We have been discussing the right of shareholders to push back on the social and political campaigns of corporations that reduce share value or damage brands. The concern over the “Go Woke, Go Broke” trend is greatest with companies like Disney, which has been particularly open about its corporate advocacy. That has proven most controversial not just in its announced opposition to the Florida education bill but also children’s movies that contained controversial sexual elements. Now, Deadline has released an analysis showing that Disney lost a staggering quarter of a billion dollars on two of these woke movies: Lightyear and Strange World.
According to Deadline, Lightyear lost $106 million and Strange World lost a whopping $152 million.
“Strange World” is about an explorer family named the Clades. The movie, however, caused a great deal of buzz due to young Ethan talking to his grandfather about his same-sex crush on another boy.
Then there is the actual “Buzz.” In Buzz Lightyear, Disney featured a same-sex kiss. Pixar initially removed the scene. However, after the controversy over the Florida education bill, it was put back into the movie as a reported statement of solidarity.
For many parents, the sexuality elements were a statement that they did not want to address with their young children. The movies bombed at the box office to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollar loss.
Disney has even entered the fray over racial reparations with a controversial children’s episode.
Obviously Disney has company these days in being the subject of a public backlash.
In the case of Bud Light, there has been a backlash and boycott over its sponsorship deal with controversial transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
While Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a non-apology apology, customers are reportedly shunning not just Bud Light but other Anheuser-Busch products.
For its part, Nike is unapologetic and pushed back on critics over its campaign featuring Mulvaney. It told consumers that they needed to be “kind” and “inclusive” while declaring “hate speech, bullying, or other behaviors that are not in the spirit of a diverse and inclusive community will be deleted” from its sites.
These companies could trigger shareholder revolts if the moves continue to spark boycotts or diminish sales.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies have already led to limited litigation, including shareholder demands for greater transparency or ESG commitment from companies. Some shareholders have also argued that the political views of corporate officers are being pursued over the profits of the company.
Such lawsuits on both sides can be difficult. Shareholders may allege a breach of the “duty of loyalty,” but must show that the officials acted in a self-interested manner or in bad faith. Alternatively, they could argue a breach of the “duty of care,” which requires a showing that the officials acted in a grossly negligent manner.
Disney executives were clearly willing to risk taking a loss over these political and artistic decisions. These moves may be personally gratifying and even professionally advantageous for individual executives, though it did not work out well for former Disney CEO Bob Chapek. The question is whether shareholders will continue to subsidize such campaigns regardless of their impact on the brand or the bottomline.
…..Mulvaney may finally be the punchline for the trans joke on America….
For all the “women’s rights” movements through the years, the democrats captured them. What do women have now? Nothing. And what are America’s testosterone challenged men doing to defend them? Nothing. We should be ashamed of who cis men have become. Stick up for women. They need you now more than ever.
This is NOT meant as a hateful comment. It is meant as genuine concern.
Why, why, are activist sources so intent on destroying a peaceful, respectful, vastly heterosexual, 67% White/Caucasian majority?
I cannot remember when I turned on the MSM evening news (NBC, ABC) and saw a blond, White person in a TV commercial.
-Instead, I see Blacks with “Afro” Big Hair (reminiscent of the 1960s/1970s militant/communistic Angela Davises);
romantically-expressive B/W interracial couples; two men kissing; Mulvaney prancing around in girl’s tights; illegal immigration and porous borders out of control.
It’s as though all of society’s minorities have gone from fractions to fractious.
A big-tent coalition to overcome and destroy a sound majority that envisioned and created this great nation?
No bombs, no war, “We will destroy you from within,” said Nikita Krushchev.
“Lightyear lost $106 million and Strange World lost a whopping $152 million.” (JT)
Only to be outdone by Bud Light (and its parent company) which lost some $6 billion in market cap over just 6 days.
Maybe there is a God, after all.
@Sam,
Don’t be too sure.
Turley points to two movies that showed massive losses.
Lets look at the longer term loss of subscribers due to Disney’s wokeness.
Also consider the creative talent. Disney’s talent leaders openly admit to their agenda.
So Disney is up there, albeit the decline is over months/years not a sharp hit.
Budweiser’s ad was so wrong on so many levels, the VP of Marketing and most of her staff should be sent walking. Nothing short of a house cleaning would be a good start to fix this problem.
-G
A big company may seem daunting to understand. They have a product to sell. It might be something tangible or it might be information or some type of service. They construct a model to replicate good ideas and set into motion an organization and employ resources. These may be people, structures, or capital. They operate on a set of standard operating procedures and go forth in the world to convince people to buy the product they are selling. Boil it down to this. The person selling hotdogs from a cart or the individual cleaning houses or tending yards does the some thing. They happen to be a single person business. If they have a good product to sell; if they produce the product consistently; if they innovate based on the needs and desires of their customers, they will prosper. If they lose site of this, then their customers will no longer buy their products.
I could not care less the political leaning of a business owner or person providing services to me. If they can repair my car, fix a complex problem in my home, solve a medical problem, etc. It doesn’t matter. However, if they make a point to push their views, lifestyle or philosophy on me, then it is like an actor who breaks character during a production. They call it breaking the fourth wall. Then, I would think carefully if I want to spend more money with them.
