Pay attention to who is and who is not stepping up, like YouTube where they are encouraging staff to take today (Tuesday) off for nationwide protests, vs. Facebook, where it was decided not to condemn posts from Trump referring to shooting protesters. Pay attention to which VC firms are and are not posting support (investing in AA or Hispanic founders). Pay attention to the CEO’s who do (Tim Cook) and do not speak up.
The actions of corporations over the past two months (and future months) will be remembered by (1) how they treated employees during the time of #covid and (2) how they stepped up during the current injustices.
Silence is not an option for corporations right now – corporate America needs to add their voice. Being silent is being complicit. This comes at a time where corporations are toeing the line: if they do speak up, they’ll be challenged for not speaking up in the past, or if they don’t speak up, they’ll get heat for not at all. The question that companies today should be answering is what side of history do they want to be on, who do they want to attract for future talent, and fundementally do they support the injustices happening currently. People are watching.
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What’s in it for the companies? It’s a garantueed loss of business if they decide to take a stance in either way in this current climate. Look at Sony, look at Chick-Fil-A.
Unless your call is also an implicit to threat towards companies to choose the correct position or else…
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Valid point. You’re damed if you do, damned if you don’t. I believe that in today’s environment that it is okay to have a stance against what’s currently happening. For me personally, I can choose where to spend my money, and am cognizant about it. The latest string racial injustices has only highlighted that nothing has changed over the past years. Someone told me the other day that rioting is the voice of the unheard, which I can’t argue with.
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>For me personally, I can choose where to spend my money, and am cognizant about it.
Absolutely, you’re voting with your dollar. You should just be wary of PR-consultant approved, so-called, “wokeness” displays especially during times of public outrage like these.
Rather honor general good business practices (privacy-consciousness, environmental regards, employee treatment or maybe even tax honesty) although here the onus of research is on the customer.
A fascinating example of virtue-signaling backfiring, is the recent ad of car-manufacturer Volkswagen featuring a protagonist being pushed around by a giant hand based on a current TikTok meme. It would have been same old lame pandering to current trends if the protagonist had not been a black male and the giant hand not been white-skinned. This combination immediately caused a social-media uproar blaming (not least because of its German origin) Volkswagen of being Nazis and racist. Volkswagen had to retract the whole campaign and published a public statement asking for apology.
Was the campaign made by crypto-racists? Turns out the campaign to promote their product was actually planned as a series of ads about a love-story featuring a Black male/caucasian woman interracial couple, the most popular combination for diversity in advertisement these day.
So the intentional pandering to (in this case) a “woke” audience ironically became their demise.
Here’s the ad:
Here’s a report on the whole story:
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