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Go woke, go broke

Dr. Keith

Not a doctor.
Dr. Keith
Joined
Jun 29, 2009
Messages
26,034
Location
Texas
This idea that going woke leads to companies going broke was brought up in another thread. It seems slightly off topic there and I think it deserves some discussion.

My thought is that every major decision by a company will help to define how customers view that company, everything comes back to branding.

As such I haven’t seen any solid examples that would prove that going woke even correlates to going broke, much less that it is a conclusive result of going woke.

So, main topics: what is going woke? What is going broke? And what are some examples of companies that went woke and are now broke?

Side topic: what companies appear to be going woke now, so that we can track their brokenness later.

Such as Carhartt requiring vaccinations. Is that going woke? Will they go broke?
 
You often come across reactionary freaks shrieking about the "woke" part. I'm not aware of the "go broke" part being delivered on.

At best these right wing freaks have a tantrum that makes news, and maybe the stock price bobbles in the short term to thunderous applause, then business continues on as usual.

Gillette and Nike still seem to be chugging along fine despite their transgressions.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
You often come across reactionary freaks shrieking about the "woke" part. I'm not aware of the "go broke" part being delivered on.

At best these right wing freaks have a tantrum that makes news, and maybe the stock price bobbles in the short term to thunderous applause, then business continues on as usual.

Gillette and Nike still seem to be chugging along fine despite their transgressions.
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Ooh, thanks. Your mention of Gillette triggered another concern: are they going broke because they went woke?

Often there are other confounding factors, like facing a huge influx of new competitors to your core products. Sometimes it is hard to say why a company is faltering, but most often the market has a pretty good narrative as to why a stock is no longer performing. For publicly traded stock the public perception is pretty easy to track.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Ooh, thanks. Your mention of Gillette triggered another concern: are they going broke because they went woke?

Often there are other confounding factors, like facing a huge influx of new competitors to your core products. Sometimes it is hard to say why a company is faltering, but most often the market has a pretty good narrative as to why a stock is no longer performing. For publicly traded stock the public perception is pretty easy to track.
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I think quite the opposite is often true. Marketing types realize that agitation the hornet's nest of reactionary dip-***** is a great way to get tons of free coverage for your brand.

I would be surprised if Gillette's ad wasn't intended to piss off the most reactionary people in this country on purpose.
 
You need to define "woke" first. It seems to be making statements or taking positions on social issues someone disagrees with.

As for "corporate wokeness"...meh. It's just another way for them to pander to certain crowds and launder their own reputations (and get a nice tax write-off). Putting rainbow flags or writing BLM on your merchandise is the same as stamping an American flag on it or painting it pink.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I think quite the opposite is often true. Marketing types realize that agitation the hornet's nest of reactionary dip-***** is a great way to get tons of free coverage for your brand.

I would be surprised if Gillette's ad wasn't intended to piss off the most reactionary people in this country on purpose.
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They ran to buy a bunch of razors so they could make YouTube videos of themselves burning it all.

PS: Real men don't use disposables anyway. Safety razors and straight edges are better for the environment and more cost-effective.
 
They need to do the right thing, woke or not woke. Carhartt needs to require vaccinations for public safety. The hillbillies need to get over themselves. **** 'em if they can't take a woke.
 
It isn't an honest economic hypothesis though, so maybe it does belong in social issues. It's just the same old group trying to comfort themselves by asserting they're still the prime wielders of socioeconomic force, regardless of reality. It's the 'silent majority' pretending they're still either all over again.
 
I've seen multiple YouTube videos claiming that Disney is suffering because all of their recent Disney+ "M-She-U" series have been miserable failures. (Meaning they featured female characters more prominently than these people liked, such as "Hawkeye".)
 
Armitage72 said:
I've seen multiple YouTube videos claiming that Disney is suffering because all of their recent Disney+ "M-She-U" series have been miserable failures. (Meaning they featured female characters more prominently than these people liked, such as "Hawkeye".)
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I find it easier to believe that Disney is on the verge of bankruptcy than anyone likes Hawkeye.
 
Thermal said:
They need to do the right thing, woke or not woke. Carhartt needs to require vaccinations for public safety. The hillbillies need to get over themselves. **** 'em if they can't take a woke.
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The funny thing was that they seemed motivated just as much by the capitalist goal of protecting the investment they have made in their workforce. Sick people don’t clock in and do run up hospital bills.

I tried that sales pitch at work, but I work in Texas. We happily throw away money to piss off the libs.
 
tyr_13 said:
It isn't an honest economic hypothesis though, so maybe it does belong in social issues. It's just the same old group trying to comfort themselves by asserting they're still the prime wielders of socioeconomic force, regardless of reality. It's the 'silent majority' pretending they're still either all over again.
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I would like to think our fellow members aren’t lying, but you may be right.

