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If you took the opportunity to read my introductory essay, “Coyote Ugly,” you will recall my thesis that Western institutions are as much, if not more, to blame for our demise as a people than any historic or current tribal conflicts. I painted my argument with a broad brush, and touched upon the low-hanging fruit of politics. It doesn’t take magical powers of perception, however, to see that “the state” isn’t the only institution working against us. After all, it is “business as usual” in Western nations, and decades of poorly-regulated markets have given way to a powerful technocracy and corporate oligarchy.
Specifically, Iʼd like to delve into the world of product marketing and the seeming contradiction of for-profit enterprises indulging in anti-white, anti-traditionalist, anti-Christian, and/or anti- male (and so on) marketing strategies. It is counter-intuitive for rational people to attempt to explicate this apparent conflict. Why would successful, powerful companies alienate their most loyal and affluent consumers? “Surely these companies no longer care about profit! They must be completely ideologically driven!” This is the argument put forth by the Dissident Right.
I think this argument misses the point. Our demographics are in the process of rapidly shifting. Our corporate institutions are no longer piloted by a coterie of aging, suit-wearing white men sitting in boardrooms filled with cigar smoke. Those men are still there, mind you, but they are held hostage by an invading horde of “problem glasses”-wearing up-and-comers who do not take “no” for an answer.
Letʼs dig a little deeper. Itʼs erroneous to assume that these companies are losing any profits from kooky multicultural advertising.
Leftist propaganda has always been a mainstay of BigCorp. As evidence, I offer one of the biggest corporations in the world, Coca-Cola. We are nearing the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most recognizable and wildly successful marketing campaigns in history, 1971ʼs I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke. This campaign was so hugely successful that even Coke’s current marketing theme is inspired by it (think “Share a Coke” with “random name”). Iʼm certain that Coca-Cola’s Board of Directors in 1971 were aging white men, and they weren’t unaccustomed to cigar smoke and business suits. Yet this touchy-feely hippie-dippy advertisement set the tone for the entire Baby Boomer generation to become loyal brand enthusiasts. I think that the Dissident Right is projecting its own biases when we question the business acumen of our current caste of oligarchs.
Even if one can make an argument that these international corporations are losing money in the short term, their staying power allows them to role the dice on occasion. They are no longer solely the peddlers of Western-oriented goods; they are also the purveyors of globalist mercantile ideals. Their customer bases are truly multicultural, and whites (who still care) are quickly becoming an aging and shrinking demographic. These are ultimately long-term marketing strategies similar to Cokeʼs 1971 hippie culture gambit.
Assuming that the old curmudgeons of yore still wield influence in todayʼs boardrooms, imagine the current state of affairs. Three generations deep into affirmative action — the employment of upwardly-mobile people of color and “N-D-Pendant Wahmen” — boardrooms and marketing presentations have reached Patty Hearst levels of Stockholm Syndrome. As it is, marketing people spring from a shitlib well of liberal arts majors. From the soft science of psychology and sociology degrees to the Andy Warhol-inspired graphic illustrator, it is no wonder that todayʼs advertisers engage in blatant agitprop.
But again, it is a foolʼs errand to declare that this is bad business.
Marketing execs and political propagandists draw from precisely the same theory in cultivating their crafts. It is a fuzzy line that differentiates between targeting the consumer based on predisposed preferences versus manipulating them to accept new ones. Neither are mutually exclusive to one another, and both result in the same thing: a predictable, reliable consumer.
As the demographic avalanche quickly approaches, it is clear by every metric that the least reliable consumers are aging and dying off, or at best living on fixed incomes, and the coalition of ascending POC, suburban single mothers and homosexuals — as well as indifferent white hipsters and bugmen — are all primed and ready for whatever counterintuitive marketing ploys our multibillionaire oligarchs and technocrats seek to thrust upon them. And they will gladly stand in line, shouting “Here, take my money!” with glee.
