Following the election of President Donald Trump in November of 2024, many American liberals were in shock or dismay at large companies rolling back on their socially progressive agendas and their DEI initiatives, which were put in place during the 2010s during the time of Obama-era liberalism and social progressivism. It had seemed that overnight, all of the backing of social progressive movements and acceptance that came from massive corporations were all gone in the blink of an eye. While I am not surprised by this sudden shift from these companies, it seems as though there is a genuine feeling of betrayal coming from American liberals. Large companies such as Target, Steak ‘n Shake, Bud Light, Coca Cola and many more either backed down from their usual pandering towards marginalized groups such as the LGBT community or have pivoted completely to endorsing or being openly friendly to Trump, something that would have been unheard of in any other year. Whether these decisions were made based on simply marketing towards this new base, out of fear of retaliation from Trump, or simply to get favors from the administration and their base, the message from the capital class seems to be clear — the era of “wokeness” is over.
Back in 2018, Nike released an advertisement of Colin Kaepernick with the text “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” This ad campaign created waves and led to an intense conservative backlash. Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem at a football game a year earlier, making him an enemy to the American right. Many conservatives saw this as an endorsement of Kaepernick from Nike and they started burning their Nike items in retaliation. The company gained favors from liberals who retaliated against the conservative backlash. This meant liberals eventually started viewing Nike favorably and bought items from them, or people heard about Nike in general and the Nike brand name would be stuck in peoples’ heads. This was a major success for Nike based on the profits and sales boom they gained from this controversy and major conversation oriented around Nike. As the phrase goes, all publicity is good publicity, and Nike put their brand in the outrage machine and got incredible returns.
Two months ago, American Eagle released an ad campaign starring actress Sydney Sweeney, and the tagline of the ad was “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” While that sounds innocent enough, when you factor in the rise of far-right ideology with the fact Sydney Sweeney is a blonde, white girl with blue eyes, who is consistently praised by the American right using jeans as an analogy for genetics. The ad ends with the phrase “my jeans are blue,” which many on the American left saw as far-right dog whistling. Contrast this with the “Future Together” ad campaign from 2021 which had the diverse cast of Jenna Ortega, Addison Rae, Caleb McLaughlin, Chase Stokes and Madison Bailey, and you can see a stark difference with how American Eagle is advertising. When the Sydney Sweeney ad released, American Eagle gained a mixture of praise from the right and backlash from the left. The right viewed this ad as a return to form, with their side winning after a decade of what they felt was an over-abundance of “woke culture” and the culture of America finally healing and going back to the nostalgic view of the 1950s. The left saw this as a sign of the culture heading towards one of increased oppression, one where the oppressive hierarchies are more pronounced and reactionary conservatism is winning. During this controversy, traffic towards American Eagle’s website soared 60% and their stock price went sky up. However, their sales did not increase and remained stagnant compared to Nike after the Kaepernick controversy, and their foot traffic has been going down. That, however, has been the case since before the ad was released, so I would not chalk it up to the ad doing damage to their traffic, even if it did damage to their brand.
Why does this matter? Well, the way that companies advertise their products or their brand is important because it is a sign of where people are culturally. As someone who has a lean to the left, I was not really surprised at the way that all of these corporations would switch their tune when it came to how they would advertise or the types of stunts they would pull, mostly because I knew that a lot of the progressive gesturing that they would do was just that —gesturing. At the end of the day, the main goals for large corporations as entities are to sell their products, make their profits and please their shareholders. When it comes to marketing to achieve these goals, the marketers will change their messages and who they pander to based on which group it is the best to do so culturally. Whether you are a liberal seeing Xbox putting a pride logo on their social media account, or a conservative seeing Steak ‘n Shake announcing they will be switching their frying machines to using beef tallow fat, at the end of the day they are corporate entities and they are not your allies. The culture war and outrage machines are used by these companies as a tool or stepping stone to reaching their goals — greater sales and profit. They input their brand into the outrage machine and hope that something comes out of it. If you are reading this and you are on the right and you are glad that culture is shifting the way that it is, just remember that in the same way that these corporations were gesturing towards the left, they are doing the same thing to you.