Marketing specialists say people will react negatively when they feel like they’re ‘being pushed too far’.
Typically, such a protest has little impact, but this time in-store sales have seen a slump, with Bud Light even losing its position as the best-selling beer in the US to Modelo Especial in recent weeks, according to Bump Williams Consulting. And at annual shareholder meetings, the number of resolutions opposing companies’ inclusion of environmental, social and governance criteria — particularly on diversity — has more than doubled in the past three years, according to the Sustainable Investment Institute.While such resolutions usually garner very few votes, they are nevertheless having an impact.
“The tension of navigating between groups of people that think very, very differently has always been there,” said Alison Taylor, a specialist in corporate ethics at New York University.Corporations “got involved in controversial questions in 2017-2018, when there was a lot of organised resistance to Trump — this seemed like a really good way to attract young people and generate shareholder value,” she said.