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It’s not only that, but there’s also the phenomenon of woke corporations receiving preferential treatment from the state for parroting woke ideology. They are shielded from regulation and shielded from the market – a license to steal in many ways.
Gillette CEO says The Billions Of Dollars Lost Over The “Toxic Masculinity” Ad Was Worth It.
Another one that will cost them.
It doesn’t really matter what the reason is. The important thing is to resist. *
* No, we don’t throw gays off the rooftops. But LMBT+ advertising in public places provokes a backlash.
From the Gillette article you linked to:
“That’s not nice and goes against every ounce of training I’ve had in this industry over a third of a century. But I am absolutely of the view now that for the majority of people to fall more deeply in love with today’s brands you have to risk upsetting a small minority and that’s what we’ve done.”
Again, this is a long term gambit. This has more to do with their long-term profitability and banking on the majority of up-and-coming liberal Millennials becoming more *ARDENT* Gillette users and not worrying about the (unfortunately) small percentage of Millennial men who were put off by it, or the irrelevant boomers who either don’t care or will be dead in 20 years.
OK, so what. Let’s not overanalyze the problem. We all know what to do: move out of the house, move out of our comfort zone.
I don’t think it is possible to “overanalyze” the problem. I think fully understanding the problem is how you learn to best address it and fight it.
Rejecting brands that don’t blow smoke up white people’s asses anymore is not going to work, because their future consumer base is the brown hordes and the traitors who facilitate them.
I’m not sure that calling attention to their marketing strategies is going to solve the problem either, but at least if it helps to wake a few more people up to the problems with corporate power concentrated in the hands of the uber-elite (and we can surmise some tribalness where that is concerned for sure), then MAYBE we gain some leverage for the future. If anything, postulating more than one possible motive behind these advertisement schemes can help cast a wider net of people who see things our way. Ideological motives as a reason for their behavior only sells to a narrow audience who understand or accept it. Economic motives make more sense to more people, and it helps to shine a light on just how gutless these people are, that they would gladly watch Rome burn as long as there’s money in it for them.
I’ve never understood why people say that it’s ultimately about the money. It’s a gospel taken by both the right and the left. Corporations do many things that are clearly and obviously not profitable, all of us can imagine ourselves using a corporation for ideological purposes if we had that kind of money and power, and there is also just simply no evidence at all whatsoever that it’s about the money.
I do not think that this is about money. It being about money is a blue-pill because being seen as greedy is less damning than being seen as genocidal and because “it’s profitable” makes the system seem legitimate, meritocratic, or capable of getting results. The truth is that companies were wealthy before they went woke, went woke later, and can sustain it so long as other companies choose not to put them out of business by competing for real. They will lose their money eventually and if that’s after White people are permanently disenfranchised and Mexican imperialism has come to fruition, they will call it a success. It’s not that they will only be progressive if it makes them money, it’s that they’ll only make money if it allows them to be progressive.
All I’m saying is that if I were told that I had a very high (low risk) probability of reaping high profit rewards in 10-15 years if I create a little controversy (and lose a little short term profit in the mean time), then I would probably play that hand.
Coke did it in 1971 in a day when hippies were seen by older generations as stinky, unwashed, good for nothing losers in tattered clothes. I’m sure there were WW2 generation men and women who were put off by that hippy commercial. (“I didn’t fight the Nazis so you could be a lazy pothead dammit!”). I can just see Archie Bunker yelling at the TV right now. Yet, even in a day when refined sugars are considered poison, and Coca-cola is certainly suffering because of it, they’re still in any top 100 list of profitable companies and the most profitable beverage company. The gambit played off as a long-term marketing strategy, and it was SAFE even in 1971. The Gillette ad seems crazy in our eyes, but that is because we on the far right are just as woke as “woke capital”, and we care about this stuff. Most people don’t care enough to offset the long term brand loyalty with Millennial liberals that they are cultivating.
