For the life of me, I can’t understand why some companies make the choice to politicize their brand.
The most notorious example to come to mind in the past 12 months is Susan G. Komen, with their ill-advised move to de-fund, then re-fund Planned Parenthood in a way that made it appear to be a political decision thinly veiled as a policy change. It’s been talked about ad nauseam in every PR and communications forum on the Internet, so I won’t re-hash it. At the time, though, I was one of the few people in my circle of (mostly Catholic and pro-life) family and friends to squarely criticize the decision and the way it was handled. It doesn’t matter what you think about abortion – the situation was handled terribly by the organization, and it alienated both sides of the most polarizing issue in the nation. It was quite possibly brand suicide. If Komen survives, it will be because people have short memories.
Slightly less damaging, but still dangerous, is the recent move by Starbucks to officially support gay marriage. While the move has certainly garnered support – to the tune of 650,000 thank yous – Starbucks has tens of millions of customers worldwide, and not everyone is on the same page. The Dump Starbucks campaign has been ramping up in an attempt to foment an effective boycott against the coffee titan.
Once again, what you or I think of gay marriage isn’t at the heart of this issue – good business practice is. You can and should have informed opinions about the most hotly debated issues of the day, but no matter how you slice it, politicizing your brand spells danger. When I donate money to a cancer research foundation, I want to know that my money is stopping cancer. I don’t want to worry about abortion, one way or the other. I don’t even want to think about it, because it stigmatizes my unrelated behavior of trying to fund cancer research. When I want to buy a cup of coffee, I want to buy the best damn cup of coffee I can lay hands on, not worry about what side of a hot button political issue I’m supporting. I’m not looking to join a movement, I just want some caffeine.
As your customer, I want to buy your products or services, NOT your ideology.
I can’t make this clear enough. Brands that take this approach may feel like they’re doing the right thing, but all they’re really doing is hurting their business. I can’t think of a friend or family member who doesn’t go to Starbucks at least some of the time. And because I know the religious and political affiliation of most of my friends and family, I know that this move will significantly impact their willingness to give money to Starbucks again. If I were a business owner, I couldn’t imagine making a decision that I knew would alienate a large portion of my customer base. It would be a purely selfish move, and it would mean that my personal political preferences are more important to me than the satisfaction of my customers. People get rightfully upset when companies get greedy, raising prices and keeping profits and offering poor customer service. How is this different? It’s a sort of intellectual greed, a means of saying to the consumer, “It’s not about you and your experience of our brand – it’s about us and what we want.”
It doesn’t matter if you’re so successful that you have money to burn. If you no longer need to keep your customers happy, your business is on its way out. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not five years from now, but eventually, someone else who cares more about their customers than you do is going to take your place.
I can’t emphasize this enough. I started as a writer who covered the taboo issues of religion and politics. My writings are on the Internet for anyone to find. If anyone chooses not to do business with me because of something that I’ve written in the past, that’s certainly within their rights to do. But as I continue to build my credibility as a professional, I’m leaving my most polemical writings behind. They do nothing to help me be the best communications strategist I can be. If you want to do business with me, it doesn’t matter what I believe, it matters how well I perform. End of story.
That’s smart business. Something that both Susan G. Komen and Starbucks appear to have lost sight of.
“I can’t think of a friend or family member who doesn’t go to Starbucks at least some of the time.”
Right here. My allergy to pretentious d-bags makes it impossible for me to go to a Starbuck’s.
Fair enough. There’s one. For most of us, though, “pretentious d-bags” are an inescapable fact of life, and the occasional cup of premium coffee (that I don’t have to make myself) is well worth it.
I agree with the premise that politics and brands do not play well together most of the time. However, in your post about not politicizing a brand, you have either intentionally or unintentionally at least strongly eluded to your own leanings, thus “politicizing” your own brand if you will.
Don,
Sorry about my delayed response. I’m still having to train my spam filter, and it’s been very aggressive lately because I’m getting a lot of incoming junk comments.
You make a fair point, but I assume my leanings are fairly well known. I’m easy to Google – I have a unique last name and I dominate most of the first 5 pages of Google results for it – and even my writing portfolio on this site demonstrates that I’m a traditional Catholic with many of the suspected leanings that go with it.
But if that is my starting point, I’m seeking to move beyond that as a focus area of my work. I recognize that when building a personal brand, it’s very difficult to separate out the individual with their beliefs, tastes, likes and dislikes from the brand itself, which is built on their name. But my work, I hope, stands on its own. I’m not using my brand to promote one cause over another.
I thought Komen erred when they singled out Planned Parenthood, and I thought Starbucks erred when they supported gay marriage. Those two issues (abortion and gay marriage) are, in my experience, usually both supported by the same people. Put another way, if you support one, you support the other. And yet here I am, disagreeing with Komen for the way they dumped PP and disagreeing with Starbucks for the way they supported gay marriage.
My beliefs are what they are. I try to come at these questions, though, as a communications professional. How should a situation be dealt with? How can the challenges faced be solved? What’s a smart strategy, and what isn’t?
I won’t ever go to bat for an issue I don’t believe in. My values aren’t for sale. But I think being smart about your policies and the way you communicate them goes beyond the immediate issue and to the fundamental purpose of your business – are you here to provide a certain product or service, or are you here to promote a political cause? If it’s the latter, and you’re not an advocacy group or a PAC, you’re doing something wrong.
One hypothesis which I think sheds light here is to think of Progressivism as a religion, as rival to established religions. The principals in Starbucks are willing to take the hit to their business, and brand, because they -believe- in Equality, Gay Marriage, Social Justice et. al. in the same way that properly religious people believe in God.
More importantly for this case, they are trading money (whatever profits they will lose from the gathering boycott) for status amongst their peers. They clearly value this status more than money; many people do. So they don’t care about losing money from those who boycott (especially abroad) since they are a) wealthy already and b) regard people who oppose gay marriage as being lower in social status than themselves (sadly, correctly). They gain greatly in cachet in the US though, and among their Progressive, transnationalist peers.
I agree with you completely about disliking businesses taking political stands. It’s the conclusion of the “personal is political” approach of cultural Marxism; a totalitarian world view that won’t allow me, as you say, to simply buy a cup of coffee.
Enjoyed your thoughts and the comments. Years ago, I had a brief email dialog with Starbucks headquarters to confirm and discuss their support of Planned Parenthood. The last communication, which is still unanswered, was my question “Why would a successful retail operation fund an organization that kills future customers?”.
I don’t know about this. It seems like Starbucks was lending support to a bill in its home state that affected how many of its headquarters employees are seen by the law, not making some worldwide pledge to support same-sex marriage. It’s the National Organization of Marriage (NOM) that is making this some international fiasco, especially by buying ads in the Middle East, where same-sex marriage is not even a serious debate.
Thanks for your comment, JE. The problem is that Howard Schultz confirmed, when asked directly, that the company board approved the statement that gay marriage is “core to the Starbucks brand.”
This has nothing to do with tolerating dissenting views within an organization. This means that Starbucks has embraced as a corporate value something that’s highly controversial, and likely to alienate a large segment of their customer base.
The reason NOM is buying those Middle East ads, as I understand it, is because Starbucks made promises there that they do not support political causes that would be objectionable according to the religious views in those nations. In fact, my guess would be that in some of the more strict Muslim countries in the Middle East, this was likely a prerequisite for Starbucks being allowed to do business there.
Customers have a right to know what the company they patronize is doing with their profits so that they can consciously choose whether or not to support them.