Go woke, go broke – become woke, go broke

Many companies want to conform to the doxa and play the game of wokism to try and increase their sales, and they’re heading for bankruptcy. This phenomenon is not new to Anglo-Saxons, and is even described by the hard-to-translate expression “Go woke, go broke”.

woke companies

There are a number of cases, which we shall attempt to summarize.

Target :

• The woke marketing policy
  • President Brian Cornell is a trumpet who wants to impose all the fashionable media values on his company: diversity, equity, inclusion.
  • Management and marketing display LGBTQ2-specific items on the shelves, such as women’s swimsuits with a place for the trans male gender.
• Consumer reaction
  • boycott by a number of consumer associations and local radio stations
• The consequences
  • losses of 10 billion in 10 days, shares plummet
  • Target removes contested items, hides others.

Ansheuser-Busch

• Marketing woke
  • The beer brand chooses a transgender to promote its products without thinking that its customers have a predominantly different profile.
• La réaction des consommateurs
  • Les conservateurs américains dénoncent le ridicule du  marketing
  • Hard-line feminists are furious at the use of a biologically male transsexual and denounce it as a provocation.
  • Singer Kid Rock declares in his concerts: “Fuck Bud Light and Fuck Anheuser Busch” and has had both brands withdrawn from his concerts.
• The consequences
  • Beer brand loses $15 million and 23% of its value in six weeks
  • The vice-president who organized the campaign was fired.

Disney

• Marketing woke
  • the company decided not to comply with Florida laws restricting the presentation of sexual material to children.
• Government and consumer reaction
  • State sues Disney for huge amounts
  • Conservative audiences desert Disney
• The consequences
  • Share price falls 30%.
  • 4 million subscribers desert Disney Channel
  • 7,000 employees laid off
  • Above all, Disney became a worldwide laughing stock, with trans Snow White becoming the symbol of the company. Disney has become a symbol of ridicule and the butt of jokes.

Netflix’s future is uncertain

• The woke policy
  • Cleopatra turns black. I wanted to watch the Cleopatra series myself when I realized that it was actually a grotesque attempt to prove that she was black, when historians know that her origins were Greek, the family descended from Ptolemy I, Alexander the Great’s Macedonian general.
• Public reaction
  • Angered, the Egyptian government is attacking Netflix for falsifying the facts and is simply calling for the channel to be shut down in the country.
  • Netflix has become the butt of jokes and ridicule everywhere, revisiting people from history and modifying them “Netflix-style” by changing the color of their skin.
• Les conséquences
  • Au premier trimestre 2022 Netflix a perdu 200 000 abonnés par rapport à 2021 et le cours en bourse a perdu 25%.
  • Contrasting results in 2023 are linked to the elimination of shares, which led to a loss of readers, and an increase in tariffs, which boosted revenues. This is another subject, but it adds to the rest, and its future is a question mark.
  • Worse, Netflix characters have often become a symbol of derision.

Other cases

• North Face, whose summer campaign was launched by a drag queen
• The Atlanta baseball team faces a boycott campaign after hiring a drag queen who mocks Catholics.

Why do these policies woke

• Advertisers are out of touch with reality and their customers
• They think the media and the doxa represent the public, when in fact they’re just a disconnected minority.

Conclusion

I’ll summarize the thousands of public comments I’ve found on these companies’ websites: “One person’s freedom should not mean imposing what they like on others, especially children”. In concrete terms, a company should know and respond to the needs of its audience, rather than carrying out crazy marketing campaigns that target a segment that isn’t its own and insult its audience.

Jean-Pierre Mercier