Also, I’m not saying that there isn’t intentional ideology behind this from some quarters. All it takes is ONE feminist shitlib on your marketing team who is willing to “tweet” about a “culture of bigotry and misogyny” at Gillette or P&G , and the CEO, no matter what his politics, will go along with it if he believes it has long-term benefits. He may resist it because of short term losses, but he will give in, knowing that it’s safer for him to do so and that the negative consequences won’t last forever.
I do want to add 2 things to the underlying point of my article here:
1) To me, profit motive is no less sinister than ideology. In fact, I’d say that ideological motives at least have a moral purpose, even if it is antithetical to my own values. I’d rather fight an enemy who I respect than an enemy who would sell their own mother for a little money or power. I don’t think “right wingers” by some arbitrary necessity are supposed to believe profit motive is a justified motive.
2) I agree that at the end of the day, knowing their motive is less important than fighting it because we believe it to be wrong. However, we fight a disease more effectively if we know it’s cause (or causes). I think these are ideas worth parsing.
Private corporations have the most complete and elaborate ‘intelligence services’ on the planet. They gather data about their ‘targets’ — consumers — all day, every day and have done so for decades. They are not only looking at recent data but comparing it will much of the past data that they have gathered an looking for trends. At one time, corporate advertising campaigns were ‘seat of the pants’ affairs based more upon intuition than data, but that hasn’t been true for some time.
For example, why would Gillette take an anti-male approach to advertising their products that are almost exclusively used by males? Because they hate males? Not likely. More likely is that their focus-group testing has shown that self-hating males will embrace such advertising. They also probably figured out that narcissism is rampant in the West and that much of that narcissism is attached to ‘moral righteousness’ in such a way that being ‘righteous’ is more important than being insulted.
Having said that, there is simply that fact that Gillette has a massive market presence, if they want to lose a billion dollars, they can. New Coke didn’t put Coca Cola out of business and ‘Woke Razors’ aren’t likely to put Gillette out of business, even if it’s a horrible failure. There’s an art to manipulating the public, and corporations devote enormous resources to hypothesis testing in the form of discrete marketing campaigns in certain areas that are deemed ‘representative’ of the market. If you live in one of these areas, you would see products and advertising that you never see anywhere else and the emergence of national campaigns for products that ‘the locals’ had access to a year or more before.
To paraphrase the Godfather, ‘It’s not ideological. It’s just business’.
The only issue is, many companies starte and pushed this trend LONG before any perceived demographic downtrend or change.
They did it regardless. It was both an ideology and an agenda.
And they sought to make both work on gullible people. That’s what propaganda does
Summarising: the premise of the article seems to be that business – inherently good and proper – would be OK *if only* it would get back to selling products to white people. This might be achieved if the besuited cigar smokers in the board room could just take control back from the millennials and hipsters.
The premise doesn’t seem convincing.
Business has been going global for 40 years at least and – as other comments have pointed out – the big corporations cannot conceive of a future that’s not globally focused. The hipsters in the board room aren’t corrupting capitalism with their wokeness. Capitalism made them that way in the first place. Their outlook is a combination of globalist universalism (one world market) and liberalism (freedom to consume) – both fundamental to economic ‘growth’.
Woke marketing will ruffle some feathers, but in the longer run serves to soften the proles up for the inevitability of our one world, one market future.
The so-called leftists cheering this all on are capitalism’s useful idiots. Corporate sock-puppets in Che t-shirts. They’re a symptom, as are the millennials in the board room. The disease is capitalism.
I think you missed the point. I agree with you 100%
No I never said it would be better if the hipsters weren’t there in the boardroom with the corporate execs. The 1970s era corporate execs gave into the 1970s version of the hipsters for the very same reason that they do it today. For the love of money. Whatever globalist marketing tool that will expand their customer base, they will use.
Hence the title refers to lessons from past marketing schemes to speak to today’s times. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
PS
You night call the hipsters their “Frankenstein’s monster”; so to speak. Eventually the next generation turns on the previous ones. It’s a cycle.
