You know the old adage by now: ‘Go woke, go broke.’ It appears more and more consumers are noticing that brands are pursuing a social justice agenda in the hope of selling products. Up until now, this has been a relatively successful strategy, appealing to the consumerist millennials whose appetite for distraction and cheap credit can drive sales of the next thing to put on Instagram. Companies can tap into the insatiable desire of their customers for the next endorphin hit and neatly package it up with whatever the latest ‘collective good’ buzzword is on social media. Everyone’s happy – the company makes money, and the customer sleeps well at night as a result of playing their part in the latest virtue-signalling fad.
This is all well and good for short-term gain, but what happens when people start to see this for what it really is? Well, evidence suggests the tide is turning. Big brands are losing customers, sales and share price value.
As an industry, marketing and advertising have always generally been viewed as capitalism’s outlier thanks to their attracting more creative, ‘anti-establishment’ personalities. However, this has often worked to a company’s advantage by providing excellent cover; in seeking to sell their products by siding with the ‘little guy’ or participating in a ‘just cause’, they’re able to enjoy the benefits of capitalism while hiding behind a virtue-signalling shield.
One of the first examples of advertising that employed the power of protest can be found in a famous 1971 Coca-Cola commercial. It featured a mixed group of people singing “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” in unison to suggest that the sugary drink is something that brings people together and represents a wholesome, communal experience. The advert was hugely successful for Coke – this set the direction of travel across the advertising industry. All brands wanted a ‘peace’ of the action.
Fast forward 40-something years and we see this strategy repeated over and over again, but with increasingly sinister undertones. In 2017 we saw Kendall Jenner and Pepsi produce the ‘Join the Movement’ campaign that used images associated with the Women’s March and BLM protests – and this time consumers weren’t so impressed. The resulting backlash forced the adverts to be withdrawn.
Then we have Colin Kaepernick – fresh from kneeling for the national anthem. He fronted a Nike campaign which involved the training-shoe manufacturer urging us to: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Again, some consumers were put off and burned their Nike products in videos on YouTube.
Then came the infamous Gillette ad which told men they were toxic. In less than two minutes they managed to alienate huge swathes of their customers.
Recently, one of Britain’s best known investors, Terry Smith, attacked Unilever for its “ludicrous” focus on “agendas”, in a sign of growing frustration at big corporate companies championing fashionable causes. (One of Unilever’s brands is the ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, possible the worst offender when it comes to corporate virtue-signalling.) In his recent letter, Mr. Smith said: “A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has, in our view, clearly lost the plot.”
This is all about selling products by associating your brand with progressive causes. It is called purpose-driven advertising and it is becoming a preoccupation with marketing departments everywhere. They are obsessed with public virtue-signalling at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals.
Many people who work in marketing have been to university, and pretty much all of them did one of the humanities subjects. Unfortunately, the humanities are full of Marxist professors. The domination of universities by the Left, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, is well documented. These professors have been left unchecked to advocate identity politics and even go so far as to mark down students who don’t sign up to their divisive view of the world. This has been going on for years, and while most of us laughed when someone went to university to do ‘media studies’ (or something equally peculiar) it appears the joke was on us. All of these graduates went on to secure roles in ad agencies, publishing houses, marketing departments and numerous other institutions.
Marketing is there to drive awareness, understanding and sales of products. It does this best when it can get into the mind of the customer – really understand them – and then articulate the right message, at the right time, in the right context.
When designing the creative execution, the customer must be able to see themselves (usually tapping in to their aspirations). They need to feel an affinity with the product, and this includes the people advertising it. Why then has the advertising industry decided that all ads must be full of minorities rather than the majority of the population? Adverts are currently over-representing black, gay and transgender people. Why? Nearly 8% of people in the UK identify as Asian, so why are Asians so strikingly underrepresented in ads? Then we have the fact that white people make up over 86% of the population, and yet make up a far lower percentage of the characters in ads.
The more advertisers try to push the ‘equity, diversity and inclusion’ agenda, the less affinity consumers will feel for the product. We should be encouraging marketing folk to continuously challenge themselves, to strive to get the best results for their businesses, and continually adapt to the evidence of what works. I don’t think they should dogmatically insist that what does not make a profit is without value, but with new challenges on the horizon for the industry it is more important than ever to do what actually works.
