Get Woke, Go Broke - Selling Authoritarianism

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Get Woke, Go Broke - Selling Authoritarianism

This could also be called "The Virtue of Slavery."

Different companies have flirted with selling social justice because they believe the millennial demographic is mostly made up of social justice warriors. Sjw's are the loudest, but not the majority. And some major corporations are learning this the hard way.

Remember those gawdawful Gillette ads about how men were nasty to women, but could "do better"?

How does an eight billion dollar loss sound?

Gillette is 'shifting the spotlight from social issues' after series of woke ads — and losses

Gillette ‘Shifting Spotlight from Social Issues’ After Anti-Masculinity Ad Disaster

Gillette learned one cannot guilt customers into buying razor blades. That's a mistake for newbies, not companies the size of Gillette. But here we are.

The real problem is not selling a product with an underdog story, not even a social class underdog story, i.e., social justice story, so long as the customer feels empowered, not demeaned. Ads that do this tend to work.

The problem comes from selling authoritarianism.

Power in the message must go to the individual, not to the tribe. Individuals buy retail products. Tribes rarely do. When power goes to the tribe in an ad message, that's propaganda. That's selling authoritarianism. And propaganda doesn't sell razor blades.

This is pretty simple, but the dorks in some major companies seem to have difficulty understanding it. I could mention not using their own customers as the villains in the ad stories, too, but one thing at a time. These people need one to go sloooooooooooww...

This problem has become so pervasive these days, there is now a popular saying: Get woke, go broke.

It's almost like the free market is telling them: Social justice authoritarianism is poison and if you sell it, you deserve to lose your money.

But a corrective is happening and another popular saying illustrates it well: Money talks, bullshit walks.

Michael