Boycotts, Baby!

Taco Bell vacation clubs, motorcycle gangs, off-key musical numbers, and... Carrie Underwood? Join Mark and Lorraine - and brand new producer and editor Denver Wittmer - as they discuss the latest blunders of big-name brands. From boycotts on classic American brands like John Deere and Harley Davidson to misfired marketing attempts from Target, Mark and Lorraine cover a wide range of companies that owe their customers a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Spend 30ish with Mark and Lorraine as they talk all things marketing, advertising, and of course ... positioning!

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is the Docent of Differentiation, Lorraine Kessler. Thing one, did you happen to catch any of the Pro Football Hall of Fame activities this past weekend?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, some vicariously, some actually. The Innis Maggiore Balloon came right over my house, as did many other balloons, which was the first time in many years, which was great. And I kind of clued in on your Wishes Can Happen. Yeah, stuff that was going on, very, very good. That's such a great charity that you sponsored and helped with. And Carrie Underwood, I have some friends who went to that and shared a lot of good- did you go?

Mark Vandegrift
I went.

Lorraine Kessler
Did you like it? I heard it was great.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, Kim and I went. My goodness, that she's got pipes. I can't believe it. And she mentioned that it's been exactly 20 years since she auditioned for American Idol.

Lorraine Kessler
Really? Wow.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, and she's going to be on the other side. She's going to be a judge apparently coming up.

Lorraine Kessler
Okay. my gosh. The time is just flying. I can't believe it.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, she did Paradise City. What's the group- Guns 'N' Roses? She did Paradise City, and I tell you not, I'm not kidding with this statement. It was as if it was the real band up there doing that. It was it was really well done. Most of her entire concert. I told Kim at one point, said, this feels more heavy metal than it does country. As you know, being country artists, you think it's gonna have a lot of twang and things like that. It's much more pop leaning toward what I would say is what we used to call heavy metal. It's not that, what do they call it now? Hair metal? It's definitely not that.

Lorraine Kessler
Hair metal? I've never heard of that.

Mark Vandegrift
Denver knows what that is. You know what hair metal is? Yeah, I know Denver- Well, that's my lead in. Now that our 50th episode has been published, and remember that puts us in the top 5% of all podcasts, at least based on quantity. We don't know about quality. But we brought in an official producer of the Brand Shorthand podcast, which is Denver Wittmer. So welcome Denver.

Denver Wittmer
I'm just happy to be here, Mark.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, welcome. You can only make us better.

Denver Wittmer
I'll try not to mess anything up too badly.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, we'll see.

Lorraine Kessler
All right, is that Mission Impossible, Mark? Is that what you do? Poor Denver.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I think so. Well, we have a lot of ground to cover today. There are some things going down with some brands that it's probably safe to say we'll have somewhat of a rapid fire discussion on a lot of different brands, some good, some bad. Let's have you start us off with a brand that both makes us laugh and gives us heartburn in one fell swoop, Taco Bell.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh yeah, Taco Bell.

Mark Vandegrift
And Lorraine, after you tell us what they're doing right or wrong, you have to give us either a thumbs up or a thumbs down based on the branding move that they're making. Can you remember that?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, can I do like a, I don't like, I can do a sideways.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, you can do a sideways too.

Lorraine Kessler
Okay. Because I think this one is a sideways for me. But I will say that ever since I don't go into the agency every day where the Taco Bell is right next door, I've been able to cut back my acid reflux medicine. So I think there's a direct correlation.

Mark Vandegrift
That's probably it.

Lorraine Kessler
But they came out with this new thing, right? The Catina, Cantinas, which is like, is that a store? Is it an event? What exactly is it?

Mark Vandegrift
I would call it a resort event. Like you attend this resort and it's all around events that are going on at the

