Why the fuck are brands now preaching ‘right-think’ at us ?

[justanotherneighinparadise]

Honestly I don’t understand. Why can’t I open an email or look at an advert on a placard without some moral message being conveyed? What happened? It’s used to be Bernard Matthews trying to convince me to eat machine blasted turkey coated in tasty breadcrumbs. Now it’s George from Asda lecturing me about how to be a good LGBT+ ally!!

I mean honest to god I preferred it when they were just honest with their message. Come and shop here because we’re a bit shit but we’re ruddy cheap.

Be gone with your bullshit woke credentials 🤬

@HermioneWeasley

Shitting hell, it includes “love has no age limit”

All critical thinking seems to go out the window when there’s a rainbow on something.

This needs to be all over Twitter.... Absolutely no conscience, as long as they promise they’re progressive or have a rainbow flag It’s all good. Who cares about women and children anyway?! Shame on you George.

They should consider themselves damn lucky I placed an order yesterday, I wouldn’t of if I’d seen this!

Virtue signalling. They think this is the majority opinion, so there is no risk to them if they, for example, tweet about how JK Rowling needs to educate herself on trans issues.

They're trying to build a personal, positive association in the mind of the customer. So that when that customer sees the Body Shop logo, they automatically think "Oh, they're modern / funny / straight talking human beings who care about the things I care about. I should buy their stuff!" Advertising has always been about forging a personal connection with the customer. See, the tired mum in that Calpol ad is just like you! The trouble is, it's getting harder for advertisers to reach an audience. We stream online, skip ads, don't buy print media as much anymore. So brands are leaning harder on social media to get the job done.

But ultimately money talks, and it's no good pandering to one demographic if you alienate your actual paying customers to do it. It's why the angry threads and brand boycotts on Mumsnet are such an effective tool. They're not just pointless complaining. They tell brands that we won't be overlooked or actively insulted while they chase the woke kids they think are this era's big spenders. We're a force to be reckoned with.

That I you for highlighting this OP. I’ve just checked and I’ve received this too. And I’m going to respond similarly. Sick of it too.

“love has no age limit” wasn’t the at PIE motto? Who wrote that for them and why the hell did they think it was ok? Didn’t anyone in-house raise their bloody hand amd flag or as very inappropriate?

Doesn’t anyone have any scruples? (Says she angrily but I have had this ‘discussion’ at work and told the team that I’d they wanted to redesign the website to be my guest... and good luck since it was in html).

Apologies, Clymene, I should have said (if the advertising agencies are to be believed) in terms of reach. In terms of profitability, marketing revenue attribution is certainly a field that big businesses which advertise engage in. For Asda, as they're owned by Walmart, that would be done by MMA SMoX:
www.mmaglobal.com/smox
It doesn't really seem any more supportable to say that it's a pointless waste of time and money than that it's definitely profitable, unless you happen to have some corporate revenue attribution figures to hand?

On the subject of Asda specifically, as the document you linked to says, their primary age group aligns moderately with millennials, who are much more likely to engage in boycotts and, more importantly, buycotts (where a person chooses a brand based on its activism). Apologies for another flashy document, this one at least has citations:
www.webershandwick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Battle_of_the_Wallets.pdf
so perhaps it's not as illogical as it might seem.

Who have people emailed? The CEO?

Wasn’t that in essence criticising your customer though? I’m trying to think of a comparison with women. Maybe Tena lady calling us lazy cunts for not doing our kegals post parturm an interesting analogy!

I thought maybe they realised that it’s mostly women doing the shopping so they’d be the ones choosing which razors to buy, but I think they pissed off so many men in the process that we weren’t allowed to buy them for our menfolk anymore! (Not my Nigel etc)

Oh, OP: you made me snort with laughter!!

justanotherneighinparadise

"Now it’s George from Asda lecturing me about how to be a good LGBT+ ally!! I mean honest to god I preferred it when they were just honest with their message. Come and shop here because we’re a bit shit but we’re ruddy cheap."

I think they should have that in their next maerketing campaign.....we're a bit shit but we are ruddy cheap!"

It's Pride month so bang on the nail. Means corporate can ride the trending #hashtags for cheap and look all caring & conscientious.

I think they should have that in their next marketing campaign.....we're a bit shit but we are ruddy cheap!"
Given the economic crash looming that would chime 99% of their demographic.

Are there any products aimed predominantly at men that have done this sort of stuff?

I notice HSBC have been busy lately, telling us what to think. And they’ve got Toksvig on it now, doing voiceover on radio ads (poss just somebody with a similar voice, in which case my apologies).

@DreadPirateLuna

Talk is cheap - they should put their money where their mouth is.

This exactly. Don't get me started on the companies saying "Black Lives Matter" while exploiting the mostly black and brown lives in their sweatshops.

This. (I wish there was a like button).

Because it's cheap PR.

Costs less than actually transforming their work-places into, say, a good place for women to work at.

ASDA deserves a twitter/email/complaint storm over the ‘love has no age limit’ shite.

Hopefully, if this backfires on them, others might at least cast an eye over whatever wokery they peddle, before giving grooming a free pass if it has a rainbow on it.

Virtue signaling, aka endorsing a cause, has been a marketing tactic for quite a while now.
I think it started with sports sponsors putting their names all over everything and using the sponsorship as a tax write off. Now it's everywhere.

Asda. They're Walmart. Says it all.

Indeed are at it now

Indeed stands in solidarity with the Black community against historical and present systemic racism, violence and hate. We will not be silent. #BlackLivesMatter

followed by a long self indulgent message from the "heartbroken" CEO saying to those "outside the Black community ... I encourage you to educate yourself and find ways to take action where you are"

I go on Indeed to try and find a new job not get a bloody lecture and be told to educate myself.

“love has no age limit” wasn’t the at PIE motto? Who wrote that for them and why the hell did they think it was ok? Didn’t anyone in-house raise their bloody hand amd flag or as very inappropriate?

No one expects these slogans to have any intellectual rational meaning. Like Love Is Love, they don't stop to think through the implications, in that case it's just in support of same sex relationships and if you think otherwise yo must be a pervert. They assume it means old people or a generation gay like 30 and 60. Obviously no one would ever mean x, y, or z.

Of course if these slogans can logically also be applied to these really problematic scenarios, it means the logic behind them is wrong in the every case. Same sex love may be ok, but it's not is not ok because "love is love".

It's teaching people to accept spurious logic so long as it seems to support an idea that they support. We're seeing the results of that now, the kind of mind it creates.

Generation gap, obviously, not generation gay!

It’s like greenwashing for the woke era. Exploitation of people / resources transmuted to ethical purity through PR.

Ah bollocks. Asda is the only supermarket within walking distance and prior to covid I shopped there daily. I am out of that habit now but have school meal vouchers that I can only spend there. Over £120 so far.

Jeez it’s just virtue signalling. To who I don’t know

I just want them to authorise my alcohol.

Don’t care about their pronouns

Diesel Douglas Murray doing what he does best!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3837767-Douglas-Murray-letting-rip-about-Starbucks-is-an-absolute-joy

It is quite disturbing that the job of making public opinion seems to have been devolved to massive corporations and their ad agencies.

At the other end, there is a culture developing where companies are encouraged to punish their employees for wrongthink. I think this is an extremely dangerous idea which legitimises political victimisation.