The goal of so-called woke companies is to make money. Outrage or praise are just attention units, and the companies are amoral. I just published about why I think Bud Light’s association with Dylan Mulvaney, and the conservative backlash is effective marketing.
Mulvaney has 10 million followers on TikTok, 1.8 million on Instagram. Honestly that’s not much in terms of influencer status. With no Twitter, and a non active YouTube with under 10k subs Mulvaney is a lower mid level influencer. But the situation garnered several hundred million impressions for Bud Light.
I just counted 61 mainstream articles mentioning this situation in the last 48 hours. I’m too lazy to calculate out the rack rates for buying that much advertising, but conservatively $322,000 worth of earned media, in the last 48 hours, and that is not the period of peek popularity for the topic.
Writing for Rolling Stone Miles Klee examines a long list of companies from Keurig to The NFL that “got woke” but also got the bag.
Companies That Get ‘Woke’ Aren’t Going Broke — They’re More Profitable Than Ever
By: Miles Klee, April 8, 2023, rollingstone.com
From the article,
“So, how is Keurig doing now? The parent company, Keurig Green Mountain, acquired Dr Pepper Snapple Group in a $18.7-billion deal in 2018, forming Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. — the third-largest beverage company in North America. This behemoth’s annual gross profits have swelled ever since, reaching $7.3 billion in 2022, a nearly 5 percent increase from the previous year. Turns out a handful of Hannity viewers throwing a tantrum didn’t make a dent.”