Go Woke & Go Broke! New list of boycotted brands..

I like to look on the bright side. I don't know what the future holds for Balenciaguar (thank you YouTube stranger), but somewhere out there is a group of around eight friends who now know exactly what they're wearing to the New Year fancy dress party.

E45

watching that sixth form performance art, you would have no idea what they were trying to flog. At least the bud light advert had some beer in it.

Et tu the Guardian 😭

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/22/jaguar-new-branding-cars-donald-trump

There is something ludicrous about a guy poised to roll out cars that are going to start at a hundred grand boasting about being mega-inclusive.

My fella's dad has got a jag, he's a member of an owners club. He's in his 80's.

I cannot wait to see the photos from the Christmas party.

Quote from the Jaguar boss:

"We don’t want to necessarily leave all of our customers behind".

The word "necessarily" does some heavy lifting.

Who do they think is their target market? Not surely affluent 30 somethings whose father is a fully paid up member of the gin and jag set. Even if they earn more than average they are struggling with kids, mortgage, whether they can afford VAT on school fees, and whether there will be an inheritance at the end of the day. House prices are much higher than a generation ago, child care is more, and other costs too. Daddy's generation were luckier.

Are they instead aiming for the young international rich? Dubai visiting trustafarians. Hip hop stars? Well paid footballers? Is the idea to compete with the flash sports cars regularly ticketed outside Harrods. It's quite a leap from a home counties golf club car park.

And isn't it interesting that JaGUar have said their new target market is younger, urban people who want exclusivity? Woke culture is all 'inclusivity, inclusivity, inclusivity' until it comes to money. The poor are still tainted.

Arf! 😄

Total Titter on X has created a great graphic on how Jaguar owners are coming out to support the new branding.😆

If their design decisions on the new car are as a bad as the marketing, the brand is sunk. Their chief exec is on a time limit.

🤔

https://archive.ph/wQBRD

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/22/jaguar-boss-says-criticism-rebrand-vile-hatred/

Will someone take that shovel off him!

It's a funny concept. That you might buy a product despite their advertising, and only if there were no obvious alternative.

Unless they are genuinely capturing whole new markets it makes spend on advertising pretty redundant.

I disagree. Boycott is possibly too strong. Perhaps a change in preference and perception.

If you go into a store to buy beer and they only have BudLight, you buy it. You may think it is a crap beer, you may not want to support their crap advertising, but you want beer and this is all there is.

Later you go into another store with two beer options. You have a choice. You do not buy the Budlight because you prefer the other. That preference might be down to taste, or something less obvious. I often opt for SE Asian beer because I used to live there, and have a lingering loyalty. In the case of BudLight it would be because of the advertising. (And because it tastes like gnat's piss). .

That's my point. It's only a useful list if you have access to plenty of stores. I used to have such a list, but I changed careers and travelled a lot for work. It's was often small towns all over the world. I'd be lucky if it even had one store and I was even luckier if I had the time to go. If I needed something like toothpaste or shampoo, I would get whatever was available. Let's just say that I stopped bothering with that list from that point on.

Boycotting really is a luxury believe.

I don't know if there is anything new, but they came out with some ridiculous genderist language at one point, people mocked them calling them "Rage on Behalf of the Machine".

I tried googling!

Thinking Bluesky?

I know this is brands but bands.... can anyone explain why lots of women like us on twitter are annoyed with rage against the machine?

No one is forcing anyone to adhere to this list but it’s a very useful guide when choosing where to spend our money. I still use some stores on this list due to them being the main store locally, all with reduced spend however most I hold firm particularly those where there’s easy alternatives.

Body shop and Lush for example have never seen another penny of mine. Boots expenditure is very rare..

I used to use Tesco for the main dry goods shop, all supermarkets near me are problematic but having Jane Fae as a spokesman was beyond the pale as far as I’m concerned so I switched away from Tesco.

M&S (non food) and John Lewis turned out to be easy to boycott and use smaller shops despite them previously being the first places I’d go to.

For many people it won't be a boycott just a revised perception of a brand.

I happily walk past Lush, when previously I would have gone in to buy Christmas presents for a younger generation. If given a choice it is Greggs over Starbucks, simply because my perception of their coffee altered when their tax dodges came to light a decade ago. I used to enjoy the warm cosiness of M&S and John Lewis/Waitrose but no more. They may have been staples of middle-class middle-aged womanhood, but they now prioritise men over their core market.

I am not so purist that I won't pick up a pint of milk in the station M&S if I am coming home late. However I am not longer tempted to linger and pick up a few extra items. Their brand image is tainted. This affects sales.

Who am I missing?

The feasibility of such a list.
It will just get longer and longer. Especially when you travel and you are maybe in a small town with a tiny drug-/convenient store where you maybe have only two brands to choose from, if you are lucky, adhering to boycott lists is simply not a possibility.

Having a choice between products or having the option to boycott is a luxury position to be in.

A huge problem is that marketing professionals are a relatively homogenous group themselves and are surrounded by people who are knee deep in this nonsense.

More problematically many have forgotten that their fundamental job is to understand their target market and deliver to their requirements, rather than their own.

That is first class from both.

I hear you Garlic in that I feel the calling to get back into working in brands as a genX. I look at the decisions some of these marketing managers make and cringe. I can only assume that they focus solely on the 'inspire' aspect rather than creating a demand and urge to buy. It comes across as preaching when you consider these types of ads in the current political climate.

More of firms ignoring/insulting their core market.

Bud Light did it. They wanted to move their image away from their good ole boys.

Countless firms have forgotten that "boring" middle aged mums control the household budget.

Jaguar, surely, screams "I've made it". Perfect for when you purr into the golf club. Or visit clients or your portfolio of rental properties. A predominantly male status symbol, something to aspire to.

I don't get. I don't identify with either the BudLight market or Jaguar drivers. But they exist and have every right to be. The 19th hole at a golf club is my idea of hell. I do identify with the busy mum who has a couple of hours to go clothes shopping or play sport/swim, whilst the dad looks after the kids, only to find a man in the female changing room. With advertising slanted towards the blue hair mob. What was meant to be a snatched catch up with a friend, but instead choking over your coffee as the chain virtue signals their support for Mermaids.

What is with this obsession with youth, and indeed not even youth, but a particularly confused sub-section of youth. The odd thing is that many of the young people I know, DC and their friends, are quite sober. We know alcohol and cigarette consumption are falling, many choose not to drive, they have their heads down and know where they are going. They are kind and accepting but are becoming tired of having to carry the "special ones", and of prioritising some over others. They are becoming adept at switching off when faced with D&I "education" and finding the "right" answers for the online screening that almost inevitably form part of a career job application.

Aldi rocks Twitter. Every time.

When other companies are making open fun of you, you know you're in trouble.