Lorraine Kessler
Okay. Well, it's an early retirement community event thing, right? Destination, whatever. To celebrate the leisurely style of those in their seventies and eighties, which means I qualify. So it's like, join grandma and grandpop in all the things they love, which God forbid, pickleball. Which I refuse to play just because of who plays it all the time. And, but they do open it, know, it's to live more, right? Right? We're big 70s, 80s. I don't know, to me, it's, I think the reason I do it sideways is, their position is, you know, the fast food Mexican that's fun, you know, full of different menu items that really fit kind of today's lifestyle, that fit that kind of flair that Mexican food and only Mexican food, in my opinion, gives to us. But it's like now the position is Taco Bell equals an early retirement community. So I just don't know if that's where they want to go. Now, the reason I do this is because it's one promotion. It's episodic, it may go away, we may all forget about it tomorrow, so it might not have any lasting effect. But if they stick with it, they're stuck with grandma and grandpa. And I just remember both our parents, my parents from New Jersey and John's from Ohio, we lived in Dallas and we brought them to our wonderful Mexican restaurants and both of them thought this was dog food. They were just like, what are we looking at on our plate? So I know we're more evolved, we're the boomers, but I don't know, just doesn't seem like the right thing for

Mark Vandegrift
So you're saying their new tagline should be "Eat More, Retire Early"?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, that's what they're saying. Yeah, "Eat More, Retire Early". You may have to if you eat more.

Mark Vandegrift
"Live Mas, Live Retired".

Lorraine Kessler
"Live Mas, Live Big", I guess. I don't know. It's just very confusing to me. Isn't it confusing to you?

Mark Vandegrift
It is. I mean, all I could think of is why do I want to hang out with grandma and grandpa? And why are we going to retirement community? Yet as I read it, it felt like it was just an event at a resort somewhere. So I don't know. They're trying to expand who they're reaching. I just don't know that current boomers are going to ever come back to Taco Bell.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, well, you better get them now because their lifespan is very, very small. So you're going to have to bring in some other people right behind them.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, apparently. Well, yeah, let's give that a sideways. I'm leaning a little bit this way with that one. So, well, I'll take the next two brands. These two are iconic American brands. And by that, what I mean is that if you ask someone to name brands that equal the word Americana, you would probably hear these picked in a list of about five. And these two are John Deere and Harley-Davidson company. The first, John Deere. Is there really another company out there that you could point to that wraps up the ideal of Americana? I mean, probably not.

Lorraine Kessler
Harley Davidson, which you mentioned and maybe Sherwin.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, that's true. But John Deere, I mean, you just think of farmers and you think of all about what this country is about, even the way that John Deere came about in the development of the company. But they just recently laid off hundreds of workers in a few of their Iowa plants. And why? Not because they had to, but they are moving their manufacturing plant to Mexico. So you're thinking Americana and then moving my manufacturing down to Mexico, it doesn't jive with me. And you know, we always say that positioning goes beyond a marketing strategy, and this is a very, very good example of that. I mean, positioning should impact your operations, your production, even your accounting team at some level, right? And when I think John Deere, I think of American manufacturer, manufactured American made, like the penultimate Americana. And now they're taking their manufacturing and moving it to Mexico. So, you know, from my standpoint, this really does impact the brand and the personality. Now they might cite, "we're more global now, we're not just an American ideal", but you know, the world looks to America and American made as a sign of quality, top tier quality. And so this to me doesn't feel like it aligns with their position real well. And I can't imagine in this country and probably many other that folks will believe that John Deere is giving us the best of America when they're made in Mexico. And then I don't know if you heard about their "going woke, going broke" policy, but they had to roll that back. You might've heard a couple of weeks ago that Tractor Supply did that. They rolled back their DEI statement and their woke policy. Well, John Deere had to do that. But right after John Deere did that, they moved all their manufacturing to Mexico. I'm not sure what's going on here. It just boggles my mind. Any thoughts on that, Lorraine?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, sure. Nothing runs like a deer... away from its trusted position to profits.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. That's a good call.

Lorraine Kessler
I mean, like, my gosh. You know, I mean, just ironically, the Mexicans are coming here. Why don't they just employ them? mean, no, they did cite manufacturing costs, rising manufacturing costs and low demand. And then finally, your favorite word, efficiency, which I think is code for "we want to make more money". And to be honest, I think there's only what two product lines they're really moving. One is those skid steer loader things. I think those are used in factories and what have you, and compact track loaders, but it is troubling. It is troubling for the brand Because and in my husband did business in China for years and the Chinese love American brands for the very reasons you were talking about, and I think that's pretty much shared through a lot of countries overseas, that they really value American-made, American ingenuity, American quality, maybe sometimes even more than we do. It just doesn't seem congruent, I guess, is the problem. I think combined with the woke stance and then the rollback, and we'll talk about this a little bit more in some of the other examples, is when you play into divisive politics, you divide your audience. So that's never a good strategy for customer build because you now have 50% or half your audience upset with you and you think the other half might come your way. Well, good luck because they may not. So this has been like a lesson learned, but the mistakes keep getting made again and again and again.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, and it's to an audience that all those policies are completely opposite, you know? So the John Deere audience, very conservative in nature, it's the farmers of this country. I don't see them as caring about-

