Nike. Gillette. Hobby Lobby. Chick-Fil-A. Starbucks. Target. Walmart. These are brands that you probably see around town almost any day, and in the past decade you’ve seen more and more in the news. America’s most popular consumer brands are constantly preparing for controversy, and in the past your average public relations professional would work to avoid, minimize, and move on from divisive headlines about their company. That is the old world. A new report from Global Strategy Group, a public affairs and consumer research shop, found that the future of business is embracing political activism, not running from it. So if you’re feeling worn down by the political noise that dominates your social media experience, movies and TV, and even your day at the shopping mall — brace yourself, because it’s only going to get louder.
Stay off the sidelines. Engagement is too profitable while inaction poses too high a risk. This is the takeaway from Global Strategy Group’s 2019 report. GSG has been doing this report for six years, and when it started the advice was quite the opposite. Pragmatism and broad appeal are now in decline, in favor of building more motivated and loyal customer bases. The Right and Left both play this game, championing it when a stand is taken in their favor and denouncing it when it does not.
There are positive and negatives aspects of this report’s findings. Participants in the research were asked which public institutions were responsible for driving social change. Washington has taken a nosedive. In 2016, Congress sat at 92 percent, the president at 89 percent, and everyday people at 78 percent. That’s pretty striking. An overwhelming majority looked to Washington in 2016 at the end of the Obama administration as being responsible for social change, whatever that change may be. Well, Congress is now down 7 percent along with the president, but responses in favor of everyday people are up 6 points. People believe less in Washington and more in themselves and their communities. This is an obvious good. A culture where people look in the mirror and to their communities for pushing social change is more healthy than expecting Washington to manage it all, top down.
The negative is also pretty obvious. Our society has little common ground left. The political culture is frayed and popular culture is its own minefield of audience segmentation and narrow-mindedness. What do we share as a people? It’s no longer God, a common religion, or shared understanding of America’s civic virtues. The idea of the marketplace has always been relatively unpolitical: people buying, selling, and shopping for what they need surrounded by anyone with the same thing on their weekend to-do list. But the GSG report shows that isn’t the world we’re building, and the financial incentive is to segment your customer base along political lines.
Think about some of the biggest political controversies in recent memory. Most ended up juicing sales and shoring up new markets for the affected company.
Nike’s choice to embrace Colin Kaepernick roiled conservatives, sparking a massive backlash, and, frankly, over-dramatic displays of protest online. The result? A 31 percent increase in Nike sales the week of the controversy and a steady 10 percent gain for the quarter. Chick-Fil-A is a more striking example with a longer pattern of growth alongside controversy. The political Left has had knives out for the Christian owned and operated chicken restaurant for years, but it reached new heights during the Obama era when it was “discovered” that the company was donating money to groups pushing back against same-sex marriage. The leftist boycotts multiplied, but so did the highly motivated patronage of the political Right. In the end, Chick-Fil-A exploded in growth and now sits at the top of the fast food chain with McDonald’s and Starbucks.
GSG is not wrong that consumers come to the table with already partisan-colored glasses. They do, but this is learned behavior being cynically reinforced. The veneer of impartiality has faded for news and media organizations, and it may have been inevitable that companies like CVS, Microsoft, or Lyft would face the same thing. However, it’s concerning that the corporate world may move further in the direction of segmenting customers along red and blue lines. There will be profit. The myth that such a move would hurt a brand has been all but busted, but is that a world you want to live in? One where your every dollar spent is tracked and factored into a perception of your politics? What about the majority of Americans who don’t play for team red or blue?
This study is both a predictor and a nudge to action for America’s companies, and I wonder what will be left after every common space becomes a political battleground.
Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is the spokesperson for Young Voices and host of Beltway Banthas, a Star Wars & politics podcast in D.C.
