The phrase “get woke, go broke” is one that many US corporations should take to heart. Many corporate executives are leftists at heart, and so they’ve been falling all over themselves to suck up to BLM, Antifa, and other leftist organizations. They see the news media coverage of protests around the country and think that the US is moving solidly leftward, and have positioned their corporations accordingly, pledging donations to a variety of leftist groups and even firing conservative workers.
But the reality is that US consumers are just as divided between liberals and conservatives as before, and conservative customers are getting fed up buying products from companies that denigrate conservatives and kowtow to leftists. Corporations that go too far to the left risk harming their bottom line.
One case in point is the recent example of Goodyear, which was in the news after the contents of an employee training session were publicized. During the session, employees were told that support of BLM or of LGBT causes was perfectly acceptable, but that support for MAGA, All Lives Matter, or Blue Lives Matter would be absolutely forbidden. They hypocrisy was so blatant that it went viral, even attracting the attention of President Trump, who called for a boycott of Goodyear.
It remains to be seen how badly this impacts Goodyear’s bottom line, but it wouldn’t be the first company to damage its profits by catering to the left. One need only look at stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Team Wendy, or US professional sports leagues, that have seen falling sales and viewership as a result of trying to embrace leftist causes.
On the other hand you have Goya Foods, whose CEO praised President Trump at the White House. The company immediately became a boycott target of leftists, who vowed to bring down the Hispanic-owned company. Thankfully, a counter-boycott, or “buycott” on the part of conservatives to buy Goya products seems to have nipped that in the bud. The company certainly got a lot of free publicity as a result, and we’ll see whether its business actually improved as a result of it.
All of this is just a reminder that our daily lives have become hyper-political. Offend the wrong people and you might find yourself on the wrong end of a boycott, for no real reason. But if you deliberately seek to antagonize your customer base by sucking up to the left, don’t be surprised to see a big hit to your revenues as a result of that self-inflicted wound.
Image: Zerohedge