Watch the Hbomber video on "Woke Brands". Another good documentary on this was Generation Like. Marketing firms don't sell products, they sell the identity associated with that product, throughout the 20th century this basically just was selling looking wealthy or cool
Huh? How is this any different from the way marketing has always been done? From the beginnings of TV marketing, it has always been about associating identity with products. That's why you never saw racial minorities used to sell anything on TV, the reason you saw women promote kitchen supplies and appliances exclusively, and no obvious LGBTQ folks at all.
But now, because marketing has been expanded to aspects of communities it used to ignore, it's gets a special name like "Woke Brands"? Total BS.
but then Oreos latched onto the LGBT movement in the 2000s and Oreos sales EXPLODED, consumption of Oreos became a political statement, I eat Oreos to support gay rights and marketing firms realised this.
Did the doc explain why it considered marketing to, and consumption by, the LGBT community to be "political"? Seems to me that in the old days of TV marketing, using straight (appearing) white men to sell to the wealthy and "cool", is no less "political" than marketing today to reach racial minorities, women (cars, sports equipment etc). If you think it's different please explain why.
Then when that coffee machine company pulled sponsorship from Fox they noticed that Conservatives started reacting by buying smashing all their coffee machines and this in turn made the news report on the coffee machine and this "controversy" suddenly everyone was talking about the coffee machine and sales exploded and that was the birth of what Woke marketing, You've seen Nike do it, Marvel do it, Gillette do it, Disney do it and CBS did it with Discovery. It's done specifically to make consumption a political statement and piss off easily triggered conservatives to create new media discussion around a product thus insane amounts of free advertising.
So, when Nike ran that ad with Colin Kaepernick, it was not Nike simply reaching out to their core demographic using a person considered an iconic figure to that demo? Nike's core demo and others who respected, loved, and related, to Kap went out and bought the hell out of Nike gear. I don't see how using a controversial and arguably political figure to sell your product is any different from the cult of personality method of selling marketers have always used on TV.
So, this doc is claiming that even though the marketing appears to be directed at minorities and women, the real purpose is to piss off conservatives? The doc doesn't think the purpose of a commercial featuring a gay couple, or minority, is calculated simply to sell products to those people the same way the Marlboro Man was used to sell cigarettes to "cool", straight (appearing) white men? It's all being done to piss off conservative white people. That is a ridiculous claim.
The ironic thing is that the "advertisement" say that Gillette commercial isn't actually the commercial, it's all the pissed off triggered Conservatives that turn it into a major news story. Literally useful idiots. (actually in fairness both sides are, a left which is dead in any material meaningful way since the collapse of the Union movement and the rise of hard-right Neoliberal economics so it thinks consumption of corporate brands is political activism and a right which is triggered into being advertising for liberals to consume)
I can't say that there hasn't been a company or perhaps even more than one company, that may have done some of the type of marketing described in this doc, but most of this sounds like more alt-right hogwash.
