Given a number of episodes in which brands in the United States attacked Trump, and the boycotts that followed, is it really good practice to mix brands and politics? Airbnb, Starbucks, Corona, Nike, Coca-Cola: some of the biggest brands on the market took a stand against the new immigration policies proposed by the Trump administration. In Brazil, we had the episode in which Amazon took a small jab at Mayor João Dória over the “gray city.” The ad man who created the campaign held an ideological stance on his social media that was completely opposed to that of the elected mayor, but should he really pass his own position on to the brand he manages? What do brands gain from this? In this case, in the end, Amazon gave in to Dória’s response and made 36 e-books available for free.
Marisa also recently produced another case of a brand taking a political stance. After former president Lula attributed to his late wife, Marisa, the interest in buying the controversial triplex in Guarujá, the brand posted images on social media alluding to the case. Are we really entering a time when brands increasingly take political stances? Or are we living in a time when ad people are using the brands they manage for their own activism?
Behind brands there are people. Behind people, there are ideologies. Brands don’t speak for themselves. There are marketers and ad people who, eager to stir controversy, win an award, or get noticed by their peers, end up stamping their own ideology and political stance on the brands they work with. Nowadays, everything is labeled. The “coxinha,” the “mortadela,” the “petralha,” the “isentão,” the “almofadinha,” the extremist, the “reaça,” and the “-phobes.” When brands, with their enormous advertising budgets, take political stances in the mass media, they end up branding people and dividing them even further, generating more labels and confirming once again that the world is heading toward ideological war. In Amazon’s case, if it sided with the so-called left, did it forget that the so-called right also buys its products? When it comes to taking a political stance with your brand, the main thing is to have the nerve to face the consequences and to be labeled in some way by a large share of the public. Some of your customers will be unhappy; that is undeniable. That is why it is so essential to weigh the consequences clearly once, twice, even three times. Create hypotheses. Don’t let the stance of just one person in the company show through. Your brand does need to build a bond with its target audience, but when it offers a product or service to the mass market, do you really want to take a stance for only half of your customers? Perhaps the best way to take a stance that truly makes an impact on society is to show that there aren’t two sides. There is no good and evil. People don’t need to be labeled and polarized the way they constantly are. Standing for respect between people, for compassion, for listening to others with empathy, is probably the best way to position your brand politically. This care with political, social, economic, and other stances needs to start with the very individuals who make up your company. How does your team present itself to the world?
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