Robby Starbuck is reminding corporate America that they only lose when they play politics.
Leading corporate players and brands such as Ford, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply and John Deere have backed off from “Great Awokening” DEI initiatives after Starbuck spotlighted pandering excesses such as drag shows for kids. Though he profiles as a conservative activist – and conservatives certainly herald his victories – it’s a mistake to understand him as such.
Starbuck is reminding corporate America of some sound and fundamental insights about business. Those lessons include risk-management and overall brand intelligence. By showing successful companies that wokeness is an uncertainty or a threat, he is helping businesses anticipate and mitigate harm.
And by reminding companies to stay aligned with their core customers, he is delivering an overdue reminder about brand intelligence. In these ways, he is proving himself both a reliable corporate strategist and a savvy activist.
Starbuck’s business advice comes along two tracks: personnel management and consumer sentiment.
Personnel refers less to “woke capture” of C-suites and more to an atrophy of culture and how workplaces function successfully. Journalist Ryan Grim, former Washington bureau chief for both the Huffington Post and The Intercept, described how wokeness has also short-circuited Washington’s powerful left-wing non-profit complex.
He noted across organizations that employees have exploited struggle sessions and DEI programs “to smuggle through standard grievances cloaked in the language of social justice.” Bitter factionalism pitting staff against management has seeded “wrenching and debilitating turmoil.”
This dynamic doubtless rings true to corporate managers and HR executives. Companies cannot function when an account of systemic injustice is grafted onto ordinary slights and oversights. No profit-driven enterprise should countenance this behavior and expect to succeed.
Starbuck’s recent campaigns give corporate officers an opening for needed internal course-correcting, which many seem to be taking.
Perhaps Starbuck’s most tangible victory with respect to personnel is convincing companies to stop sharing information with the Human Right’s Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. Companies like Ford, Lowe’s and Harley-Davidson have withdrawn from the program after Starbuck spotlighted their DEI functions and partnerships with leftwing groups.
Companies make a mistake when they outsource sensitive decisions such as benefits packages to outrage entrepreneurs. HRC is proving as much in its reaction to the exodus of corporate participants from its equality index. Consistent with the dynamics Grim captured, the group has proactively denounced companies it partnered with as recently as last month, and promised to leverage LGBT buying power against them.
Consumer attitudes are a more pressing consideration for business. During the Trump administration, “brand purpose” ideology flourished in advertising. Many businesses mistakenly incorporated public policy goals into their customer-facing communications, thinking customers demanded as much. Perhaps some of them did, if only for a time.
But market signals come and go. Starbuck is delivering a timely reminder about brand DNA.
Put simply, Ibram Kendi – author of "How to be an Antiracist" - doesn’t shop at Tractor Supply. Companies carefully identify customer personas as part of their overall brand intelligence and make a serious mistake when they ignore their historic customer base.
Bud Light’s fundamental mistake was not its ill-considered partnership with Dylan Mulvaney. It was the repudiation of its core customers, as revealed in the contemptuous remarks of a former marketing VP who derided Bud Light’s “fratty” past and “out of touch humor.”
Out of touch humor? Maybe to the ears of a Harvard-educated New York marketing executive, but not people who used to drink Bud Light.
Starbuck has caught businesses like Harley-Davidson and Brown-Forman (the parent company of Jack Daniel’s) at cross-purposes with their own customers. Aligning business strategies with customer identities is not “cowering” to an internet critic. It is basic brand intelligence.
All told, the reason Starbuck’s campaigns have seen such smashing success is because of their fundamental alignment with good business practice. He’ll continue to succeed for that reason, to the betterment of business and the political climate.
Ken Blackwell is a former Treasurer of State of Ohio and a former director of Fifth/Third Bancorp. He serves on the board of directors of the Club For Growth