Lorraine Kessler
And manufacturing workers. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, yeah, manufacturing. And people that are even buying John Deere tractors tend to be that way. So, you're trying again, like Bud Light did, to move a whole segment of your society into a politic that they'll never adopt. And trying to do it through a brand that is focused on tractors and combines and steer loaders and trucks and you name it, it just doesn't make sense. So I have to give them a on that move. So we're both a thumbs down. And you mentioned the DEI policy. So the other brand I mentioned was Harley Davidson and they're facing a Bud Light-like boycott for activities going on at their headquarters. This is another iconic American brand. I mean, picture, if I said Harley Davidson, you immediately get a picture in your mind of a big biker, long hair, long beard, a biker gang, right? Almost. I don't know whoever's running the ship there, but they need to get the rudder unstuck. According to, I read an article in USA Today, which is where I found this, one person leading the boycott said it about as simply as they possibly could, just get rid of the social issues and divisive causes. And he was referring to the DEI and woke initiatives going on at headquarters. So this same person actually happened to call out Tractor Supply and Deere for the same offenses, and that's what got them to backtrack on their stances. So to me, this falls into the Bud Light boycott arena where your target audience is conservative as you could probably get. And Harley Davidson doesn't really get any more conservative. I would say that their recent stance, an issue if they go and they roll back like John Deere did and Tractor Supply did, they'll be fine. It's hard to know, but it seems to me like if you don't want a biker gang showing up at a corporate headquarters demanding some answers, you might want to roll back sooner than later because that crowd would scare me even more so than farmers with pitchforks. So anyhow, in this move, I'm going to give them a two thumbs down for really going against the Americana that I was talking about.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, yeah, and I think, you know, whether your point of view in this case is that DEI is, whether you're pro DEI, pro LGBTQ+, it's really totally irrelevant to this brand and to their customers. And what's happening is the hubris of C-level, whether it's the CEO or the CMO or that level who want to take their values and almost school their customer, right? Or shame them, because it's one or the other, into you need to believe what we believe, which means you're completely out of touch with anything we've learned in marketing. That is to understand who you can best serve and what customers really want and need and desire, whether it's for emotional reasons or functional reasons. So you're totally disconnected. And it's a total inverse of what marketing is supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be about the elite leaders shaming me or cajoling me or whatever you want to call it into a cultural position that I don't hold. It's, you know, it's really time for some customer R-E-S-P-E-C-T. And if I was Aretha, I'd sing that for you. But I know that we would lose the five viewers we have if I sang.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, you know, it's funny because we don't even think about their first customer and their first customer is the dealers. And we have a guy here that used to do a lot of work for John Deere and he is still in touch with the dealers and they're at wit's end because they're not that way either. I mean, they want to stay out of politics because they want to serve everybody that's interested in their product. The moment you declare a position- and I don't mean, I mean a political position, not a brand position- the moment you declare a political position, like you've lost because first you tick off the people that aren't in that camp. Second, when you roll it back, you tick off the other side because now you've got their attention. So now you've ticked off everybody.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, you do roll it. Yeah, you tick them off because in many cases, then you backtrack, you crayfish. And here's the thing that I think you pointed out with this guy who leveraged his popularity or whatever he did to get Harley to backtrack and to get Tractor Supply to backtrack. The opposition is organized today. It's not just, you know, Mark Vandegrift, Lorraine Kessler. These people are organized. They use all the tools, social media. They gather up a storm of people who are like-minded. And now you are fighting a mass of people and a mass of media that in the past could be a one-off complaint. And so it's really a very different world. So my bottom line in all this is that sowing, meaning as in farming, sowing cultural divisiveness is commercial suicide. And it breaks with the edict that is the most basic in business, in my opinion, from Peter Drucker. The purpose of business is to produce a customer. It's not to change their values. It's not to change the world. It's not to bring them over and have a debate, the conversation on all of their beliefs. It is to produce a customer for the products and services you sell. End of story.

