Category: Corporate Wokism

Roost, Chickens Coming Home To

Corporate Wokism, Crime

Well, well, well.  Here’s the macro event:

Hours after murder charges against a former Philadelphia police officer were dropped on Tuesday, large groups, mostly made up of teenagers, looted multiple stores in the city. 

Police started receiving calls around 8 p.m. Tuesday night about a large crowd moving into Center City, the main dining and shopping scene in downtown Philadelphia, NBC 10 reported. The crowd eventually turned riotous, ransacking a Foot Locker, Lulumelon, and an Apple store, among other businesses, before at least 20 were arrested. 

Note that Philly has one of those “Soros-style” prosecutors who distinguish themselves by not prosecuting anyone for crimes like this.  There’s also evidence that, far from being “spontaneous”, the raids are being coordinated and targets established via social media — almost the very definition of organized crime.

And speaking of targets, here’s a micro event:

Target is closing nine stores in major cities across four states, claiming theft and organized retail crime have made the environment unsafe for staff and customers – and unsustainable for business.

The big box chain is part of a wave of retailers – both large and small – that say they’re struggling to contain store crimes that have hurt their bottom lines. Many have closed stores or made changes to merchandise and layouts.

…which is likely to cause an epidemic of Schadenböners among conservatives because the Minneapolis retailer is easily one of the wokest corporations in the world.

The only good thing about the Philly situation, by the way, is that unlike the Portland OR police, some Philly cops are getting into the spirit of the thing.

Try to contain your guffaws of delight.  I couldn’t.

Clear Alternative

Business, Corporate Wokism, Good Stuff, Resistance

It’s all very well to boycott foul companies like Anheuser-Busch and Target, but what are the alternatives available?  Reader JC_in_PA writes about one such organization:

“Kim,

“I heard the founder of this company on Mornings with Maria (Bartiromo) radio show, she’s a legit conservative in business broadcasting.  To counter the ESG nazis driving American companies to adopt insane Global Cooling Climate Warming Change postions, and kowtowing to the LBGTQRSTUVWXYZ fanatics, he created a business network for businesses called Public Square, to proclaim their opposition to this nonsense by proclaiming a set of principles that guide their business practices and connect them with like-minded consumers.  I’ll relay my experience with them shortly, but this is their statement of principles.

“Our Values

    • Pro-Life, Pro-Family, Pro-Freedom.
    • We are united in our commitment to freedom and truth — that’s what makes us Americans.
    • We will always protect the family unit and celebrate the sanctity of every life.
    • We believe small businesses and the communities who support them are the backbone of our economy.
    • We believe in the greatness of this Nation and will always fight to defend it.
    • Our Constitution is non-negotiable — government isn’t the source of our rights, so it can’t take them away.
    • When a business signs up with PublicSq, they agree to respect the values above.

“I heard that interview a month or so ago and never checked out their website. But I needed new blue jeans and I’ll be damned if I’ll buy from Levi Strauss or Wrangler with their anti 2A stance. So I started emailing American jean manufacturers (there are a surprising number of them) with something like the following. ‘I need new jeans and while I don’t need you to make a positive statement of support for 2A, I need to know you have not made any public statements which are anti-2A, I just need to know you are at least neutral.’  Needless to say, crickets, all around.

“So I went to Public Square’s website and found L.C. King Manufacturing, a 115 year old American company making quality work wear at reasonable prices, and got a 25% discount from them for a Public Square promo code! The site is fairly new, but they have a number of clothing companies, housewares, skin care… all sorts of stuff, and the network is growing. I find it fascinating. Much as I love the travails Bud Light and Target are going through right now, I think this is better than boycotts. Spend our money with firms that actually RESPECT their customers. What a concept!

“Anyway, I don’t do this often, but I thought you might find this blog-worthy, and I’d sure like to get the word out about this group.”

And now you know.  I especially like the links just under the masthead:

That’s some good-looking stuff right there.

