Why do businesses get involved with politics?

To follow that up: if Twitter's fascist leanings do not affect the other side, does it have any effect on the fascist side? I guess what I am asking is whether Twitter's political activities actually have much of an effect, in general? I suppose by blocking the non-fascist members' posts, it can limit discussion but if people still use it in the same amounts and recognize its blatant biases, has Twitter actually furthered its nefarious causes?

 

For these social sites, I think the big money maker is "number of views on ads".

I'll tell you about my own behaviour.
Until 2013-14, I was barely active on any social site.
I used to check my fb account once a week may be.
Today I am checking it at least 10 times daily. Sometimes that many times in 2-3 hours...

Its not just about blocking content from one side, Its also about spreading content of other side more.
In just these last 6-8 years, use of whatsapp has grown so much, that I cannot even explain it.
Lot of it is happening via paid APIs.

Its difficult to explain what these companies are doing here...

 

Good question @jrbiz Wondered the same question many times myself. Me thinks reasonable CEO's would not. Looney ones would. Most CEO's make BAD politicians anyway. A litmus test: a CEO gets involved in politics - beware, there's so much more to his/her persona than he/she has lead you to believe. And usually it's not good.

 

You raise a good point. The best CEO's I have known are too busy and/or have higher priorities than getting involved in politics.

 

So, I have a local story on this subject: Back in the May/June timeframe, when Antifa and Black Lives Matter were rioting against the police in the streets of many major cities here, we had an interesting development on the donut front.

Those of you who have seen my posts on my Armchair Dining thread (see my signature line) over the years, might remember a few tributes I did to a Rhode Island donut shop, called Ally's Donuts. Fantastic donuts and donut-based birthday cakes. However, when the rioting broke out, the owner of the shop, in a big display of virtue signaling, announced that he was going to stop offering a small discount that the shop traditionally offered to police customers in support if the Antifa and BLM cause. He got a lot of local publicity on TV and the press because of it. However, despite the cliché that all PR is good, the shop immediately suffered a tremendous drop in business for weeks and weeks, until he humbly and apologetically went on the airwaves to say that he was reversing his originally bad decision and welcoming back his law enforcement customers.

Not sure how well that worked out, but have heard a lot of comments from people that they will never visit that establishment again now that their hatred of the police is out in the open. I will never buy a donut there again.

Their product is good and memories are short, so they will likely survive this incident. But, I bet that the owner has learned a powerful lesson to keep his politics out of his business.

 

Wow, it is going to be really interesting to see how the open hostility to conservatives by Big Tech (Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, etc.) is going to work out for them. Yes, they have friends in the government coming into power right now (there are those who have unequivocally stated for years that they are already just another player in the Fake News industry) but that will change. It always does. Have been hearing a lot about conservatives leaving those services in droves due to their open censoring of the Right and Trump, in particular (by the way, one of the first thing that Fascists and dictators do, is take over the press/social media to silence their opposition and exclusively publish their own propaganda.) Going to be very interested to see how this plays out for these Big Tech companies in the months and years ahead.

 

Businesses pay politicians so that they can crush the competition like facebook can crush small business with suspended ad accounts.

 

Well, significant stuff has happened since I started this thread asking why companies get involved in politics. I still don't get why so many companies continue to do it.

Some of you may have heard how Disney in Florida recently lost its special jurisdiction status when it got woke and vocal on a controversial parental rights in child education issue and the FL state legislature responded with a new law that will hurt Disney. There have also been anecdotes that they have lost a fair amount of attendance over their politics, but they are quiet about that. Disney's shareholders must be very pleased with how this is working out for them.

Now, the PR firm, Zeno Group, who has clients like Coca-Cola, AT&T, Starbucks, Kia Motors, Pizza Hut, and Astra Zeneca, has come out with new guidance for their clients basically telling them to stay out of controversial politics as they are "no-win" situations because you always alienate part of your market. I would be laughing my butt off if it was not such a sad, pathetic situation. A top global PR firm only figures this out now???? As a junior sales rep, many decades ago, even I knew that politics and religion discussions had no place in the business world. These clients should be suing Zeno Group for malpractice over the past 20 years.

 

It should be SELF-EVIDENT that a business, any business, exists for only one reason - to fulfill customer wants and needs. Anything that will torpedo that job is a time bomb waiting to explode. If a business takes care of its customers, those same customers will reward the business with profits. What is so hard about that? Why does a business need an outsider telling a business what that business should already know?

 

This is exactly my point: it is a lose/lose proposition when a business gets involved in controversial politics.

 

Netflix just issued a memo to employees indicating that it is going to stop woke censoring of its artists and invited woke employees to leave the company if they do not like it! Is a backlash to the idiotic, counterproductive woke culture in the works? I think that the Disney catastrophe has opened companies' eyes a bit...

 

Actually, I think that "stupid" is woke and I think that "evil" is woke. Stupid are woke policies like "defund the police" so that rioters, terrorists and other thugs can have free run in mostly minority communities. Evil are woke policies like Critical Race Theory and other such divisive nonsense that poisons the mind of young students and feeble-minded adults. In the case of Netflix, it was both: their censorship of conservatives is nothing short of evil; their wokeness is also proving to have been stupid based on their sinking revenues.

Respect has little to do with wokeness; it is all about controlling what you say and think by pitting one group against another.

 

So, the "Go Woke, Go Broke" mantra seems to be in full effect for Disney. Their new woke film, "Lightyear," just had a horrible opening. Worst, by far, of that entire series of films. So, I started thinking about how might a responsible Board of Directors go about getting Disney's brand out of the woke politics toilet and back into family friendly entertainment mode? Not an easy challenge. I guess that I would start by getting rid of much of the executive team and be sure to install an apolitical team focused on their core mission and not afraid to talk about "getting back to basics."

 

I would not be surprised if Disney case studies start being published by finance and business research organizations in the months ahead. Numbers are starting to confirm the storyline.

Last month, a Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies poll found just 33 percent of adults had a favorable view of Disney. This was a 44 percent decrease from 2021, when Disney enjoyed a 77 percent approval rating. Last week Yahoo! Finance reported that the share price for the Walt Disney Company has fallen 47 percent in the last year, a very similar slide.

And I don't think that this is over yet. I have seen no signs that Disney is changing its approach to mixing politics in its business.

 

For those interested in running, I just read the book by the CEO of Brooks running shoes, Jim Weber: Running with Purpose .

He has a whole chapter on why they take stances on political issues. He gives a pretty convincing discussion of why they do that.

 

Can you provide a few of his most compelling arguments for taking a stance?

 

It mostly around concern for employees and customers.

 

So, it sounds like he did not offer solid business reasons (achieving more revenues, increasing marketshare, etc.) and, instead, was focused on "squishy" stuff with no measurable results?