Re-thinking Marketing to Employees
Is my fundamental understanding of marketing flawed?
In July 2019 I wrote a post called “Marketing to Employees”. The thesis was that the vast majority of consumers really don’t care about the political beliefs of the brands that they buy. This allows companies to take “controversial stands” that seem “risky” which gives them free media, without taking any real “risk” at all — unless the “controversial stand” is controversial with their employees. Unlike consumers most (many?) employees really DO care about the political beliefs of their employer. Consumers buy many products and generally don’t define themselves buy when they buy (large ticket, publicly visible items products like cars may be an exception), but many (most?) employees generally only work one place at a time and partially define themselves by their occupation and workplace.
It still leaves a problem of how to appease different constituencies within a workforce. But since the majority of the people a company needs to keep happy are smart, young and college educated, that means it is far easier to error on the side of socially-left ideas than any other. And that is what large corporations have generally done. This Miller Lite ad is a good example. Many critics derided the commercial as ignoring the Miller Lite customer (~61% male, 25-35 years old), but if you accept that the customer does not matter, then you just need to ask if the ad was offensive to Miller Lite employees. And I expect it was not.
(The biggest caveat here is that, like cars, beer may be an exception to my rule that customers don’t care about your politics. Beer is one of those products were users DO define themselves by what product they consume more so than the product features and benefits).
Which brings me to today and my re-think.
When do customers matter?
On June 3rd the WSJ wrote about the challenges companies are facing right now with Pride Month:
Businesses are unveiling advertising campaigns and product lines to mark Pride Month, even as some conservatives try to build on recent clashes with Bud Light and Target by calling for boycotts of brands that advertise their support of the LGBT community.
Target last month dropped some items from its Pride collection after a backlash that included in-store incidents, and Anheuser-Busch InBev earlier put on leave marketing executives who oversaw Bud Light’s collaboration with a transgender influencer that drew criticism and confrontations.
“The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands,” the conservative commentator Matt Walsh wrote on Twitter after those events. “…First Bud Light and now Target. Our campaign is making progress. Let’s keep it going.”
Both Target and Bud Lite launched campaigns that were targeted by conservative activists, and both backed down, dropping promotions and, in Anheuser-Busch’s case apologizing.
One could argue that this is a good example of consumers caring about the political stance of the companies they buy from, and companies responding to those needs.
Hence the re-think.
But, having thought about it, I do NOT think that is what is going on here. And I think the fact that these two companies were targeted and responded, while Miller Lite is charging ahead, and other brands including (from the WSJ article) Kohl’s, Google, Skittles, Microsoft and Under Armour, are not making any changes to their Pride Month plans, gives good evidence as to why.
These are all big household names with penetration across all demographics. Both the most liberal and most conservative consumers buy groceries from Kohl’s. If conservatives were really offended by Target and Bud Lite such that it changed their purchase behavior, why wouldn’t they be equally offended by Kohls and Skittles? It would not be THAT hard to shop at a different grocery store or buy a different flavored candy.
I think the reason is that this is NOT an example of consumers caring about company politics. Rather it is an example of ACTIVISTS targeting a company in order to force the company to make a change.
When I was at A Place For Mom we ran the majority of our television spots on remnant. It meant that we usually did not know where they were going to run until well after they were in front of consumers. It also meant that the ads often ran when there was excess supply of media — and that often meant placements where other advertisers had decided to drop out. We had no political bias at the company. We ran the ads where they performed well, under the belief that whether someone was far right or far left, if we could help them with finding a place for their mom or dad, we were doing something good in the world.
But activists did not feel that way.
There were left wing activists that were upset that we were on Rush Limbaugh and there were right wing activists that were upset we were on Al Jazeera. Mostly we were able to ignore both groups (remember: customers really don’t care!), but then the activists upped their game and came after us through our partner properties. All of our major partners received letters claiming that A Place For Mom was supporting terrorism. The letters also threatened to picket the properties themselves.
Our partners were very freaked out.
In the end families did not care. Partners did not care. But partners were concerned that their families WOULD care. We backed down and pulled our advertising from Al Jazeera. The marginal value we got from those ads versus the next best alternative was small, and far less valuable than the relationships we had with our partners. The activists found our weak spot (or I suppose the weak spot of Al Jazeera who was their primary target).
Which brings us back to Target and Bud Lite.
In both cases it is not a matter of the customers caring much at all. Here is how the WSJ described the events back at the end of May (I added the bold):
Target this week stopped selling certain items from its Pride Month collection after a backlash from some customers that included in-store incidents, and Bud Light last month put on leave two marketing executives who oversaw a collaboration with a transgender influencer that drew criticism and real-life confrontations.
In both cases the activists were directing actual violence or threats of violence against company employees.
These companies did the same math we did at A Place For Mom: Any financial impact from promoting LBGT or not is going to be small in comparison to the costs of having an employee physically hurt due to an altercation. Even if no employee is actually hurt, the fear that they might be in the future is going to affect large numbers of frontline staff (who are also less likely than the managers to have strong feelings about the political stance to begin with).
These companies caving in the face of “customer pressure” is really companies caving due to ACTIVIST pressure and threat of violence. They aren’t making the changes one way or the other due to what their customer think, they are doing it for the people who care the most about what the company stands for: The employees.
Keep it simple,
Edward
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