Give them a shot, and let’s do our bit for the America we want, as opposed to the fucking shit we’re having shoved in our face every day.

Not So Sure

Corporate Wokism, Marketing / Advertising

Here’s an interesting take on the whole Bud Light debacle:

“When the company was bought over by InBev, a lot of things changed [from] when it was owned by Anheuser-Busch. You know, it’s an American brand,” the whistleblower remarked.

He explained that the company previously offered many benefits prior to its purchase by InBev. Through the fall in sales for the Bud Light brand, the former employee stated, the corporation could restructure both employee benefits and its company standards through layoffs and renegotiating contracts.

“Bud Light has been failing for many years. We’ve talked about that for many years. The numbers of just, you know, little by little deteriorated. And it feels like they said, ‘Let’s put this nail in the coffin,’” he said. “Now we have a lot of layoffs, a lot of loss in production. It would be easy for them to restructure, let’s say, pay or contracts.”

“It’s too obvious that they wouldn’t just mistakenly do this and not expect these repercussions. Anybody could tell you what was going to happen,” he commented.

Um, maybe.  Okay, I’m not so sure about that.  In the first place, when it comes to giant corporations, never ascribe to malice what can also be ascribed to stupidity.  Sometimes it happens, but that ain’t the way to bet.

The most telling rebuttal to this assertion is quite simple.  Regardless of whether Bud Light was in decline, or not, it was still the best-selling beer brand in the United States.  And yes, while A-B might have stood to gain from restructuring salary scales or employment contracts, I hardly think that those savings would equate to anything like the amount of money that’s been lost (and will continue to be lost) from their plummeting sales and the equally-dismal drop in their share price.  If some toad in Finance suggested this, he needs to be castrated, in the corporate sense, because if even someone like me can see this, then he’s truly stupid.

Regardless of everything else, you just don’t willfully destroy your #1 brand, especially when it’s as large a brand as Bud Light.  The sums of money are just too vast, the possible repercussions too dreadful because they’re unknown — the ramifications could see A-B split up as a company into separate operating companies (Michelob, Busch, etc.) and the loss of economies which stem from shared brands would cripple all of them.  They’d become no different from a bunch of craft brands — and regardless of what anyone thinks, A-B brands are about as far from craft beers, in both quality and consumer regard, as one could get.

No, the whole thing is just way too Machiavellian and too complex — and trust me, it’s not like InBev is staffed with people of the strategic vision of, say, the German General Staff of WWII, even.  They’re a bunch of Belgian and American bureaucrats, a breed not known for their perspicacity.  And let’s be honest, the Belgies are among the wokest people on the planet, so I’m more likely to ascribe all this bullshit to simple corporate vanity.

Of course, if I’m wrong and this really was just part of some diabolical Master Plan, I hope it all falls apart and the whole A-B/InBev house comes crashing down.  The world will survive and who knows, we might just end up with a few decent beers out of the wreckage.

Lite, Shmite, Ultra-Shite – You All Suck

Corporate Wokism, Food & Drink

In the wake of Bud Light performing the impossible task of stepping on its own transgender wokedick comes this silliness:

Miller Lite is facing criticism for a weeks-old ad that pushed a feminist message.
…
“So here’s to women,” comedian Ilana Glazer says in the ad, which Miller Lite published in March for Women’s History Month. “Because without us there would be no beer.”

Without women, there pretty much wouldn’t be any need for beer, but let’s continue:

Glazer explains that women have made beer throughout history and the beer industry has not paid them enough credit. The ad criticizes beer advertisements that feature women in bikinis.

Errr nobody gives a rat’s ass about who actually makes beer — it could be made by Brazilian macaque monkeys, for that matter, and I suspect some actually might be — but showing women in bikinis is just the beer industry’s equivalent of a cosmetic company using some actress as their “face”, i.e. getting the attention of its core buyers.