When a corporate leader or committee loses touch with their customers, when they lose sight of the idea that the money that pours into their company doesn’t come from some magical realm. It comes from customers. A bartender, barista, or restaurant server has a better understanding of economics than the Ivy League MBA who has no experience working with customers. Anger half of your customer base and you will have half the business. Simple.
Maybe it is time for these massive companies to be taken down a notch or two and let the smaller, more innovative and agile companies take their place. I will not shed a tear.
During Holy Week, we went to watch a movie about Abraham called “His Only Son.” The theater was full. The movie was made on a shoestring budget and the lead actors were Lebanese and Iranian. The budget for the movie was less than 1% of a typical Hollywood production. I was curious to see how some other Hollywood movies such as John Wick 4, Creed 3, etc. were doing. The theaters were nearly empty.
The golden age of Hollywood was built by providing people who went to the theater an escape from the turmoil of life. The audience needs to be transported to another place for a couple of hours, away from the cares of life. The dance scenes, the grand productions and excellent plots were the core products from Hollywood that people were (are) willing to buy. Tom Cruise figured this out and is marvelously successful. Good for him. The others in this industry seem to have lost touch with their customers.
The wise among us understand that what we care about from those who provide us goods and services is the value of those goods and services,
not the politics of those those produce and sell them.
What is called “cancel culture” is the unwise choice to make decisions regarding the 90% of our lives that has nothing to do with politics on a political basis.
All that accomplishes is politicizing everything and increasing political conflict and even the likelyhood of political violence.
Most of us do not care about the politics of actors, teachers, our pharmacist – until their politics infects their product.
When politics poisons the quality of movies and shows – we quit watching.
When it poisons our schools – we change the schools or move out kids. For several months one new state per month has shifted from funding schools to funding kids. That means parents can send their kids to the school of their choice using the same funds that would have been sent to their local public school.
Few people want those who supply what they want and need delivering indoctrination in addition.
Just to be clear – those providing our wants and needs are free to do so. In Niche markets that can even be a wise business decision.
But political engagement for mass market products is a lose-lose.
And as we are increasing seeing both political poles can “cancel” producers.
The right likes to label anyone who does not tow their line as “racist” or “transphobic,” but in reality, they’re fighting an uphill battle against millions of years of evolution. They claim that gender is “fluid” but racial behavior is “fixed” (once a white supremacist, always a white supremacist). Both claims fly in the face of science. The old adage, You can’t fool Mother Nature, has never been more fully vindicated.
The “right” is being methodically stamped out of America’s consciousness by our communist media, education system, and the courts. Good to see you here, Comrade!
GioCon,
I think you meant to say the Left calling everyone a ‘racist’… ‘natzi’ … ‘homophobic’, ‘transphobic’.
The beyond hyperbolic chants that ‘silence is death’. ‘trans rights are human rights’ etc …
The reality is that we have liberals that need to find something to fight for.
I mean the whole ‘separate but equal’ is disgusting.
-G
Please don’t call them liberals. “Liberal “is exactly what they reject. They are the most illiberal cohort I have ever seen. They are progressives, which has always stood for government by “experts,” rewards given to the favored, and everyone else gets scrod (the pluperfect).
No matter the intensity of the propaganda mchine, the pure fact of the matter is that the prog/left agenda is just a small, but amplified portion of our society and I believe they have over-reached their message. They cannot convince enough sane people that what they are selling has any value.
I can’t understand how so many people with “alternate lifestyles” got hired into a family-entertainment business like Disney. Now Disney faces the dilemma of letting them destroy the company or a class-action lawsuit for getting rid of them. Someone was an idiot for a very long time.
Ditto, for hiring a female Harvard MBA to market a product popular with young men. I think a Dallas cheerleader could easily have done a better job. And Dylan acts more like a female minstrel show–as if he actually resents women. None of this makes sense except as decadent, leftwing politics.
Don’t hire leftwing leadership. “Go woke, go broke.” There’s a definite trend here.
Yuengling Brewery Tweet Shows Some Beer Companies Still Understand Their Customer Base
by Mike LaChance Apr. 16, 2023 7:00 am
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/04/yuengling-brewery-tweet-shows-some-beer-companies-still-understand-their-customer-base/
Diogenes,
One would like to think company leadership is looking at these two major losses and are taking notes. Or they should.
But if there are leftists already in leadership positions, then, like the leftists that comment on the good professor’s blog, they will ignore it, deny it, twist it into a mental pretzel to justify that America is full of . . . whatever they spew.
What they cannot ignore, deny, or try to twist is profit losses and a red bottom line.
Will they learn and go back to a winning strategy?
Or double down on “Go woke, go broke?”
If it is the latter, then look for someone who sees this weakness and takes advantage of it.
As I understand it, the beer company Yuengling is doing quite well. They put out a simple tweet on Friday:
“Yuengling, The Oldest Brewery In America. Independently Owned and Family Operated since 1829 because we make good beer.”
Gentlemen, excellent points! Yuengling demonstrates that when it comes to business, the best politics is NO politics. How was that ever unfair to anybody?