It’s time to drop the woke nonsense and go back to what we do best. Not only for the sake of our reputation in the boardroom and for the millions of individual consumers being alienated by brands they used to trust, but for the sake of ordinary people who are being force-fed a divisive political ideology.
Lee Taylor is Managing Director of marketing agency Uncommon Sense.
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Why isn’t she doing her bit by moving to Africa where she will consume much less electricity than she does wherever she currently lives. She could stop travelling, cut herself off from the internet, give up hi-tech healthcare, share a shack with Greta, eat insects.
Because she’s on the right side of history and has rightfully earned the luxurious live she’s been living by always attaching herself to the proper cause. It’s the others who are the evil people. Especially if they’re white, comparatively poor and might even have voted for Trump.
I do wonder if people like her really believe this stuff. It seems more like mental illness than anything else.
Agreed. Her and Garbage Pail Kid Greta are cut from the same cloth. The Left gives these out and out nutters a platform though. They should not be allowed anywhere near a microphone or camera because they’re toxic and what they spread is disinformation and hate speech. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re fully onboard with the whole gender ideology and preying on kids aspect of the Woke cult either. Proper radicalized acolytes and a menace to society.
BTW, I presume Fonda isn’t married because her attitude just screams ”single lady for life” to me. No sane man would go near her with a barge pole!
I wouldn’t and I haven’t even got a barge pole!
Her and Garbage Pail Kid Greta are cut from the same cloth.
Generationally, they’re mother and daughter, ie, the parents of the Gretna were people like Fonda, just less famous.
I do think they believe it. I just think they are not very bright but are capable of strong emotions and think that their sense of empathy for some person or group they consider downtrodden is all the justification they need to speak up.
They’re very thick and lacking in self awareness.
Actors and actresses don’t get famous because of their intellect.
Much like musicians. Bono and Geldof – two leprechauns from the same garden.
Say something outrageous and get yourself noticed. There’s no has-been like an old has-been.
A study carried out many years ago came to the conclusion that they (actors and actresses) stop maturing at the age at which they become famous. I do think that this would explain the puerility of so many of them. Look no further than the Harry Potter lot; permanent 11/12 year olds but with lots of money.
… and leave us all alone.
Bothering other people has never appealed to me- I’ve got enough problems of my own to last me several lifetimes. To some, bothering other people seems like a mission in life and they grab any platform that allows them to do so
I haven’t seen any headlines announcing that Jane Fonda has arrived in Cannes after a year long walk.
I’m sure she should be on the Death List by now.
https://deathlist.net/
I read she has had some advanced medical treatments, developed probably by evil white men and powered by evil white man electricity. It’s hard to know whether to despise her or feel sorry for her.
And what tedious, virtue-signalling zealots like Fonda forget is that the vast majority of violent crimes in the U.S are perpetrated by black males. Not racist, just a fact. But I guess as long as they’re shooting and robbing folk, as opposed to destroying the planet with noxious greenhouse gases, it’s ok and fits in with her tunnel visioned narrative. Such divisive claptrap should never be allowed to go unchallenged.
Indeed
That kind of crime isn’t much of an issue for people as rich and powerful as she is
Something is keeping these buggers alive tof. Kissinger, Soros, Schwab and the rest of them.
If only!
Ok, boomer.
Any chance can commission a study to find out if repeated Botox injections freeze the brain as well as the face
?
….says the rich entitled white woman living in the lap of luxury…those Americans don’t only not do irony, hypocrisy also seems lost on them?!
Said the woman who owed her fame to having a famous father.
And getting her tits out in Barbarella.
And allegedly opening her legs on request
Is this the woman who made a fortune from exercise videos – you know, that beacon of white privilege and oppressive white supremacy? Who’s current net worth is around $200 mill and who has homes in California and New Mexico? That Jane Fonda? Riiiiight….
“It blows my mind how many millions of people have embraced fitness as an overall lifestyle choice,” she wrote. “If only we can come up with more ways to involve the millions of others who have yet to discover the benefits and, yes, the joys of working out or even going for a regular fast walk, or climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator, or biking instead of driving.”
I have no problem with anyone who wants to spout non-proven ideological dogma if they walk the talk – the problem is, none of them do. That goes for JSO, CEF and all the other well-funded activists too.
well the likes of Al Gore, John Kerry, etc are white and are guilty of causing/inventing/promoting an imaginary, but very lucrative, ‘climate crisis’. But there are plenty of women and non whites who are equally guilty of this fraud. Destroying their pseudo science with actual science, stripping them of their ill gotten assets and stop them influencing the gullible simpletons like jane fonda could also accompany some jail time.
