Since approximately 2016, people right across the western world have come to learn that corporations have feelings too. At least, they have twitter accounts that voice their ‘company ethos’.
The extent to which brands support social movements for their own benefit as opposed to the principle they purport to care about is, of course, a huge mystery. What can be studied, however, is the reaction from the public, their fellow brands, and the social fall-out and hysteria that never fails to ensue.
The first major incident featuring a brand taking a stance was when coffee machine maker Keurig pulled ads from fox news citing presenter Sean Hannity’s far-right views. The internet backlash saw hundreds of Hannity fans destroying their coffee machines on film with the hashtag #boycottkeurig. The internet storm surrounding it generated a huge amount of publicity for the brand, most of it positive, as the backlash to the initial backlash was made up of people who supported Keurigs choice.
The 2016 #metoo movement similarly resulted in huge publicity for corporations that incorporated the social movement into their marketing. Brands like Dove and Gillette utilized this salient and serious issue of sexism in ads explicitly making statements about modern masculinity and misogyny. Just like with the coffee machines, twitter was awash with footage of people destroying products they had already paid for and tweeting the name of the brand they felt had betrayed them, to the great amusement of the majority of people who supported the brand’s message.
In 2018, Nike used American Football star Colin Kaepernick as their poster model following his decision to kneel for the national anthem in response to police brutality. The response? The same again: indignation met with opposition and ultimately a huge boost in publicity. It is unclear whether Nike, Gillette, or Dove went down this path because of the success of Keurig's stand against Fox News, or if their decisions were simply born of the same social environment and changing demands of their consumer-base.
What is most important to note here is the publicity-spike wouldn’t be able to occur without the first backlash. A coffee brand pulling an ad from a news network should not in itself generate much buzz. The media attention, hashtag, and online publicity came firstly as a result of the people reacting negatively, which then in turn sparked an influx of people supportive of the brands decision.
Which brings us to 2020, and the decision of PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea to support the Black Lives Matter movement. These two household names have been seen calling out members of the public on Twitter and telling them not to buy their tea if they don’t support the BLM movement. The hashtag #solidaritea is the result of this strange but ultimately positive phenomenon. It has also caused people who definitely aren't racist, but for some reason see support for black justice as some kind of betrayal, get extremely upset.
Alone and bereft (at least of tea), the British wing of the #AllLivesMatter brigade vents their fury at the twitter account of a subsidiary company of Unilever, who's goods they will definitely continue to buy.
Brands in 2020, having learned from the successes of previous 'woke' brands Nike, Dove, and Gillette, are banking on the right-wing backlash and subsequent counter-backlash as a means of getting publicity. It would seem the anti-SJW Twitter-lords still haven't cottoned on to the fact that they are helping the brands they suddenly hate by trying to bring them down.
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