But that just leads to my main point.

Regardless of who makes it and who drinks it, “light” or “lite” (i.e. diluted) beer is a totally shit product. 

We shouldn’t be boycotting Bud Light or Miller Lite or any of their cohort brands;  we should be boycotting diluted beer in toto.

When I say “we” I mean all existing male drinkers of this foul swill — I had one sip of Miller Lite back in 1985, and have never touched the shit (of any brand) since, so I can’t very well boycott something I never drink.

Still, I can’t deny that there’s a need for people to drink lots of hardly-alcoholic booze, so I have to reluctantly concede that there is a market for it.  Going back to my first experiences with light beer, I recall that anyone throwing a party always had to get some Lite in so that the girls could drink with the boys.

So while men have always bought light beer, it’s generally been for their womenfolk and not themselves:  men can consume and handle alcohol in quantity more easily than women — fact! — so why not?  Light beer, then, has always been aimed at women, but subtly:  showing bikini-clad women in those ads simply reminds the buyers — mostly men — not to forget the ladies when they plan their party.

Clearly, though, that’s just Not Appropriate anymore, and Men Are Pigs and Women Are Downtrodden and and and and, ad nauseam.

Is it time for a breakfast martini yet?  Oh, why the fuck not?  If there was any 6X anywhere around, I’d go for one of those, but there isn’t so I’ll just substitute.

Not a lite bone in its considerable body.

Judging from the Comments, I seem to have pissed in a few people’s light beer.  LOL

Unaffected, Yet Still Amused

Corporate Wokism, Marketing / Advertising

As someone who has never drunk more than a mouthful of “light” beer (true story:  I tasted a Lite when I first arrived here, didn’t finish the drink, and never touched another of the type ever again), the brouhaha surrounding Bud Light’s marketing decision to elevate some girlyboy to be the brand spokesman has left me totally unmoved — well, apart from bursting out in derisive laughter, that is.

I don’t have a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution, so I’m hardly one to judge this latest example of woke stupidity [redundancy alert].  Nevertheless, here are some core principles I’ve discovered along the way, in a career that spanned over three decades of marketing and advertising.

Marketing Rule #1:  You never neglect (never mind alienate) your existing customer base.  They are the ones who pay your salaries and keep your production lines moving.

Marketing Rule #2:  Once your brand is established, you never chase after “new” customers, but concentrate on getting your existing customers to use your product more.  This is both intuitive and cost-effective, except perhaps to an inexperienced person with a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution.

Marketing Rule #3:  You never make radical changes to your marketing or advertising strategy, especially when it comes into direct conflict with the philosophy of the first two rules.

Marketing Rule #4:  You never let the latest “thing” drive changes to your marketing strategy, especially if that latest “thing” conflicts directly with your brand’s core principle (Unique Selling Proposition, ethos, whatever) and customer base.

And for senior management:  if anyone in your marketing structure — executives, ad agency, promotion company, whatever — suggests anything that flies in the face of the above four principles, fire them immediately before they get to make those changes.

Understand that they’re not being fired for making a mistake.  They’re being fired for deliberately ignoring the canon of the marketplace.

One Or The Other

Corporate Wokism, Literature

If it’s not Gummint fucking us over, it’s Gummint Lite (amazon.com) and its suppliers:

Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race. Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed.

Puffin Books, the company which publishes Dahl novels, updated the electronic novels, in which Augustus Gloop is no longer described as fat or Mrs Twit as fearfully ugly, on devices such as the Amazon Kindle.

Dahl’s biographer Matthew Dennison last night accused the publisher of “strong-arming readers into accepting a new orthodoxy in which Dahl himself has played no part.”

I think it’s the “automatically” part that gets to me — even though I don’t have Kindle or any ebooks.

Thanks but no thanks. Paper, Dead Tree, whatever you want to call it, are mine, all mine. As for Kindle: turning them into “kindling” would be my suggestion.