The Parkland Shooting Uprising and Backlash

This is the story of a national tragedy, about how a student shot and killed 17 innocent people with an assault rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Last weekend, we witnessed mass student protests across the country. It’s been an incredibly sad and tragic moment in the national consciousness. It’s also unleashed a growing consumer backlash.

Unless you’ve been on another planet these past few weeks, you already know how consumers went after MetLife Insurance, Hertz, Enterprise Car Rental, United Airlines and Symantec security software aggressively, which all abruptly announced plans to cut ties with the NRA.

Wednesday, Laura Ingraham, of the “Ingraham Angle”, uttered some highly provocative remarks about David Hogg, a survivor of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

David Hogg’s sister, Lauren Hogg, another of the teen survivors in last month’s mass shooting at the Florida high school, took to Twitter to accuse the Fox News host of cyber bullying. Then, David nationally called for all students to boycott the “Ingraham Angle’s” advertisers such as AT&T, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Arby’s and Esurance to name a few. It will be interesting to see the reaction and whether Laura Ingraham will pay for it by hemorrhaging advertisers. Nestle, TripAdvisor, Hulu and Wayfair have announced that they are dumping Ingraham.

Putting aside the political aspects of this story to look at the marketing side of it (I can’t help it, I’m a marketer), I have to wonder: going forward, how might this affect the way advertisers think about fundamental questions like “What do we stand for?” and “Who do we stand with?”

It’s a new era where consumers will punish a company for taking a wrong stand, but also for taking no stands at all. 

If brands haven’t fully answered those questions, they’d better. We’re living in an Age of Uprisings, and the uprisings extend beyond politics or social issues, spilling into the world of commerce and marketing.

Today, if you do something that ticks people off, they’re going to rise up against you.

They have the will, the passion, the power and the social media tools to wreak havoc on your brand, and it may be in response to something you haven’t even done yourself. You may simply be associated, through advertising or some other form of support, with the offending party.

How will marketers react to all of this, going forward? In my book “Uprising”, I interrogate this world for marketers. Should they respond by becoming more cautious, by trying to stay far way from anything that could ever, in any way, be perceived as controversial?

Trouble is that’s also the quickest way to make a brand invisible and irrelevant. If you play it safe in today’s boisterous marketing environment, it’s true that you won’t have crowds rising up against you — they’ll be too busy ignoring you. In the attention economy, no one will pay attention.

It’s complex, but marketers will need to do something more counter-intuitive. Brands should use more activism, not less. But they should do so in a thoughtful, considerate way that is likely to put them on the same side of passionate issues as their customers.

A movement strategy starts with figuring out what your brand’s core values are: What are you for? What are you against?

Traditionally, marketers have been reluctant to take a stand against anything, because it can feel controversial or divisive. But the truth is, some of the boldest marketers have been doing this kind of thing successfully for quite a while (think of Apple, which in its very early days, came out strongly against conformity and the dangerous “Big Brother” world of computing).

Today, more than ever, consumers are looking for brands that share their values and outlook. They see those values expressed clearly in some brands, but too many brands don’t seem to stand for anything. So, they end up being defined and judged — and sometimes found guilty — by association.

When brands are willing to take a deep look at themselves — their culture and their values — and are simultaneously inclined to really pay attention to what’s going on in the lives of their core consumers, it can lead to epiphanies.

When that happens, they begin to have their own clear mission.

To really be part of this age of movements, your brand has to be willing to get out there and mix it up. They must demonstrate their values and beliefs through action.

Use your resources to help customers become more active and involved in the issues they care about.

Create platforms for them. Help them form communities. Set up events where they can rally behind an idea or principle.

I believe brands must connect with that passion and activism, somehow. If you fail to respond to this shift in the culture, you run the risk of being out-of-step with your customers.

Your company could end up looking like a “status quo” brand in a revolutionary world.

Scott Goodson, CEO of StrawberryFrog