Support is waning for corporate involvement and advocacy around many of the country’s biggest hot-button social issues, according to a new Public Affairs Council survey shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: No business wants to become a political football ahead of the 2024 election.
I owned a couple of small businesses and never saw the point of taking sides on political issues. Personally, of course, but not the business or myself when representing the business., which includes my personal facebook account which had 2,500 people from an industry I was in. Prospective or current customers weren’t looking to the companies for political advice… they wanted us to do our jobs for them. From a practical level it seemed like taking a stand on divisive issues would lose us more customers than we’d gain.
I think it’s a different situation when the company is a big company.
Example, I like knowing my grocery store is trying to use sustainable food procurement practices.
I don’t really care about my grocery store having an opinion on gun rights other than to say “don’t fucking use it in the store”
That’s the thing though, it’s almost never relevant. I don’t care what Budweiser thinks about the LGBTQ community. It makes no difference if Target supports abortion rights or not. These things are entirely divorced from the business these companies are trying to carry out and yet they take up a sizable chunk of public discourse and advertising space.
Politics taking over every aspect of culture is insufferable and this seems like a great place to start when it comes to making politics less combative. Let’s stop making a taco purchase a political statement.
So the heart of what you are getting to is that the techniques of marketing have become so effective, efficient, and advanced that it’s mechanisms have realized the best way to get people to buy things is to appeal to deeply held opinions and beliefs and that practice is bringing those beliefs and their contrasting opinions to the forefront of common discourse. Which is then in turn both unveiling the deep ideological divisions that already existed amongst us to light but is also inherently exacerbating those divisions by raising their profiles. All in the pursuit of further revenue. The issue isn’t politics invading everything, it’s everything invading politics
Marketing is just propaganda with a business goal rather than a political goal. We should’ve put stringent limits on what it’s allowed to do after we watched what Goebbels and Riefenstahl were able to do
We should’ve put strict limits on it with Bernays’ “torches of freedom” rubbish.
I would feel the exact same way, but there is one thing stopping me. These companies then use my money (and others) to fund super pac’s to lobby congress and buy politicians to enact legislative I think is morally and socially bankrupt. When companies can no longer do this, I think that’s the day business becomes less political.
I am indifferent to the politics of Bud Light (can’t/wouldn’t drink it anyway), and I understand they wanted to modernize the brand and broaden it’s appeal, but it’s almost comical how badly they misread their audience. Of course the people who reacted badly are a bunch of wankers, but… those are the people who drink Bud Light.
That’s why I draw the line where I did, to show that relevance should matter.
I do want to know where a company stands on social issues. If they don’t want/don’t care about the people I care about t h en they don’t need my money either.
Sure, but it could harm a business my size. I wasn’t interested in discriminating among customers based on their political views. But if I even responded to memes about politics on Facebook i could end up with colleagues or store owners not wanting to work with me. Stuff specifically relevant to the business, sure, of course take a position on that.
There is a small plant nursery in my area that I remember had this massive obnoxious “TRUMP 2020” sign (like, bigger than their own sign) up back when I first moved there in 2019. This is in a large town in NOVA, right in the center of town on a major road, so pretty damn blatant. When the Floyd protests kicked up and started turning into riots (including here), it quietly went down for a month or two. When Joe won the election, it stayed up. Until Jan 6. Since then, there has been a notable lack of any political signaling. I can’t help but think they’ve suffered a lot of business loss and embarassment because of that sign.
Instead of virtue signaling, let them put out quarterly public reports about what they donate to what causes and politicians. I’m holding my breath, of course.
“Human Rights brought to you by Pepsi!”
Sounds real genuine doesn’t it.
“I prefer Coke anyway”
