And yet, Nike's sales surged when they brought on Kaepernick<p>> Despite Fox News and parts of the social mediasphere predicting the Swoosh’s downfall, the company claimed $163 million in earned media, a $6 billion brand value increase, and a 31% boost in sales.<p><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90399316/one-year-later-what-did-we-learn-from-nikes-blockbuster-colin-kaepernick-ad" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastcompany.com/90399316/one-year-later-what-did...</a>
There's a meme, where someone goes on a rant in the wrong location and someone responds "Sir, this is a Wendy's".<p>Maybe we need one for "Sir, this company sells shoes". It isn't clear to me why a person trying to sell shoes needs to take a stand about one politician or another. Except for the fact that there is only one thing partisans hate more than their enemies - the people who aren't part of the partisan fray.
Businesses are supposed to be separate entities from the individuals who own them. I don't understand why people think businesses need to be political. If that's the case then just start your own Political Action Committee.
If I were running a business ethically, I'd want to mute my criticism of politics, including fairly extreme ones. Partisanship is tearing the world apart. I want people with different viewpoints to interact. That's the only way to address them. If we don't work together and we don't shop together, we'll grow more polarized as a result. Democracy isn't a battle, and you win by convincing people, and not by beating them down or punishing them. That means interacting with them.<p>A business isn't a good venue for partisan change. It is an okay place for some types of politics (e.g. environmental sourcing), but not for explicitly partisan ones.<p>Ironically, if I were running a business efficiently, I'd probably want to pick one side and stick to it. If I sell to everyone, and I have competitors who focus on the blue tribe and ones who focus on the red tribe, they'll have a competitive advantage over me with any given consumer, and I'll be left with the very few people who aren't on either side.
Here I thought the progressive ideology would be to not buy Nike's because they are overpriced garbage that has a history of questionable manufacturing processes. Professional sports in many ways are like the cornerstone of capitalism.
If someone is openly taking your money for the stuff they make and giving it to people who are pretty open about wanting to make your life worse, then they shouldn't be surprised if you quit buying their stuff. Actions have consequences, and being filthy rich shields you from some of them, but not all of them.<p>And sometimes choosing to not take a side is, in fact, an action with distinct consequences.
> Years later, for many, Jordan’s brand is intrinsically tied to this choice.<p>I really dislike this kind of journalism. How many is "many"? Is it just the author and their circle? Is it just people who insist that everything is political? I think this is a lazy assertion, which is a shame because I enjoyed the content that followed it. Surely there's a better introduction available.
The positive framing of this phenomenon is strange. Someone muting his criticism against an open segregationist because his voters buy sneakers is probably one of the more cartoonish examples of market logic and self-interest crowding out people's values.<p>And I mean this even in a value neutral sense in regards to the topic itself. It's as if a devout Christian would start selling abortion pills or a pacifist became an arms dealer.<p>When the article uses the phrase 'tribalism' it seems to me they just mean 'political'. People have started to prioritize values over economic calculus again after the monoculture of the 90s, which this kind of a thing was a product of.
> Our desire to be in tribes feels natural.<p>People need to realize the consequences of this because it is the go-to tool for manipulating people. Creating division is creating tribes that people can belong to (and, by extension, another tribe they can blame for their problems). Racism, sexism, immigrants, homophobia and transphobia are obvious examples.<p>But there's a way more pervasive version of this: the myth of the middle class. The middle class is propaganda to create division between the completely made up middle class and the completely made up lower class.<p>> Workplace preferences see co-partisan workers paid more and promoted faster, despite at times being less qualified.<p>In tech we call this "culture fit" and it's pervasive and real.<p>> Republicans are more entrepreneurial. Conservatives start more firms than liberals ...<p>Is this adjusted for socioeconomic conditions?
> A series of surveys suggests that people who identify as conservative are more likely to want to do this by buying products marketed as “better,” while liberals are more drawn to messaging that emphasizes that the product is “different.””<p>this is interesting. I would be more drawn to messaging on "different", but mostly because I wouldn't trust a company to be an impartial judge on what is "better" - I would look to reviews rather than marketing for that. I guess it also represents a difference in notions of black and white thinking as well. I'd be curious to hear which one appeals more to people and why.
Another good memo - less controversial :) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32513917" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32513917</a>
The woke-PR institutions that are meant to be criticized by this already account for it. Companies that sell direct-to-consumer are not trying to outwoke each other, they're resting in the same moderate, optimistic, positive, there are well-intentioned people on both sides place they always were.<p>Where you see the aggressive enforcement of woke sentiment is within industries who are fighting regulation. To think about Republican voters (not politicians, who are of course important for them) is wasted time. All of them are going to vote for politicians who will not regulate these companies, no matter how their base feels about the companies and their messaging. Their Democratic politicians, however, could be voted out and replaced with eager regulators for helping a company that has been cancelled.<p>Instead of thinking about regulation, it's important that the Democratic voter ask: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow... would that end racism? Would that end sexism?”<p>i.e. Their Dem politicians need to be protected, their Republican politicians do not.