| Consumer brands are learning the truth of “Go Woke, Go Broke.” |
The Woke Contagion started on college campuses, metastasized into pop culture, but may now be coming to a hard stop at the cash register. Terrible ideas usually fail the test of time, which means when enough time goes by, they fail. There’s some hope this may now be happening with the worst ideas America has ever produced. Fingers crossed.
First let’s define Woke. I’m sure no dictionary would agree, but here’s a pretty good explanation of what the word means. Wokeness consists of embracing concepts that a generation or so ago would have been laughed out of the room. Here are just some of them.
- Anti-Racism. People are defined by, and should be judged by, their skin color. Any disparity between the accomplishments of one type of skin color group vs. another, in aggregate, can only be caused by racism. And racism means judging people by their skin color. The solution is not to NOT judge people by their skin color. The solution is to hand out cash to those who don’t have as much of it, and also discriminate when hiring—especially for film and TV roles—to make up for the sin of people discriminating based on skin color. And of course you are supposed to discriminate based on skin color, because skin color is what defines people. (Anyone confused yet?)
- Trans-Agenda. Anyone who thinks that maybe they’re actually the opposite sex of what they are, in fact IS the opposite sex of what they are. If their body doesn’t conform to their feelings, then they should modify their body by having sexual organs cut off and/or re-organized in a kind of Frankenstein monster way, which among other things means that person will never be able to have normal relationships. Or kids. And it’s best to start talking about these options to school children as young as Kindergarten, and encourage them to decide what sex they really are—because that’s obviously the main thing our primary schools should be focused on teaching.
- Inclusiveness. No one is better or worse than anyone else, on any scale. Obese people who do not take steps to control their weight are to be admired no less than those who eat sensibly and maintain a healthy body type. Those who adopt dysfunctional lifestyles involving perhaps drug and alcohol abuse must not be shamed for their failings. Criminals who perennially engage in burglary, rape, assault, and other such violations of the law can be forgiven all of it if they have the right skin color (see item #1, above.)
Most—probably all—cultures throughout our 9,000 years of human civilization, up to about twenty years ago, would laugh their heads off at such silly ideas. And they could never incubate outside the dreamy, isolated biospheres of college campuses. But in those places they grow like topsy.
If you could keep such dysfunctionality cauterized and confined to institutions of “higher learning,” the damage would be limited. What happens, not surprisingly, is that students become indoctrinated into such nonsense, and when they get hired by large corporations, the infection spreads further—eventually making it up to C-level positions and even board rooms.
The result is increasingly predictable. The company itself goes woke, and tries to jam its wokeness down the throats of its customers. And that’s when the problems begin.
We’re all familiar with the two most obvious examples: Disney, and Bud Light. Although in truth what happened at each was very different.
Disney—over many years—reached Stage IV Woke Derangement Syndrome. Most all their movies in the last decade are outlandishly contrived to feature what they like to call “marginalized groups.” Any film produced by Disney or one of its subsidiaries is today certain to include in a prominent role (take your pick) an LGBT actor, a Person of Color, or some other member of the “marginalized community,” whatever that is. Disney is so deep into the fetid swamp of wokeness that they don’t let the words “boys” and “girls” be spoken by staff at their theme parks. In recent Thor movies, they’ve introduced a minor character who is a creature made up of rocks—a talking rock creature. OK fine. Kinda cute. But they had to make the rock creature gay, and be from a planet where children always have two fathers. Yeah, the sexual orientation of the rock creature was really critical to the plot.
John Nolte of Breitbart News said, “Every single one of Disney’s problems comes down to its obsessive left-wing political, social, and sexual agenda, which is deliberately aimed at innocent little kids. Forbes points out that Disney’s failing streaming service, Disney+, has already lost two billion — with a “B” — dollars this year but doesn’t bother to point out why. We all know why. The content sucks,” he added. | From “American Insider,” 10/17/23
And if all that weren’t enough, their stock price is down almost fifty percent in the last two years. Go woke, go broke.
But it turns out the same thing can happen to a consumer brand if it makes even one, tiny, woke marketing mistake. Back in April, for reasons that in hindsight seem inexplicable, Bud Light, the most popular beer in America at the time, produced a version of their cans with the image of Dylan Mulvaney, a prominent trans influencer: a guy pretending to be a woman.
Ironically, Anheuser-Busch, their parent, had never before ventured into the woke wars. And the cans themselves were a limited edition, created on a customized basis as a gift to Mulvaney. They were never sold in stores. No matter. Dylan showcased them on his social channels, and they went viral. To Bud Light customers, it seemed the brand had shifted from good, old-fashioned American values as expressed through their iconic Clydesdale horses, to disgusting and silly images of a man dressed up like a little girl. “Creepy” didn’t begin to describe it. Within days, the sales of Bud Light—previously the top selling beer in America—dropped thirty percent and never recovered. Bud Light is no longer even in the top-ten selling beers in America. And the parent company has lost billions in market cap.
It will probably go down as the greatest marketing blunder in commercial history, but who made it? Apparently the decision to go woke was made by thirty-something Alissa Heinerscheid, then Bud Light’s Marketing VP. So what’s her background? Hmmm, Harvard graduate with an MBA from University of Pennsylvania—two of the wokest schools in the country.
While anecdotal, here we have a young woman who was indoctrinated into woke ideology at two top Ivys, was snapped up by corporate America, was given more responsibility than she probably deserved, and—subsequently—destroyed the top-selling beer brand in America. Unlike Disney, this was only one mistake. But the customer base wasn’t very tolerant. Experts now doubt Bud Light will ever recover. Go woke, go broke.
Even the advertising firm linked to the Dylan Mulvaney promotion, Captiv8, last month laid off 20% of its workforce, so catastrophic had the mistake been.
And now, yesterday, we learn that another top consumer brand, Victoria’s Secret, may be shaking off its woke hangover. A couple of years ago the iconic brand forgot what business it was in: selling sexy lingerie. Even someone who didn’t have a fancy MBA could have told them such products should feature the kind of models other women are trying to look like, when they buy sexy lingerie. Maybe it’s not to our culture’s credit, but we all know what that means: young, pretty and slender.
In fact, almost all female clothing brands use young, pretty and slender female models. Heck, everyone uses them. That’s how they sell everything from Ford Trucks to pool tables. But if there’s one company on the planet who should use such “brand ambassadors,” it’s the world leader in sexy lingerie.
But apparently that concept was just a little too complex for the folks at Victoria’s Secret. For some reason, in the last few years, they’ve decided to go all in on obese models and transgenders.
And according to an article in Fox Business yesterday, it’s not working out so well. Or as they put it: “…Victoria’s Secret is…ditching its woke, feminist makeover of recent years as it hasn’t translated into business success.”
Wow, who would have guessed? It seems making gay, butch Megan Rapinoe (the American-hating soccer player with short purple hair), and a transgender woman, their brand spokes-models didn’t work out so well. And replacing their young, pretty, slender models with off-putting fat women in skimpy lingerie didn’t exactly make the cash register ring, either. In fact, sales have plummeted roughly ten percent since they made the change.
A normal, sentient, human being would have grasped this intuitively. But graduates of our elite universities, now in positions of too much power in corporate America, struggle with it.
The only question is, has America’s experiment in nonsense reached an end? Will disappointing financial results finally trump woke values?
The worm may be turning. But in the meantime, parents, think twice before sending kids off to elite college campuses. What was that famous country music song?
“Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be wokesters.”
Who knows what famous corporation they’ll ruin next.
Jacques Voorhees 