Support is waning for corporate involvement and advocacy around many of the country’s biggest hot-button social issues, according to a new Public Affairs Council survey shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: No business wants to become a political football ahead of the 2024 election.
That’s the thing though, it’s almost never relevant. I don’t care what Budweiser thinks about the LGBTQ community. It makes no difference if Target supports abortion rights or not. These things are entirely divorced from the business these companies are trying to carry out and yet they take up a sizable chunk of public discourse and advertising space.
Politics taking over every aspect of culture is insufferable and this seems like a great place to start when it comes to making politics less combative. Let’s stop making a taco purchase a political statement.
So the heart of what you are getting to is that the techniques of marketing have become so effective, efficient, and advanced that it’s mechanisms have realized the best way to get people to buy things is to appeal to deeply held opinions and beliefs and that practice is bringing those beliefs and their contrasting opinions to the forefront of common discourse. Which is then in turn both unveiling the deep ideological divisions that already existed amongst us to light but is also inherently exacerbating those divisions by raising their profiles. All in the pursuit of further revenue. The issue isn’t politics invading everything, it’s everything invading politics
Marketing is just propaganda with a business goal rather than a political goal. We should’ve put stringent limits on what it’s allowed to do after we watched what Goebbels and Riefenstahl were able to do
We should’ve put strict limits on it with Bernays’ “torches of freedom” rubbish.
I would feel the exact same way, but there is one thing stopping me. These companies then use my money (and others) to fund super pac’s to lobby congress and buy politicians to enact legislative I think is morally and socially bankrupt. When companies can no longer do this, I think that’s the day business becomes less political.
I am indifferent to the politics of Bud Light (can’t/wouldn’t drink it anyway), and I understand they wanted to modernize the brand and broaden it’s appeal, but it’s almost comical how badly they misread their audience. Of course the people who reacted badly are a bunch of wankers, but… those are the people who drink Bud Light.
That’s why I draw the line where I did, to show that relevance should matter.