America: Home of the free and the unregulated.
Where growth and empire are so integral to national values that brands and culture become inextricable. Where your hometown is recognizable by its burger restaurant chain, and Coca-Cola is as much of an American symbol as Uncle Sam.
The latest evolution of this late-stage capitalist culture is political expression through brands. With the internet’s endless access to information, production chains’ environmental and social impacts are under interrogation. Constantly taking the temperature to understand what drives sales, brands have felt the need to respond to ethical criticism in recent years.
However, if brands’ political stances are any measure to go by, it seems the cultural pendulum is swinging away from social consciousness.
Escaping woke-ism
In 2020, the Tennessee-based farm tool company, Tractor Supply Co., set a series of internal diversity and environmental goals, following the CEO’s values and large corporate trends.
These goals seek to ingrain equality and sustainability into the internal company operations. One goal states: “By 2026, increase people of color at the manager level and above by 50%”. Another says, “By 2040, achieve net zero emissions across all operations”.
However, when conservative activist Robbie Starbuck brought these goals to the public attention via X, significant backlash followed.
Starbucks feels these goals don’t fit the company’s rural American customer base. Disdain for “woke priorities” fueled online anger towards the company. Eventually, the heat got to the farm tool supplier, prompting a strong reversal statement: Tractor Supply Co. will eliminate all DEI roles, retract carbon emission goals, and no longer support pride events.
This is the story of a growing list of companies who have found themselves in the throes of America’s culture wars.
More and more companies dodge ‘woke’ accusations.
Polling reveals sustainability and ethical sourcing as highly prioritized by Gen Z consumers. This, combined with corporate ideas valuing investment in sustainable models, meant your favorite sneaker brand began campaigning on racial issues and the soda you drink started advocating against climate change (while simultaneously producing an excess of plastic waste, of course).
We focus on sustainability not because we’re environmentalists but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock
However, diversity and sustainability pledges that were beginning to be industry-standard have seen major backpedaling in recent months.
After Starbuck’s effective targeting of Tractor Supply Co., a rampage of DEI programs took place. HR Dive reports Harley Davidson, Jack Daniels, Ford, John Deere, and Lowes Hardware all scaling back DEI and other diversity programs. Starbuck takes credit for what he calls “exposing” many of these companies. He celebrates “bringing sanity back to corporate America”.
Nike, Bud Light, and Target
Nike formally made tall commitments to sustainability pledges. However, recently the brand has been criticized for dissolving its “Sustainable Innovation Team” and performing a series of layoffs on sustainability-focused staff. In 2024, Nike also failed to promote a Pride collection for the first time in several years.
Bud Light saw its own PR storm when transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a promotional video for the brand. A conservative-led boycott in reaction to the video meant a 10% decline in US revenue for the production company Anheuser-Busch InBev. The company responded by saying it would focus on promoting its beers through sports partnerships and military family and farmer nonprofits.
Target made headlines this May after announcing its annual Pride collection would be reduced and only available in select stores. The company told the Wall Street Journal that the 2023 collection was met with intense criticism. Some stores reportedly had displays knocked over by offended customers and received threats to employees.
Criticism of Target’s Pride collection is not new. For 10 years of annual Pride releases, Target took the punch from conservative Americans. However, this level of backlash is unprecedented. Why?
Is it me or is it hot in here?
Why now? Was right-wing resentment bubbling all along, bound to overflow onto CEOs and PR departments? Are corporations just now deciding politics are too tricky of an investment? Or is conservatism finding new strength in American culture?
In this conversation, we can not ignore the recent controversial Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action efforts from universities. This decision set a precedent, institutionalizing conservative ideas of fairness and certainly stirring the pot.
Further, the easiest way to heat up a conversation is to throw an election in the middle of it. With 2024 being an election year, the public is constantly reminded of our starkest differences. We’re encouraged to believe the other is the ugliest, most hateful, baby-eating, monster-like community. However, other forces have long strengthened the roots of anti-woke agendas.
Elon Musk is anti-woke
The fiercest of the woke wars takes place on the platform-turned-web-forum, X.
The social network site, formally known as Twitter, has seen major changes since transferring ownership to Elon Musk. Beyond the firing of executive positions in the company, the structure of the site and the conditions it operates within make it a dramatically different platform– one where right-wing rhetoric thrives.
Musk purchased Twitter after publicly criticizing the company’s regulatory policies and safety decisions, such as permanently banning former President Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6 riot.
He calls himself a “free speech absolutist” and promises X to provide a “digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated”. He’s positioned himself on the front lines of America’s heated debate over language and how it should be wielded.
Musk headed a series of actions to reduce content moderation, or in his words “destroy the woke virus”. The company dissolved the Trust and Safety Council and eliminated labels notifying account ownership by foreign governments. New company standards mean content containing hate speech, and disinformation is reportedly more prominent across the platform.
His determination towards unregulated speech led to the country-wide shutdown of the platform in Brazil. A Brazilian judge threatened the arrest of the country’s X representative if accounts determined as spreading disinformation were not deactivated. Musk said of the dispute: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy, and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”
Elon Musk has spearheaded an anti-woke agenda. On top of his public criticism of “wokeness”, he shifted a major public discussion site around anti-woke principles, or what he argues is freedom of speech.
Anti-woke and anti-ESG
The suits are having it out in Congress over something called ‘ESG measures’. What has come to be framed by Republican lawmakers as “woke investing”, ESGs are under cultural and legislative attack.
To be more precise, ESG is a rating system that assigns businesses a set score based on environmental, social, and governance measures. Factors that may affect this score include ecological footprint, tax transparency, labour standards, etc. The score allows investors to consider the company’s sustainability and ethical hang-ups in decision-making.
Former Vice President Mike Pence wrote for the Wall Street Journal on the topic. He credits ESGs as an attempt at “woke capitalism” and criticizes them for “empower[ing] an unelected cabal of bureaucrats… to rate companies based on their adherence to left-wing values.” In March, Biden used his first Veto to oppose a bill restricting ESG measures on retirement funds.
Although the anti-ESG agenda has yet to find success on a national legislative level, the discussion alone seems to discourage focused efforts from businesses.
The Economist reported mentions of ESG on performance calls to have fallen in the second quarter of 2023 by 39% compared to the first quarter of 2022. For profit-concerned companies, the politicization of ESGs by Republicans like Mike Pence may cause businesses to walk in fear of being labeled “woke”.
Woke wars
The word “woke” derives from African American Vernacular English. Linguist Tony Thorne told The Independent the term was used through the mid-1900s to “literally mean become woken up or sensitized to issues of injustice”.
Black Americans continued to use the term in pop culture and the Black Lives Matter movement. To be woke meant to hold power through knowledge. However, the word once used to express and advocate for awareness of Black oppression has been co-opted by right-wing leaders. Today, “wokeness” signals to conservative America a great leftist disease. It proves effective at rallying right-wingers around a perceived cultural threat.
A scroll through X or Robbie Starbuck’s comments will assure you the woke wars are alive and raging. For now, the battle over brand advocacy goes to the anti-woke.