Thanks for your response, John – and apologies if I misunderstood the point of the article.
You’re on the money. Yesterday’s capitalists are essentially the same as today’s. Both served / serve the interests of shareholders (or other owners) over all else. Marketing serves two purposes; stimulate demand for consumption AND shape attitudes in favour of an environment conducive to profit.
50 years ago, the state regulated in the interests of the nation. But over time, marketing has convinced people that the state has no role other than to protect business from risk. It has shaped attitudes to create an environment conducive to business.
The idea that the state drives this process is widespread among those who identify with the Right. But I’d argue this is mistaken. The state – under capitalism – is captive to business interests, exactly because it’s business that shapes public opinion through marketing.
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I’ve noticed that woke capital isn’t so woke in other counties — especially throughout Eurasia. Coca-Cola’s ad campaigns in a country such as Russia for example, features an entire line of White celebrities. While I was in Russia, I noticed that the cans of Coke at a plethora of grocery stores all featured White Russian musicians whom I’m familiar with. I believe that multinational corporations only engage in woke marketing campaigns in the West because they know that they can get away with it — as we allow them. Just step back and think for a moment about how complacent and indoctrinated the majority of our society is here in the United States. Our European populace is its worse enemy in many of ways. It’s nearly as bad as putting a loaded gun in the hands of a highly suicidal individual.
On the contrary, many of my peers and I, along with others in the region where I reside, are extremely conscious of the brands that we support – from buying locally produced food to American made clothing and gear. Some of these people are fervent Marxists, but at least they’re conscious and socially aware of the repercussions of their purchases. As Mr. Wilkinson mentioned earlier in this thread, “I’d rather fight an enemy who I respect than an enemy who would sell their own mother for a little money or power”. There’s a lot of truth in the aforementioned statement and this is why it’s difficult for me to get angry at our opposition who make a valiant effort into learning about ideologies of certain brands and where their products are manufactured. I’ve recently explained to a fellow Traditionalist Christian that multinational corporations hate what we stand for and that their ideologies contrast ours. I provided explicit examples from companies such as Amazon, Target, and Google. They were infuriated after what I told them – but followed up with “There’s nothing that I can do about that”. Unfortunately, they’re wrong — but the problem is that there are many of people in the West who think this way. They’re too comfortable and lack the critical thinking skills to read between the lines or conduct the appropriate research.
I can attest that nearly everything that I own aside from electronics has been made in the USA by an American small business. Furthermore, I own some items that have been produced in Canada, Europe, and Russia – along with a couple of specialty items that were produced in Japan. Aside from Japan, everything that I own has been produced by a business in a White country of European or Russian descent. This task isn’t too difficult if one takes the time to conduct some research. Most of what I own consists of high quality, versatile clothing and outdoor gear.
I don’t think that the white demographic is irrelevant. Instead it is much smarter than the black and brown demographic.
Also it as a crisis of classic advertising/propaganda. It doesn’t work as few decades ago.
Childs and women are more influenced by advertising than the men. Blacks are more susceptible to advertising than anybody else.
An white man probably doesn’t spend too much money on an unhealthy drink. Tea, coffee, ginger ale, wine, beer, mineral waters, a good spirit are better tasting , cheaper, healthier and fantastically diverse. Also, there are a huge assortment of food processors, blenders, tools to make your own fresh fruit juice, wine, spirit, beer.
So, why would someone spend his money on a coke? Why would Coca Cole spend a dime on advertising for a mainly unreachable demographic?
As a matter of fact probably Coca Cola hates the white men. Whites are the single biggest threat for them.
The same with Gillette. Why buy their expensive blades when there are better, much cheaper classic blades and razors. For years now their advertising is not simply stupid. It is oligofrenic. Only tattooed thugs and now freaks. Maybe those are their target public. Just don’t buy their plastic, inferior products.
The so called profit is mainly what the stupid people spend, more than they afford. So the advertising is mainly for them. Whites naturally are excluded.