What’s more American: blue jeans or guns?
It used to be that you didn’t have to choose. That was before the announcement last autumn by Levi Strauss & Co., the 165-year-old denim company, of a partnership with Everytown for Gun Safety and other gun violence prevention groups.
“While taking a stand can be unpopular with some, doing nothing is no longer an option,” wrote Chip Bergh, Levi’s chief executive. “Business has a critical role to play and a moral obligation to do something.”
The National Rifle Association (NRA) responded, declaring it “a particularly sad episode in the current surge in corporate virtue-signalling”.
“We can only assume that Levi’s accountants have determined that resulting skinny-jeans sales will be enough to offset the permanent damage to their once-cherished brand,” the gun lobbyists said.
Levi’s move did not have the markings of a purely venal business play: Bergh, a former US army captain, has spoken out about guns before. But with Nike announcing controversial football player Colin Kaepernick as its latest spokesman the same week, and a surprising wave of brands taking stands on issues they might have avoided in the past, the NRA accusation had bite. Is this new brand bravery for real? And if so, what’s driving it?
As consumers are roiled by Facebook fights and riven by mistrust in Donald Trump’s America, corporations have confronted the old question — of how to move product — with sometimes experimental answers, analysts say, and deeply mixed results.
“Brands that stand for something”
“More and more, consumers are looking for brands that stand for something and take a position, so that they can make a decision for themselves if that represents their identity and their values,” said Todd Fischer, a senior vice president at GMR Marketing, a global agency. “Brands have been pulled deeper into the conversation.”
But that conversation comes with risks, and corporations sometimes get it wrong. The roll call of shame is topped by Pepsi, which in the spring of 2017, released an ad in which Kendall Jenner, the millennial model, led a group of (very attractive) protesters evoking the Black Lives Matter movement in a showdown with (very attractive) police. The standoff was resolved by a shared soda.
“If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi,” Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., tweeted. The spot was abruptly stopped.
What was Pepsi thinking? Corporations in general are under increasing pressure to “take a stand in ways that go beyond the generic corporate social responsibility platitudes they used to be able to sort of hide behind,” said Michael Serazio, a professor of communications at Boston College.
“We’ve evolved to a point in branding history where consumers purchase things not because of their utility but because of what it signals to other people in their social milieu. What you’ve seen over the last couple of years is this trend toward corporations taking more specific and more controversial political stances.”
Many other corporations have dared to go where Pepsi stumbled. Yuengling, the Pennsylvania brewery, endorsed Trump for president; Patagonia, the California-based clothier, sued Trump for annulling public lands; Delta Airlines and REI, the outdoor clothing and gear store, came out in favour of gun control; Adidas stood behind Kanye West, the inventor of the brand’s bestselling Yeezy shoe line, after his controversial statements about slavery and Trump. Burger King, meanwhile, made a Whopper commercial about net neutrality, and after Trump was elected, Heineken staged an excruciating series of conversations between strangers to insist that “there’s more that unites than divides us”.
With its recruitment of Kaepernick as spokesman, Nike seemed to go even further. As a leader of the movement among National Football League players to kneel during the national anthem to protest about police violence against people of colour, the former star quarterback found himself ostracized by the league and attacked personally by Trump, starting when Trump was still a candidate.
Featuring star athletes and others who have overcome various forms of adversity to become champions, the latest Nike ad is narrated by Kaepernick and finishes with the tag line: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” The line induces either chills or nausea, depending on your tolerance of corporate plays at poignancy. It appeared to find the mark with consumers; Nike’s stock touched an all-time high after the advert was launched.
Trump, though, thought the ad did not work. “What was Nike thinking?” he tweeted.
Authentic, relevant, digital
Patrick Rishe, a professor who interviewed 50 people in sports marketing and media for his recent book They Shoot… They Score, said the company had obviously done its research and was thinking it was going to sell shoes. “The messages that these companies are getting from their market research with millennials and Gen Z consumers is these people want their brands to be authentic, they want them to be culturally relevant, they have to be digital,” Rishe said.
“Younger folks want brands to stand for something. ‘I don’t want to just see your logo. You’re just trying to sell me some shoes or shirts. I want you to stand for something.’ And when you take that leap of faith as a company, you are running risks,” he adds.
America’s social and economic divisions predate Trump. But as a candidate and now as president, he clearly comprehends what corporations have also realized: taking definitive stands on divisive issues may alienate some people but it also inspires loyalty.
Trump understands that he can make a stronger connection with consumers — i.e. voters — if he does not restrict the conversation to products or to policies. Instead of immigration, he talks about gang violence. Instead of Russian cyberattacks, he talks about Hillary Clinton. Instead of criminal justice reform, he talks about football.
It might not make sense for someone with urgent personal healthcare needs to vote for Trump based on a shared opinion about Kaepernick, just like it might not make sense for people to buy shoes because they admire Kaepernick. But it works.
“The point of branding is to make a corporation into a human being,” said Serazio. “And that is fundamentally ridiculous. And yet that is the basis of our advertising, contemporary consumer culture.”
© Guardian News & Media 2018