Mark Vandegrift
And you do that two ways, innovation and marketing is what he said. I don't see in either one of these that says develop politics, take a stance. I don't know why people are doing that.

Lorraine Kessler
I don't know. Somewhere, somebody wrote a script that said, if you take a social stance, right? And there are brands that do that, like Tom's Shoes, they started that way, right? And there's that Bomba Socks, when you buy socks, they give it- All right, it's a little different. They've chosen a very narrow target of goodwill. That's really not something you can argue with, right? It's good thing either give food to people, give them shelter, give them clothing. This is a whole different ball of wax.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well Lorraine, I'll let you take us to another couple brands that are facing boycotts and that's Ben & Jerry's and Kohl's. Take us through those.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, you know, Ben and Jerry's and Kohl's, they're, to me, are the poster children for "go woke and go broke", right? I mean, you can just look at the analysis of what's going on. And I'd say that going woke and going broke is no joke, because these big brands are in big trouble. So first we'll take Ben and Jerry's. People may not remember this, but in 2023, on July 4th, Ben and Jerry's, they've always been very liberal. They've always been very progressive. That's fine. I was like, okay, that's them. I'm buying their ice cream. Just don't get in my way with your, whatever flag you want to wave. Of course that changed in 2023 when July 4th and they basically put on a tweet and put it on their website and promoted this idea that indigenous land was stolen and they demanded that the said lands, including Mount Rushmore, be returned to the Lakota Indians. And even so far, think in some things I saw was that that who's on Mount Rushmore now, Washington, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Jefferson, be changed over to American Indians. The hypocrisy in this is palpable because this wonderful chief, Don Stevens, was quick. And he's the leader of the New Hagen Band of Cusack Abenaki Nation. He quickly reached out to Ben and Jerry. He did not get a response, as I know, to tell them that, "Gee, great idea. Your headquarters is built on our land in Vermont, so why not give it back to us?" Like, you can start. And, you know, it's been mum since. But that's not the end of the story. After the attack by Hamas on October 7th on civilians, Israeli civilians in the Gaza Strip, Ben and Jerry doubled down on something that it was protesting in 2021 in defense of the Palestinians' peace in Gaza. So, you know, guess what the end of this all is. Unilever, who owns Ben and Jerry's. So for those of you who didn't know that Ben and Jerry's is no longer the two guys that maybe you felt you had a relationship with and you kind of aligned with their politics, is part of a big, huge, massive corporation that's all about profit. They are spinning off Ben and Jerry's as of March. So, goodbye.

Mark Vandegrift
And why? Because they lost what? $2 billion in market value?

Lorraine Kessler
yeah, I forgot that. They lost $2 billion within three days of market value, within three days of the July 4th, 2023 statement. So thank you. Yeah. I think that beats everybody. That beats Bud Light. That beats, think, right? Isn't that bigger than what Bud Light lost? Well, at least in three days.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, in three days period. Yeah, absolutely.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. So again, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. It's commercial suicide to enter into divisive politics. The other one is Kohl's. Their stock decline has been persistent. It's not all related to their woke-ism or, know, I think that they do have a boycott because they went forward during Pride. And I think this was last year with a huge Pride display. And that just helped accelerate kind of what was already going on. It just- they didn't need that. And again, this is a great example to me of where the opposition who is affronted by this push towards the acceptance of LB- whatever, I can never remember the initials unless I'm reading them- they're organized. They're super organized. So with social media hashtags, they amassed over 1 million combined views, and that's just not good. You know, added to retail and Kohl's, they don't need this because the competitive forces on brick and mortar retail is intense because you have online, and you have the Amazon effect, you have many specialty stores online. It's just another nail in the coffin and they don't need to be shooting themselves in the foot this way, but they did. And again, they lost on both ends because they took a stance in favor of LGBTQ. And then when they got bad press, then they rightly crayfished. So nobody's happy with Kohl's.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, it's not too dissimilar from Target, but Target's now, believe it or not, just the other day, they rolled back. So they've already lost a huge contingent of people shopping there. Now they're going to lose the other side because you got their attention. But what they ended up doing was all the stuff that they had clothing-wise that was in question that was targeting children, they've now decided they're going to remove most of that apparel and limit it to only a few stores across the country. But your rural suburban stores, my guess is they won't have that type of clothing.

