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The Latest Woke Boycott – Against Coca-Cola
Welcome to our world of wokeness. It is not a nice, tolerant, or intelligent place. But it does spark a sense of humor, at least among normal Americans, at least until they find themselves in the sights of our aspiring overlords.
Cancel culture, as many of you should know, is not without funding and organizational support. I’ve seen and experienced it first hand. So have many corporate executives, who find themselves inundated with a sudden barrage of simple, scripted bot emails and phone calls from what seems like an “organic” movement (hint: it’s not). Boards of Directors seem to get them as well.
Progressives and their organizations that run cancel culture campaigns often look to leverage corporations to affect and influence government activity. They assume, wrongly, that corporations with big lobbying operations like Georgia-based Coca-Cola can force governors, US Senators, and federal and state legislators to cower and obey. That’s the power they aspire to. After all, Coke, along with the Home Depot, announced their opposition to the Georgia law. Such pandering opens a Pandora’s Box that is not easily closed.
That was their first mistake. They’re in a no-win situation by commenting, and invite retribution either way and certainly from woke employees and “affinity groups” they’ve been cultivating for years now. But they couldn’t help themselves, apparently. The evidence continues to mount on how wokesters in corporations can pressure their jelly-spined if not sympathetic bosses into ill-advised demands and actions.
To wit: Georgia’s excellent new election reform bill. The Woke is calling for a boycott of Coke in retribution for Georgia’s new election reform law. As if Coke had anything to do with it. But their “statements” in reaction to the new law didn’t meet woke demands. So, here comes the boycott.
This terrible and poorly researched Yahoo News story completely mischaracterizes the new law, but that’s the corporate media for you. You can get the facts of the new law here and, if you have a Wall Street Journal subscription, here.
There is actually one very good reason to boycott Coca-Cola; their very woke general counsel has imposed racial quotas on the hiring and staffing of outside counsels, on which most consumer product companies rely, and heavily. I suspect he is part of the problem behind Coke’s not smart handling of this “controversy.”
And frankly, you invite boycotts over cultural issues, especially from the woke, when you do things like this photo from a pandering Coke billboard below. You’ve opened a door, and they will expect you to respond to their demands. Every time. All of them. You, Mr/Ms/Xe/Xer corporation simply cannot do enough. And it never ends.
Perhaps they should remember the first “Rule of Holes.” Stop digging. Few, if anyone, consume your products over your cultural pandering. They like it because it tastes good, is convenient, and the price is acceptable.
And they’re thirsty. At least until they’re turned off by your pandering and look elsewhere because they don’t want to be associated with the cultural politics of your brand. Boycotts work both ways.
But boycotting Coke over Georgia’s election law is stupid, wrong, and should fall on deaf ears and fail. Consumer product companies get boycott threats by the dozens every week, if not every day. I would know from 23 years of experience in the consumer product world. Hint: most people will claim they “don’t drink Coke” but are probably consuming one of their many other excellent beverages and feature different labels. I do. You can look them up yourself.
Coke is highly unlikely to take any of my advice, but maybe they should learn a lesson from Delta Airlines, which expressed its support for the new election reform bill. When you stand up to the bullies in Wokedom, they back down. They don’t seem to be going after Delta.
There’s a lesson or two there, and Coke, along with all other consumer product companies, would be wise to learn from it. But don’t count on it.
Published in General
I think we need the moral leadership of a corporation that is paying for second homes and sexual affairs by flogging sugar water to destroy teeth and induce diabetes. Why, it’s only natural that such a virtuous and august enterprise serve as pathfinder to a new utopia. Like Pepsi, showing us that the CCP is actually very virtuous because a huge part of their worldwide revenue comes through deals with the CCP.
Personally, I have adjusted my restaurant choices to family owned or local chains that offer kitchen brewed sweet tea.
Dog bites man. No news at 11:00.
I will continue to drink my Cherry Coke Zero and I am probably one of their best customers. I did sell my Coke stock. I also sold my Exxon stock when they started talking sustainability.
Good plan. “Get woke, go broke” should be a disinvestment strategy.
Any corporation that has tens of thousands of employees and thousands of stockholders is going to have people with views across the political spectrum. So why make a statement that reflects the views of half or fewer of your employees and shareholders? It is vanity when some PR flack suggests that a statement be made as if it reflects the whole company. I wish businesses would just shut up about politics, unless they are commenting on a law or regulation that directly affects their business.
All these consumer product companies need to do is 1) check their own marketing data (they do phenomenal metrics) on how their “woke” campaigns are doing with the target audiences (some of their wokier products may be seeing a small bump in sales); and 2) the dramatic increase in Goya products when they went in an opposite direction, politically (sales up over 100% for awhile, with the company unable to keep up with demand in some locations). But no, there are no more woke corporate staff than the marketers, where young college graduates often get their start after their university indoctrination, and anyone who pushes back gets pushed out.
Hmmm. I did see some “Boycott Delta!” and “I won’t be flying Delta!” comments on social media this past weekend, but I didn’t know why and I didn’t care.
I can’t say that I’m surprised or bothered, and it’s good to see that corporate wokeism is no shield from internet ninny wokeism. Maybe if they embrace the new fad of putting interracial couples in their commercials enjoying a Coke they’ll achieve a small measure of forgiveness.
Actually, given the Woke’s current assertion that mixing the races is BAD BAD BAD! I think they’ll just increase the number of gay couples.
Is the GA government doing anything about a major employer openly flouting essentially every civil rights law in america?
They’d better make that throuples.
Wasn’t Coke in the news just last month, for some “training” session telling employees to “be less white”? Or something like that.
Wait a minute. Are you saying that Coke has to put a black and white couple, one of whom is bisexual, and a third person either black or white (or Asian) who is gay?
I miss my old ménage à trois.
That immunization didn’t last long, did it?
To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds – you’re gonna need a bigger group…..
Yeah, something like that, but then I think they walked that back after it was reported in the press.
How do they “walk back” an anti-white training session? It still happened. They can’t pretend it didn’t happen.
Do they think we’re just going to forget it?
If the Right goes through with boycotting them for that and the Left goes through with boycotts for this it might be felt in the bottom line. That’s why a company shouldn’t make political statements. Make a good product and focus on that.
Bingo.