She’s almost completely right, really.
Without white men, the world would not be in the highly developed state it is in. There might not have been an industrial revolution and we’d probably be living in a far less developed agrarian culture.
The bit she’s got wrong is the bit about there being a climate crisis.
Excellently put.
Jane Fonda is a vacuum ceaselessly searching to be filled… and failing.
She hasn’t been the same since Barbarella when she was put in that machine and suffered great indignities at the hands of Milo O’Shae.
Just another has-been desperately trying to remain relevant and grappling for any crumb of exposure or limelight she can get. Very undignified for a lady in her time of life if you ask me.
The machine was broken by the slapper!
What a galloping looney!
Hanoi Jane claims that “the planet only has 10 years” – statistically, at the age of 85, she doesn’t even have that
Silly bitch…
Hanoi Jane is still a dumb bimbo. As a British ex soldier I know many Americans who would piss on her grave and then hold a dance. I dare say some would help her in if they could get away with it.
I’ve heard they wouldn’t P155 on her if she was on fire
What would have become of her had they jailed Henry?
“This is serious. We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half”
let’s start with you, it would only take seven or eight minutes to cut you in half!
Jane Fonda’s a nutter – a spoiled, second generation Hollywood brat. She notoriously feuded with her father over the fact that his good friends John Wayne and James Stewart, were Republicans. She said he should ostracise them. Henry stayed loyal to his friends. Jane sat with commie soldiers in Vietnam, while young Americans died in their thousands, having been asked by the South Vietnamese to help protect them from the communist North. She advocated for the murder of people who disapprove of abortion on The View a few weeks ago.
Jane Fonda is one of the creators of the modern Hollywood: acting isn’t enough. Even quietly advocating for a cause, as many actors did in the past in a group, isn’t acceptable. You have to be a loud activist, causing riots and getting arrested. Not being loud and angry enough means you’ll be accused of having sympathies with ‘the enemy’, which is why the Hollywood mob all tried to outdo each other attacking Donald Trump, even though few of them could specifically explain why he was so ‘evil!’ You have to advocate the eradication of any view with which you disagree, because it causes you distress just knowing people think differently from yourself. So no sneakily being friendly with Republicans or Libertarians. If they’re drinking in the same bar as you, you have to leave and tell the press you were driven out.
Jane Fonda’s influence can be seen in the behaviour of every gobby Hollywood activist, from A-lister to Z-lister. She’s the fountainhead from which every Meghan Markle and JoJo Siwa springs.
And as for the ‘iconic’ Barbarella, anyone with a little film knowledge knows that the other Italian comicbook adaptation made by Dino De Laurentiis’s company that year – Danger: Diabolik – is a vastly better film!!
And as for the world being about to die in the next decade, we’ve been told that for the better part of a century, just as people have been told a ‘Rapture’ of some description is coming for the better part of the last 3,000 years.
Western Civilisation is self destructing
Her father…a white man
Her brother…a white man
Her husband (ex)…a powerful white man.
Her success…from acting in films etc probably made by white men.
Her presence at Cannes…by plane.
Her claims…seven/eight years to cut fossil fuel use in half plunging much of the Western, developed world into chaos, poverty, food shortages, apart from her part of that world.
Tell you what, Jane, next time you get an invite to Cannes, tell them you can’t come because you’re too busy saving the planet.
As she so elegantly put it “Where would they put the sh*t”
Sadly the headlong race to net zero that she and other very rich people are advocating dumps all of their very privileged “shit” on the poorest around the world, regardless of colour. It will continue to do so for generations and will impact severely on health outcomes worldwide.
The rich meanwhile fly across the world by private jet whenever the stress gets too hard to bear – or they just fancy hanging out with other Uber rich eco zealots in some paradise oasis of luxury.
Rich idiots are the ones that should be jailed – and the sooner the better.
Jailing is too good for them
History has proven that she has a problem keeping orifices closed.
Why do we give any credence to people who literally lie for a living?
According to USA stats, whites in the USA are in the middle level for average income based upon race, compared to other racial groups i.e. some racial groups make more on average than whites and some make less, on average.
MS Fonda………What is it that white people have caused? More storms? More floods? More droughts? What? ——-I have news for you, none of those things have occurred. There is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event so white people haven’t caused anything have they?