Should brands take stands on controversial topics?
The first question is, why would you? It is inherent to the word “controversial” that you are going to irritate at least some people. Most of the time, customers who agree with you are not going to buy any extra product and some people will buy less or stop altogether, so it is likely to be a net damage to your business.
Of course, sometimes you have to. I don’t mean, in this instance, that the moral case is imperative, though might be true sometimes. I simply mean that there is no alternative. For example, if you are a cosmetics brand, you either test on animals or you don’t. There’s not a way of avoiding the issue. If you have no policy on the issue, then are almost certainly using ingredients that were tested on animals. Do you provide healthcare and other benefits to the partners of your gay employees? Again, there simply has to be an answer to the question, though in the case of some, usually smaller, businesses, it may not have arisen. Such questions are inherent to your business operations.
But putting out a statement of your views on, say, abortion, if you are not in the business of providing gynecological services or pharmaceuticals, is necessarily optional. And exercising that option will alienate a portion of your publics. Taking a stand on issues that are outside the scope of your business operations is a risky strategy, and is more likely to hurt your business than to help it.
Let’s hone in, for the moment, on customers, though there’s a case for saying that longer term stakeholders such as staff or investors may be more motivated by these issues.
Are your customers typical of the general population? Starbucks was vocal about providing gay partner benefits back when gay marriage was much more contentious than it is today. The concept had been rejected even in liberal states such as Washington and California (twice). But as a hip, urban, brand, the company may have concluded that its customers were generally more liberal than the US as a whole. Disney had, much more quietly, been providing gay partner benefits for much longer. Its customers are mostly families with young children. It probably did so because customers don’t care much about staff benefits whereas staff do, and it was recruiting singers, actors, dancers, almost all of whom probably had gay friends, even if they were not gay themselves.
Disney is also different from many businesses because its assets include some compelling IP. Many children really want to go to its parks and consume its products. Those products simply aren’t available from a competitor, and parents might have been very uncomfortable explaining to children why they wanted to boycott Disney.
Why would Bud Light decide to use a prominent trans influencer? They were presumably aware that this would be contentious with a significant segment of their customer base. My guess is they were trying to appeal to new customers. If so, it seems to have backfired, with significant boycotts by existing customers.
Trying to appeal to new customers under the same brand name always runs the risk that you will reduce your appeal to existing customers without attracting many new ones. Complete repositioning strategies are hard to pull off.
So, here’s a list of questions brands considering tackling a controversial issue should consider:
- Do you have to? Is there a way you could simply not be involved in the matter?
- Is this going to alienate a significant public?
- Is it something that really matters to a stakeholder group? This doesn’t mean just that the issue matters. Does it matter to them that you should take a stand on it?
- Are your publics – customers, staff, investors, etc. – in line with the general public on this issue, or they likely to be outliers?
- How competitive is your market? Can people who disagree with you easily replace your product with something similar.
On the whole, I would say there has to be a compelling reason to take a stand. Otherwise, don’t.