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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Anyone else think that there's an uptick in gender-provocative advertisements recently? Adidas has now hired a biological male as a women's underwear model, with chest hair and a distinct bulge at the groin:

https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1658934499118309379

https://www.adidas.com/us/pride (It definitely is classified as women's swimwear)

There was also that other now-withdrawn Miller Lite beer ad where the woman spends her time swearing and professing how happy she is to compost images of women in bikinis. Just recently, we had the original trans beer ad that has proven very damaging to Bud Light.

Is this kind of advertising increasing, or are people noticing it more, or am I making up a trend? I suppose one could conceptualize a waves and troughs model, as advertisers tone it back after boycotts (Gillette comes to mind as having suffered from its choices). Some have argued that Gillette took an immediate and serious financial penalty from the ad, 350 million in six months. On the other hand, there have been arguments that P&G, Gillette's owner didn't suffer in the medium term, or at least that there's too much noise to tell. They stood by their advertisement choice. Perhaps merely being aggressive towards gender roles is much less risky than promoting trans.

Or maybe the conservative response to these ads is essentially random? I never heard that Gillette made another trans ad in 2019, that all got subsumed by the toxic masculinity ad. Thoughts and theories welcome.

That adidas page is wild. I'm impressed by a company that is ostensibly selling fitness products and products with their image tied to fitness electing to advertise using people that are the complete opposite of an aspirational appearance. Presumably, the basis for this is that fat people buy shorts too, but I'm just kind of amazed that an apparel company would ever want to associate their image with people that are physically grotesque.

Advertising is weird. Tucker Carlson had 1% of the entire US population watching his show every night, but nobody wanted those eyeballs.

It's not weird, we just need to abandon the idea that companies actions are exclusively market-driven.

Yeah. For some reason, people seem to hold the axiom that corporations "maximize shareholder returns". There is not much evidence to believe this is actually the case.

Once you drop that axiom, things make a lot more sense.

Here's a better axiom:

"Companies are run primarily for the benefit of people who run companies."

The point about market mechanisms though is that they don't depend on all individual managers/employees being relentlessly profit driven, rather the point is that eventually less efficient firms will be driven out. Now, of course I accept that this is not a perfect mechanism, especially once they get large firms will have a certain inefficiency carrying capacity that they can manage without losing their position, but in general I think that it's safe to assume firms try to maximise profits unless there is compelling evidence otherwise. There is certainly precedent for controversial culture-war adjacent advertising campaigns being a success. These things are hard to gauge but it does seem that Nike sales increased in the wake of the Kaepernick advert controversy.

This is a good point. In the short term, companies are run for the benefit of insiders. But in the long term, only profitable companies can remain in the ecosystem. The long term can be very long though. The era of zero-interest rate policy from 2008-2022 allowed a lot of zombie companies to stick around who should have been victims of creative destruction.

Another thought: Perhaps wokeness works the same for companies as it does for individuals. Those businesses who are thriving (Google, Disney, Nike) can afford to waste resources signalling wokeness. Those businesses that are only surviving (most local businesses, Bud Light) can't afford to piss off their customers with woke nonsense.

rather the point is that eventually less efficient firms will be driven out.

This doesn't work once the co-ordination problem is solved. If all firms can be similarly situated, or enough punishment can be brought to bear on firms who choose the more efficient rather than the politically correct solution, the market can be defeated. That's how Carlson ends up making no money for Fox despite being popular, the big ad agencies are all politically aligned against him.

rather the point is that eventually less efficient firms will be driven out.

That's where ZIRP comes in. Productivity growth went to zero once ZIRP started...

"Companies are run primarily for the benefit of people who run companies."

And their failsons and faildaughters who need some sort of sinecure to show for their expensive miseducation.

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