> Despite Fox News and parts of the social mediasphere predicting the Swoosh’s downfall, the company claimed $163 million in earned media, a $6 billion brand value increase, and a 31% boost in sales.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90399316/one-year-later-what-did...

Maybe we need one for "Sir, this company sells shoes". It isn't clear to me why a person trying to sell shoes needs to take a stand about one politician or another. Except for the fact that there is only one thing partisans hate more than their enemies - the people who aren't part of the partisan fray.

A business isn't a good venue for partisan change. It is an okay place for some types of politics (e.g. environmental sourcing), but not for explicitly partisan ones.

Ironically, if I were running a business efficiently, I'd probably want to pick one side and stick to it. If I sell to everyone, and I have competitors who focus on the blue tribe and ones who focus on the red tribe, they'll have a competitive advantage over me with any given consumer, and I'll be left with the very few people who aren't on either side.

And sometimes choosing to not take a side is, in fact, an action with distinct consequences.

I really dislike this kind of journalism. How many is "many"? Is it just the author and their circle? Is it just people who insist that everything is political? I think this is a lazy assertion, which is a shame because I enjoyed the content that followed it. Surely there's a better introduction available.

And I mean this even in a value neutral sense in regards to the topic itself. It's as if a devout Christian would start selling abortion pills or a pacifist became an arms dealer.

When the article uses the phrase 'tribalism' it seems to me they just mean 'political'. People have started to prioritize values over economic calculus again after the monoculture of the 90s, which this kind of a thing was a product of.

People need to realize the consequences of this because it is the go-to tool for manipulating people. Creating division is creating tribes that people can belong to (and, by extension, another tribe they can blame for their problems). Racism, sexism, immigrants, homophobia and transphobia are obvious examples.

But there's a way more pervasive version of this: the myth of the middle class. The middle class is propaganda to create division between the completely made up middle class and the completely made up lower class.

> Workplace preferences see co-partisan workers paid more and promoted faster, despite at times being less qualified.

In tech we call this "culture fit" and it's pervasive and real.

> Republicans are more entrepreneurial. Conservatives start more firms than liberals ...

Is this adjusted for socioeconomic conditions?

this is interesting. I would be more drawn to messaging on "different", but mostly because I wouldn't trust a company to be an impartial judge on what is "better" - I would look to reviews rather than marketing for that. I guess it also represents a difference in notions of black and white thinking as well. I'd be curious to hear which one appeals more to people and why.

Where you see the aggressive enforcement of woke sentiment is within industries who are fighting regulation. To think about Republican voters (not politicians, who are of course important for them) is wasted time. All of them are going to vote for politicians who will not regulate these companies, no matter how their base feels about the companies and their messaging. Their Democratic politicians, however, could be voted out and replaced with eager regulators for helping a company that has been cancelled.

Instead of thinking about regulation, it's important that the Democratic voter ask: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow... would that end racism? Would that end sexism?”

i.e. Their Dem politicians need to be protected, their Republican politicians do not.

These are liberal analogs to, e.g., conservative claims about the how Civil Rights Act would directly lead to blacks and latinos raping and murdering whites, or in more recent years similar insinuations (and sometimes outright claims) regarding border controls. When you can draw a straight line between abstract policy preferences and the imminent death of an untold number of people, dissension becomes intolerable. Most people tend to agree with that sentiment on its face--that's why political rhetoric so often regresses to such stark terms--the sticking point is what that line looks like, if it even exists at all.

EDIT: I keep forgetting that the misuse of science is nothing new, so liberals aren't actually bringing anything new to the table in that regard. Of course science (certainly poor science, yet sadly mostly only in hindsight generally recognized as pseudo-science or non-science, e.g. Social Darwinism) was used to justify those example conservative claims, as well countless similarly specious claims from across the political spectrum going as far back as one cares to look, but particularly after empiricism displaced both institutional religion and rationalism as the fount of categorical truths.

That doesn't really apply when your business is essentially selling your own image and personality.

Just remember that politics isn’t everything.

Abortion for example, they just hardline "no". It's very exhausting.

Longer-term, that's a dangerous strategy in the social media era. The side you pick may regularly twist your arm to perform expensive demonstrations of loyalty to them. And (depends on where you are) potential customers who are less than comfortable with hyper-partisan politics may be more numerous than the red or blue zealots.

Another way to look at it: There was a very popular hairstyle among alt-right youths a while back (actually, a couple now that I'm thinking about it). It didn't matter if you were alt-right: if you had that haircut, that's how people perceived you, because that's who adopted the style. It's no different with consumer products.

If alt-right nuts started buying up Jumpman products in droves, you can bet that the progressive fans of its brands would demand for the company to take a stand on their co-option or risk losing the progressives (because progressives buy sneakers too).

This is painful and pointless unless it is a good faith discussion. But often people just use you as a sounding board to repeat rumors, gossip, and lies about whatever out-group currently in their crosshairs. Also what possible interaction can you have with someone that can compete with the slow drip of fear and hate they consumed nightly for the last decade from cable news for example.

My example is obviously exaggerated but my point is: Right now there is only one really extreme "side" in the U.S., so it doesn't come across odd that some businesses for ethical reasons and some for efficient reasons try to position themselves against it.

I'm actually pretty skeptical of this. I think that in most cases, when corporations are taking a "stand" it is because they have calculated that not taking a stand will be more financially damaging to their prospects.

I think the business school lectures that keep coming of late about not alienating consumers are skewd towards a time when

1) The American consumer was more homogenous.

2) Companies had less insight into who their customers were.

What's more, analyses like these seem to take for granted that companies risk alienating an equal number of customers taking any stand other than the center. But the consumer base is not the electorate. Conservative leaning Republicans make up less than half the electorate and their cultural preferences are generally held by well below the majority of people.

The strangest part of all of this talk is that it has exploded in the discourse at a time when the positions corporations are taking have generally been about issues facing minorities of race, sexual oreintation or gender orientation.

Yet dozens of large companies have taken conservative stands in recent decades. And while occasionally the media does question the ends of such stands, i.e. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, there isn't this endless hand wringing about whether businesses ought to be taking culturally controversial positions. The most pointed part being that in a case like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Hobby Lobby ACTUALLY affected the lives of millions of people. Most of the things business bloggers grouse about of late is corporations throwing out some utterly token signal of wokeness.

You're never going to win. You're not going to achieve final and total victory over white southerners. Even if you did, then you'll have to battle conservative Latinos, Asians, Muslims, etc. Look over at Muslims in France to see what happens you try to have diversity without a pluralistic social structure that allows groups to leave each other alone over value differences.

You're assuming that there was criticism to mute. Many people just want to live their lives without being dragged into politics and forced to choose a side.

Political beliefs that are prejudiced are usually just people who haven't thought very deeply about the issue and find the emotional aspect of the political cause appealing. Dependency on members of politically opposed groups fosters empathy.

People respect Jordan unlike Kapernick or James, because Jordan didn’t hypocritically involve himself in politics — unlike those two who haven been outspoken against racism and slavery… except for the slaves making the shoes they advertise. They’re perfectly fine profiting from those slaves.

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I also think your example is ridiculous: not vocally criticizing is nothing like actively participating.