We hear it all the time: “Brands need to take a stand on social issues.” “The public demands to know where your brand stands on social issues.” But is it true? And the bigger question: Does a brand’s stance on social issues actually affect sales?
Not according to new research conducted by Reach, the largest commercial publisher in the UK and Ireland:
“Gen Z all the way to boomers really expect brands to take a stand on societal issues.”
Oh wait… pic.twitter.com/dY9GV8KLHt
— Andrew Tenzer (@thetenzer) September 16, 2022
Let’s blow that up a little so you can see it better:
As you can see from the chart, across the board, the percentage of consumers who cite “a brand’s position on social issues” as “important when buying brands and products” is diminishingly small, only reaching as high as the low double digits among respondents in the 16-to-24 age group.
Which is funny, because a lot of us more grounded marketing folks have been saying this for years.
Do consumers want to know where brands stand on social issues? Maybe. But ultimately, a brand’s particular stance (if any) seems to have very little bearing on consumers’ buying decisions.
Well, aside from the occasional high-profile disaster, that is.
Witness the debacle that resulted when PepsiCo waded into the national conversation about racism and the fake Black Lives Matter movement with its (pretentious, cringey, overblown) TV commercial featuring Kendall Jenner offering a can of Pepsi to a police officer during a protest. (Video below.)
The backlash was so fast and fierce that Pepsi was forced to pull the ad and apologize within 24 hours.
Pepsi’s statement: “Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly, we missed the mark and apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are pulling the content and halting any further rollout.”
Below: This nearly three-minute ad for Pepsi got the brand in hot water with BLM supporters — and many others.
I’ve been saying it forever: Unless a brand is built with a particular social purpose in mind, or the connection between a brand and a social issue is natural and relevant, a brand should mind its own damn business.
One brand that understands this is outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia.
Patagonia has positioned itself as a champion of environmental conservation movements since its beginnings in the 1970s. It’s a position that works well to this day.
Unfortunately for most brands daydreaming about the social capital and cachet they might gain from being seen as more than mere marketers of fizzy drinks and plastic whatchamafuckits, they are not Patagonia.
Yet, brands continue to trip all over themselves to take a stand on social issues. Especially — no, almost exclusively — woke ones.
- In 2019, Gillette launched a #MeToo-inspired ad campaign taking aim at “toxic masculinity.” Once again, the backlash was intense. On YouTube, the ad received many times more “dislikes” than “likes,” with many commenters vowing to dump their Gillette razors and boycott the brand. (Apparently unsatisfied with the damage it had done to its market share, the company followed up with an ad in which a man teaches his transgender son — that means she was born a girl — to shave.)
- Early in 2022, Disney inflicted upon itself the worst public relations crisis in its history when it attacked Florida’s Parental Rights in Education measure, demonized by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for kids in kindergarten through grade 3. (Don’t believe the hate. A poll by Public Opinion Strategies found that 61 percent of people supported the law, including 55 percent of Democrats.) For inserting itself into this issue, Disney got its mouse ears handed to it but good with plummeting stock shares, theme park protests, and a rumored 350,000+ cancellations of Disney Plus, the company’s premium streaming subscription service.
- In April, Virgin Atlantic launched its “See the World Differently” ad campaign, which the company said is intended to celebrate “the rich individuality of the airline’s people and customers,” but somehow turned into a woke nightmare.
I could go on.
Just this week, PayPal lost more than $9 billion in market value after it announced on Friday that it would take $2,500 from anyone spreading “misinformation” (the new word for “truth” that the government and its media slaves deem too dangerous or damaging to their agendas for the public to hear).
Twenty-four hours and thousands of canceled accounts later, the company walked back the policy with an embarrassing statement that the notice “went out in error” and “included incorrect information.” (Hey PayPal, is that the same as misinformation?) The language “was never intended to be inserted in our policy,” PayPal said, and “We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.”
I won’t even mention the absurd over-representation of black people in TV commercials, or how razor company Harry’s own-goaled itself with its virtue signaling and created a hungry new competitor in Jeremy’s Razors, or all of the brands that jumped in to push the unproven, experimental — and, as evidence is increasingly showing, unsafe and ineffective — C0V!D shots. (Seriously. If you haven’t heard about the epidemic of injuries and “sudden, unexpected” deaths that are destroying families and baffling doctors around the world, then it’s time to crawl out from whatever rock or social media echo chamber you’ve been hiding in.)
The good news is, I think consumers are waking up and starting to ask what brands stand for. The bad news for some of these brands is, we can smell what they are shoveling and we have only just begun to push back.
My advice to brands and advertisers tempted to jump in and start pushing woke social and political issues that have nothing to do with their business?
Shut up and sell.
Thanks to Andrew Tenzer, director of market insight and brand strategy at Reach, for sharing his firm’s findings on the importance (or lack of importance) of brands taking a stand on social issues. He shared this and many other interesting findings from his company’s research on Twitter. You can find some great little gems related to the mindsets of marketers and advertisers here, and a full report here.
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The Pepsi ad looked fairly sensible for a short film (I watched it with the volume down so I couldn’t hear anything) as it seemed to focus on promoting unity, but it is bad as an advertisement. Yes, product placement can work well in other media, but as you have pointed out many times, the main purpose of advertising is to sell a product or service, not hype up some pet project. The Pepsi ad did the latter rather than the former.
Thanks as always for the insight. If or when it comes time for me to find someone to advertise for something I produce, it will be someone like you, who focuses on the task at hand rather than anything else.
Spot on, GDT, and thank you very much for the kind compliment!
Anyone else notice that brands are now the ones policing behaviors and pushing virtues?…
While the government is campaigning for market saturation and adoption of their “products”…
Meanwhile parents are barely present, giving massive liberties and only the basics of food and shelter?
Things are a bit shifted out of sorts.
I agree one hundred percent that brands need to stop assuming influence and authority in places they have no business. Make and sell your products. Period. Meet the need at hand and focus on being the best in that, or suffer the fate of capitalism when we switch to less preachy competitors.
Ah, I was hoping my “brand” guy would comment on this blog post — and here you are!
Yes, Brad, I think a lot of people are noticing how brands, Big Tech, and the media are policing behaviors and pushing agendas. But so far, we seem powerless to stop it. *They* have the levers of power, and even if we have the numbers, it doesn’t do us any good until we push back — like people did against PayPal last week when it decided to police free speech.
The country’s culture is being taken over by a minority of well-placed activists whose brainwashing and propaganda are attacking our traditions and values. Their slow, methodical progress has turned into a gigantic push, and the “live-and-let-live” crowd (which is most of us) still hasn’t figured out what’s happening.
Good to hear from you.