I figured a clear space to post a few examples and discuss them would help get to the bottom of this.
 
Dr. Keith said:
So, main topics: what is going woke? What is going broke?

And what are some examples of companies that went woke and are now broke?
Click to expand...

When brands go woke, do they go broke?
The phrase ‘Get woke, go broke’ originated after a paper by John Ringo was published online in 2018 that refers to the rise of organisations using politically correct actions as part of their strategy, only for that to result in a massive loss of income because they have abandoned mass reach. It soon gained some cut through and has been regularly used in online analysis of businesses as diverse as Gillette and Disney...

Failures do exist

Gillette are undoubtedly the most famous example this side of the shore, facing genuine backlash when they switched from ‘the best a man can get’ to ‘the best men can be’ and all that entailed...

But it’s not the whole story

It would be tempted to say that going woke, if it didn’t make them broke, certainly lost Nike and Gillette some money along the way, but it’s never really that simple. Both companies are battling a market that has changed considerably... Indeed, Harry’s have arguably done a much better job at looking at toxic masculinity than their big-time rival, creating a long form video in 2018 that fought gender stereotypes and genuinely sparked conversation around what it means to be masculine in the modern world.

Far from looking like an ill-judged apology for the mass reach of the traditional male, it opened up the purpose of the start-up to being part of the conversation about what it means to be man.
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So Gillette didn't 'go broke' (lose a bunch of money) due to 'going woke', they lost out to a competitor because they didn't go woke enough!

Side topic: what companies appear to be going woke now, so that we can track their brokenness later.
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Everywhere a business tried going woke it has failed, or will fail sometime in the future. This is an obvious, incontrovertible, irrefutable and unfalsifiable fact. ;)

Dr. Keith said:
I tried that sales pitch at work, but I work in Texas. We happily throw away money to piss off the libs.
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But not just to piss off the libs. Every business knows that pissing off libs will bring in more business from people who appreciate your efforts. But it's more than that, because the libs' goal is to eliminate the excesses of unbridled capitalism our freedoms and turn the country into a communist hellhole. So pissing off libs is good for business in every sense.
 
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I can't think of any good examples of "woke-broke," and I suspect it's wishful thinking on the part of many. Companies always have to gamble a little on whose good will they'll profit most by, and try to guess what trends and new regulations are around the corner.

The example of Dick's Sporting Goods came up in the predecessor to this thread, and there's perhaps an example. I don't know how much of that chain's revenue depends on guns, but I bet someone did the arithmetic to figure out how much they'd lose if, for example, a local school district decided not to buy their sports uniforms from them again, or a victim of a shooting sued the seller of the gun, and so forth.

I think it's a fairly small percentage of people who even think very much in terms of "woke" and not woke, but I doubt they have either the strength or the intelligence to break a big business that's being run intelligently, or even just not stupidly. Big businesses that go broke seem to be able to do this out of pure and apolitical mismanagement and bad luck. Which I suppose is why we don't get our tools at Sears any more, or our socks at K Mart, or computers at Circuit City, or groceries at the A&P, books from Borders, and on and on.

Of course not all those failures are due to as conspicuously egregiously bad management as some like Sears and Borders, and of course a lot is anecdotal and geographically specific. But I know that here, at least, it's a lot easier to find a pint of Ben & Jerry's than it is to find a surviving Hobby Lobby.
 
Dr. Keith said:
This idea that going woke leads to companies going broke was brought up in another thread. It seems slightly off topic there and I think it deserves some discussion.

My thought is that every major decision by a company will help to define how customers view that company, everything comes back to branding.

As such I haven’t seen any solid examples that would prove that going woke even correlates to going broke, much less that it is a conclusive result of going woke.

So, main topics: what is going woke? What is going broke? And what are some examples of companies that went woke and are now broke?

Side topic: what companies appear to be going woke now, so that we can track their brokenness later.

Such as Carhartt requiring vaccinations. Is that going woke? Will they go broke?
Click to expand...
If requiring vaccines is one's measure, Fox News should go broke in 3... 2... 1.
 
I googled the phrase, and the articles that came up didn't give examples. I saw several references to surveys that said they wished the stores would stay out of politics, and criticizing whatever "woke" action had come to prominence, but there weren't any examples of companies that lost money or changed their woke ways following consumer boycotts.


I think the various woke actions are unpopuilar, but people still like cheap stuff.

I think perhaps it's difficult to convince people who believe in free markets that they ought to base their buying decisions on political statements.
 
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