The wokeness vocabulary joins the thesaurus of corporate buzzwords used by executives trying to hide from their investors that they don’t know what they’re doing. Making headlines for their wokeness changes the conversation from their business model to their politics. Touting a brand as socially responsible evades questions about its financial viability.
Take Coke, please.
Coca-Cola’s global sales fell 28% in the second quarter of 2020 from $10 billion to $7.15 billion. The corporate giant blamed the pandemic which had shuttered movie theaters and bars, and began cutting its small brands while concentrating on its big signature brands.
But Coke was struggling even long before the pandemic.
Despite all the international marketing, North America is still the biggest soda market. And the average American is down to drinking 40 gallons of soda from 50 gallons two decades ago. The shift was driven by the same demographic that tends to go woke, young white urban lefties, who became more likely to drink bottled water. Coke chased them by going into bottled water and vitamin drinks, but also by shifting away from a family brand once associated with Santa.
Santa and the polar bears reflected a Coke that was marketed to children. But fewer parents are comfortable with their children living off soda. That’s why one survey found that the number of children drinking over 3 cans of soda a day fell from 10% to 3.3%. The drop in soda consumption, once again, was heaviest among younger and wealthier urban white lefties.
The economic consequences of young white wealthy lefties dropping soda wasn’t just a sales issue. Wokes are a politically narcissistic demographic that legislates its tastes into law, pursuing the legalization of drugs, and bans on soda. Both drug legalization and soda bans were, as usual, done in the name of oppressed minorities, but had little impact on them.
Legal drugs are too expensive for minorities and the infamous soda taxes don’t work. But the soda industry remembers what happened to tobacco and other lifestyle habits that fell afoul of the cultural values of the new woke ruling class. That’s another reason why it went ‘woke’.
Banning soda from schools and taxing it in stores precedes the class action lawsuits and national legislative activities that would effectively eliminate sodas from the marketplace.
Coke isn’t just virtue signaling to prop up sales in a declining market: it’s also afraid.
Read the whole thing. As Glenn noted last night, it’s been quite a ride for Coke, as it tries to incorporate the zeitgeist into its advertising over the decades:
