A new system to name and shame woke companies

The following article by Will Hild is sponsored by Consumers’ Research.

What could possess Dutch brewing company Anheuser-Busch InBev to put a trans activist at the forefront of its Bud Light marketing efforts? The promotion was a grave offense to the values of its customer base after all. But Bud Light is hardly alone. A litany of America’s largest corporations have recklessly exposed themselves at the very front of the woke political agenda.

(Article republished from Breitbart.com)

This week, Consumers’ Research, a consumer advocacy group founded in 1929, is inaugurating “Woke Alerts,” a free direct-to-consumer text service to call out corporate pandering to the far left’s ideology when it occurs. The Woke Alerts service will be backed by a massive digital campaign to make consumers aware of how to sign up and use it. The Woke Alerts project is a dynamic extension of the Consumers First Initiative, in which Consumers’ Research called out companies including Coca-Cola, Nike, American Airlines, State Farm, Ticketmaster, MLB, America Express and Levi’s for nefarious wokeness at their customers’ expense.

Users sign up for Woke Alerts through the Consumers’ Research website. Subscribers will be notified by text message when companies cave to the woke mob – so they know the brands attacking their values.

In light of the recent direction taken by companies like Bud Light, Jack Daniels, and Bank of America, Woke Alerts is being launched to help consumers make better-informed decisions about where to spend their money. It is our belief at Consumers’ Research that companies should focus on their customers and not woke politicians and progressive activists. Nor should corporate executives be compelled to act in a certain way based on pressure from ESG extremists. Woke Alerts will inform consumers not just about a company’s decision to descend into woke activism, but they’ll also offer insights into what’s really behind those decisions, including the desire to mask the company’s objectionable behavior.

In some cases, C-suite executives are incentivized to go full on woke in order to get a high score on the Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which is managed by the world’s largest LGBTQ+ political lobby, the Human Rights Campaign. Think of the CEI as the ESG movement’s lesser-known cousin. CEOs who fail to receive top scores reportedly risk compensation cuts and smaller bonuses, in addition to seeing investment dollars dry up from the three woke asset management giants – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Bank. And in far too many cases, a company’s woke virtue-signaling is an attempt to divert attention away from their mistreatment of customers, business malpractice, and their exploitation of cheap foreign labor, including child and forced labor.

In addition to informing consumers, Woke Alerts is serving notice to corporations that their woke virtue-signaling isn’t going to work anymore. Now, consumers will know immediately when they take political positions in areas where they have no expertise, instead of focusing on providing the best product at the lowest price for their customers.

Will Hild is the executive director of Consumers’ Research, the nation’s oldest consumer protection organization.

Read more at: Breitbart.com