Lorraine Kessler
If you've ever seen the map of red and blue in America.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, that might be where it follows it. So when you think about it, and I always call them "Tarjay" because their position is really affordable luxury, right? I can give a thumbs up for doing that. That's a good move. And they're also trying to return to their position of that. Now, we talked last time. I can't recall seeing a worse commercial than what I saw recently for them where there's a bunch people in the store shopping trying to sing a song that was out of tune. You couldn't even identify the song for the most part. And they're interacting in weird ways with the products that aren't anything special. So they might say that they're trying to go back to their position, but the execution in this case, which we'll throw up on the screen here, it was just atrocious. Here's how it got our attention. My wife and I are watching the Olympics and we saw this and we put down, I think we were both looking at our phones. We put it down and we had to watch this commercial because we thought "you couldn't have a worse commercial". And we both looked at each other at the end. It was like, what was that? It was so bad. I'll give them thumbs up for getting rid of the trashy children's clothing, thumbs down for their latest commercial, because I didn't think their old commercials were that bad. It was consistent and constant. So I guess I'll give them a sideways thumb. You know, I wish these big brands would just get back to selling what they sell and leave politics out of it, leave morality out of it, leave all the junk out of it. It just gets people all worked up. I mean, I get worked up just talking about this stuff and we're just talking marketing.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Well, maybe they believe that adage that all PR is good PR, even if it's bad. Maybe this is proving that adage wrong.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, where it hits is in the stock. I mean, we can see whether it's good or bad. If truly they're trying to go for profit and market cap, capitalization, etc., all their stocks are just tumbling.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, my personal opinion is Target has been lost long before this. I think that they've, they're kind of in this uncomfortable middle store anymore, right? And their online isn't as powerful as Walmart's, for example, and Walmart has brought some of their style up and kept their costs low or relatively low. So they just- and Kohl's was a good competitor until they weren't. I mean, they just have a- it's a lot- the whole space of this kind of affordable quality for lifestyle is pretty filled. And I think it's a tough space right now. So, but I do think the harm was done with the PR they got on this. One, you're targeting children with this message and our parents- your market's suburban moms. And they don't want you introducing to their children gender identity at this. Just don't. It's not healthy. I'm sorry. And parents, in my opinion, should be in charge. that, you've just alienated this audience. So I think it's a Mission Impossible for them to get back to where they were. So they're going to need something pretty dramatic to reengage the marketplace. I don't know what that is. I think retail's really, really hard because they're dealing with so many competitive forces aside from the boycotts that make their forecast less than favorable. So I'm a thumbs down on Target's future. I don't think these missteps have helped them, but I think it was hard anyway.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, it's good we did a couple of thumbs up the last couple of episodes. Well Lorraine, we hit on quite a few topics today. Thumbs up, thumbs down, mostly thumbs down. But fortunately in the last couple of weeks, we had some good thumbs up with Etsy and some others. But if I didn't know better today, our theme probably could have been "Boycotts, Baby", or "Boycott Mania", or maybe "Brands That Don't Need Enemies". I don't know, something like that. I'll have to work on that for the title of this one. Denver, that's what you get to do as he listens to us. So any closing thoughts, Lorraine? You have any ideas for our theme today?

Lorraine Kessler
Two things, one, if any of these retailers we talked about really want to cultivate the communities that they've tried to dabble in insincerely or without a genuine commitment, which is obvious how quickly they crayfish, then create a brand that's all about that. mean, specialty stores win, right? If you had a specialty store that's all about transgender and you finding your identity through clothing or whatever, home furnishings, create a brand that's all about that. That to me would be authentic and probably very successful. And then second thing, maybe you could take that title, brands that don't need enemies and call it "Pogo Brands", brands that don't need enemies. For those of you who are old enough to remember Pogo- "I have met the enemy".

Mark Vandegrift
The Pogo Sticks!

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Well, no, the character, remember, "I met the enemy and it is me."

Mark Vandegrift
Oh yeah, yeah. OK, well, pogo sticks work too, right? Brands up, down, up,

Lorraine Kessler
That would work. But see, no one, I'm too old. This is the problem.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, thank you for all those who joined us today. If you haven't liked, shared, subscribed, please subscribe and tell your friends about the Brand Shorthand Podcast. And until next time, have an amazing day.