So where are the Lawyers filing Civil Suits on the behalf of Share Holders?
Kick off the legal proceedings and remove the Board Members who voted and supported all this Wokism and violation of their fiduciary responsibilities….hit them in their Wallets and send them packing!
1st we have to get done laughing & making/sharing jokes about AB’s Butt Lite beer & other stuff. lol;)
https://www.infowars.com/posts/carpe-donktum-tweet-mocking-trans-indoctrination-in-schools-goes-viral-triggers-far-left-groomers/
Priceless! Thank you.
Woke doesn’t work naturally. In fact, the only thing that works to change an entire culture, in defiance of nature, is force. ESG is force. Green New Deal is force. The more we resist, the more force that will be used. Keep resisting.
All government IS is force. Which is why the less of it, the better.
The very notion of woke is so azz-backward and childishly naive coming from supposedly emotionally mature adult humans as to be unfathomable. How about having that beer because you like it, or are thirsty, whomever you may be?
What we are really talking about here (particularly with Disney) is the self-proclaimed superiority of a group of people so ignorant they themselves just learned the earth revolves around the sun or what their belly button is and so entitled and arrogant they believe they are the first people on earth to have this special knowledge. Marxists, blind Progressives, Silicon Valley, millennials, and gen z have dragged human culture backward by decades, possibly centuries. It is hive mind of the highest order, and for these tools to think they have any relevance in terms of countering culture or new ideas in their breathtaking and utterly predictable conformity is a joke beyond measure.
The elites pulling the strings really do operate based on wealth though – the pocket book is absolutely the best place to hit them, as is protecting the first and second amendments fiercely. They must know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are in fact the ones with a moral and intellectual deficiencies, and that they are indeed a marginal minority. To be blunt – without their money, they ain’t nothin’.
That’s a just sum for all the ‘queer’ one Disney employee was so gleefully anticipating being able to pour into her work. The ‘alphabet people’ don’t appear to be the cheese that’s been feeding Disney’s mouse.all these years..
It is like the guy I talked to at a local small business that sells beer,
“You want to be whatever, it is a free country. Just don’t shove it in my face!”
I have read quotes taken from Mulvaney’s twitter feed on girlhood, and I found them to be demeaning to women.
So, now we take an ordinary, mediocre, male, put him in a dress, slap some lipstick on him and declare he is a extraordinary women? Or one that did not so well in men’s swimming, but now dominates the women’s league?
THAT is insulting to women!
May woke companies bottom line continue to suffer.
That reparations cartoon is such over-the-top, angry agitprop my jaw about fell open. I’ve seen bad, and was prepared for worse, but that one blew me away when I saw it a month or so ago. It would be bad enough if hard-edged indoctrination meant to instill a sense of group hatred and zero-sum entitlement had been aimed at older teens. It’s chilling to see someone animate and target to younger children and portray their simple-minded, ignorant scapegoating and rage as the righteous pursuit of justice. Very Cultural Revolution if not Khymer Rouge.
It is neither unusual nor new for corporate managements to misuse corporate resources and to place their own interests above the interests of shareholders. Historically corporate managers have violated their fiduciary duty to shareholders by lining their own pockets. Now, however, we have corporate managers who are using corporate resources to advance ideologies at odds with capitalism itself. And democrat controlled governments are seeking to aid them with anti-capitalist ESG policies. They seem to be hell-bent on killing the golden goose that has produced the wealth we all enjoy.
It seems that these “woke” and sexual issues are not so much about acceptance…but are considered a “must accept” approach and the avenue for such a stance is to push it on individuals with no concern how it may affect them. It forces a “bad person” image on any individual with an opposing viewpoint. A sad trend that has taken root through coercion and open threats. Sad
The National Socialist Democrat WOKE Party escalates their the War on WOMEN.
Why does Mulvaney dress like a little girl? Asking for Biden.
We have a PEDO for President: Why so Suprised? You really think Biden got 81 million votes?
2024 Dominion says we got this. No need to vote.
Can Americans make it more obvious they don’t support the woke intellectual ideas of perverse right and wrong?
At their core, the WOKE mob are socialists who don’t care whether western society likes or even accepts their recalcitrant conduct . . . their goal isn’t to persuade or win hearts and minds . . . it’s to destroy!
Adam Smith (father of capitalism) is looking down from the heavens and through the tears he’s shedding over CEO’s ignoring the lessons he taught in, “The Wealth of Nations” a tiny small emerged.
My main concern with the commercial is the same as commentator Megyn Kelly’s: It’s totally demeaning to women, especially if the goal of the ad was to lift up the image and awareness of transgender people.
AB could have created a bar scene where a group of guys says, “We like Bud light!” and a group of women says, “We like Bud Light!” and then Dylan could have been sitting in the table in the middle and simply said I like Bud light too and so do many of my friends.
Good point Gordy . . . but the the goal of the WOKE mob isn’t to, “to lift up the image and awareness of transgender people” . . . as taught by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, it’s to tear down and destroy the institutions of western society.
So Disney is “woke” and depraved and wants to have sex with children. I bet they also are Satan worshiping cannibals (and Democrats).