Marginalized majority are canceling woke corporations

FPI / May 29, 2023

One day, Monday May 29, is Memorial Day. One month, beginning Thursday June 1, is "LGTBQ+ Pride Month."

Such are the nation's priorities in 2023.

Meanwhile, the marginalized American majority are canceling woke corporations one credit card transaction at a time.

One store in New York was selling a 24-pack of Bud Light for $3.49, or about 15 cents per can, according to the New York Post.

Some stores are giving the beer away for free.

In Wisconsin, some stores were giving customers $15 back if they purchased a 15-pack or larger between May 17 and May 31, Breitbart News reported.

Since the boycott of Bud Light began after it's marketing people decided to celebrate Dylan Mulvaney’s one-year anniversary of posing as a woman by featuring the transgender TikTok influencer, Bud Light sales have tanked and Anheuser-Busch has lost nearly $19 billion, with shares down 14 percent.

Target has lost $10 billion in market valuation over the last 10 days as the retailer continues to face a boycott over its Pride-themed clothing line for children.

A week ago Wednesday, Target's stock value was at $160.96 a share, but following the calls to boycott the Minneapolis-based retailer over its “PRIDE” collection, the value plummeted and closed Friday at $138.93 a share. The more than 22% drop in value roughly translates to a $10.1 billion loss in valuation.

As Pride Month kicks off in June, consumers are putting the fear of the Lord into marketing executives.

"Until a few months ago, we accepted it without a fight. But then Bud Light happened. It was an inflection point. The moment enough normal everyday Americans decided to stop playing along. As June and the corporate celebration of 'Pride Month' begins, the battle heats up," said Isaac Simpson of the based marketing company WILL.

"We’re seeing wins. Target removed woke items. Heckler and Koch disavowed identity politics. Bud Light continues its plummet. But none of these corporations admit the truth: they’re infected by a poisonous ideology devouring them and the country from whence they came," Simpson added.

Kay Yang, a long-time LGBTQ activist, began speaking out now about her concern after watching hundreds of corporations launch marketing campaigns that celebrate transgenderism, despite customer outrage.

That outrage must continue, Yang said, because, even though some companies are losing money now, they believe it will be worth it over the long term because transgenderism is a lucrative subject.

“That money, to them, is nothing,” Yang told The Epoch Times. Those companies are “being promised that, 'OK, you might lose a little bit now. But you’ll make it in the new economy. And you’ll still be here. And all the businesses that don’t go along with this — we’ll make sure that they’re excluded.' ”

Yang said she left LGBTQ activism behind when she realized the movement was leading children to accept certain sexual ideas and normalize the ideas of sexual acts. It was grooming them, she said.

The work of transgender activists is a profound threat to humanity because it threatens the integrity of the human body, Yang said. Once a soldier in that army, she’s now committed to fighting it, saying “this is very, very dangerous.”

Companies should prepare to face more backlash from consumers, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing recent research.

Forty-three percent of surveyed Americans said they raised their voice to a customer service representative to show displeasure about their most serious problems with a business in 2022, up from 35% in 2017, according to this year’s National Customer Rage Survey, a long-running assessment of customer attitudes.

Some 17% of those surveyed said they personally behaved in an uncivil manner with a business or organization, the survey found. Consumers’ characterizations of certain behavior also varied, with 12% of overall respondents describing physical and verbal threats as civil behavior.

Brands including Disney, Apple, Target, and Adidas released lines of Pride-themed clothing and other products this month. Disney also announced the first “Pride Nite” events, set to take place next month at California’s Disneyland as part of its “Disneyland After Dark” program.

But some marketers have grown more cautious in recent weeks than they were in past years, cutting their Pride campaign budgets and confining related messages to “gay or gay-friendly media channels” to avoid being caught up in the culture-war backlash, said Jonathan Mildenhall, co-founder and chair of consulting firm TwentyFirstCenturyBrand and the former CMO of short-term rental company Airbnb.

“I work with many top brands who have historically supported the LGBTQ community during Pride. Unfortunately I have seen a swift, cautious pull-back from both levels of investment and the mainstreaming of that investment,” Mildenhall said.

Rose Montoya, a transgender content creator, said fewer brands are reaching out for Pride partnerships this year.

“All of this will hopefully blow over,” Montoya said. “The queer community has huge spending power. Brands can’t afford to not work with us forever.”

WILL's Simpson noted that marketing "presents an important front in the culture war both because it has immense power to indoctrinate, but also because the industry itself is so rotten and bloated. It’s an unguarded flank where we can win, as we saw with Bud Light."

Woke companies, Simpson added, "deflect, they distract, and of course they blame their own customers for daring to be religious, moral, traditional. Refusing to buy their products is the beginning, but it’s not enough. We must also re-build our beautiful American brands, and create new ones unpolluted by toxic ideology. We must fill our public spaces, airwaves, and homes with beauty and aspiration — the values that built Apple, Nike, Budweiser, and yes, Twitter. We call this 'Based Marketing.' ”

Free Press International
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