executives of some corporations have been taking illicit drugs. What’s making me ponder this question?
How about sheer stupidity?
How many companies have made the decision to go ‘woke’ as a marketing strategy only to find out it backfires and causes them to lose market share?
The first one I became aware of, but was unlikely to be the first rather than the biggest at the time, was Gillette. Their disastrous ad campaign that denigrated men ended up costing them over $8 billion in sales and valuation.
The latest is Anheuser-Busch who thought it would be a great idea to use a trans-woman as the center of their ad campaign to capture younger customers for their Bud Light brand. While the popularity of Bud Light had been falling off, this ‘woke’ campaign may have killed it off. It may have killed off the career of the architect of the ill advised move, Alissa Heinerscheid, a marketing VP for the Bud Light brand. She’s taken a leave of absence and her position is being filled by Todd Allan for the time being.
Another example - retail chain Bed, Bath & Beyond whose very public dislike and denunciation of My Pillow magnate Mike Lindell seriously affected their already struggling bottom line. BB&B has closed 400 stores across the nation, including all but three of them here in New Hampshire.
Then there’s Disney which has seen falloffs in subscriptions to its Disney+ streaming service, box office failures of ‘woke’ remakes of popular movies, and falling popularity of some of its Star Wars spin-off series because they appear to be too woke for fans. Disney is also laying off staff, something it has never done before as best I recall.
It is doubtless there are plenty of more examples, big and small, of businesses who went woke, and then broke.
More of corporate America is learning the lesson of “Get woke. Go broke.” Pissing off a majority of one’s customer base in order to capture a small percentage of customers they might not have seems like an incredibly stupid move. Why anyone thought it was a good idea escapes me. The only explanation I can come up with is that either those who made the decision to do so were either off their meds, using illicit substances, have had too much of the ‘woke’ Koolaid, or some combination of all three.
