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Target's Backlash Is a Sign Corporations Should Start Weeding the Woke Out of Their Marketing Departments

AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File

While many corporations should have learned to fear a backlash to embracing woke culture after Bud Light, one that you’d figure wouldn’t have to worry about it is Target.

The megastore chain that became so popular with women that it morphed into a stereotype has ever embraced the leftist side of any situation or issue. It was one of the first corporations to declare that it was going to allow men who identified as women into women’s restrooms in 2016. The decision resulted in a massive boycott, but it didn’t slow Target down when it came to siding with radicals.

Fast forward to Monday, and Target once again made news by further embracing the transgender craze by releasing swimwear with “binding effects” as well as a heap of clothing embracing the LGBT lifestyle for children as young as infancy.

That’s not the worst of it. As Mike Miller wrote, the designer they used to make this clothing is an avowed Satanist who isn’t shy about his advocacy for the demonic. Meaning that Target has teamed up with a Satanist bent on bringing your kids into a destructive lifestyle full of depression, isolation, and and a high possibility of suicide.

(READ: Transgender People Are Not Under Threat and Their Movement Is the Height of Narcissism)

But now it seems even Target flew too close to the rainbow. As Brittany Sheehan reported on Tuesday, Target held an emergency meeting last week after its new LGBT selection went viral on the internet to massive backlash:

In response to consumer outrage and calls for boycotts prompted by social media influencer Kaylee Campbell Layton’s viral video revealing LGBT Pride clothing including “tuck” swimwear for concealing male appendages in the children’s section, Target corporate held an emergency meeting for some of its southern locations.

According to a Target insider, many stores have swiftly relocated their Pride sections within 36 hours after emergency calls were made on Friday, instructing managers and district senior directors to move mannequins and large signage from the front of the store to a smaller section towards the back. The call, which lasted approximately 15 minutes, primarily focused on ensuring team member safety and avoiding the need to defend Target against the backlash. Target Asset Protection and Corporate Security teams were present during the call.

Not every store is going to be tucking their “Pride” section away so it can identify as a normal Target store, and it would appear most will still prominently display LGBT clothing for children right up front.

As Sheehan noted, Target fears a Bud Light-esque backlash, but the cat is already out of that bag. The question isn’t “can it avoid a boycott” it’s “will this boycott get big enough to matter?” Given Target’s customer base, my guess would be “no,” but then again I thought the Bud Light boycott wouldn’t get nearly as big as it did either…and neither did Bud Light.

Target’s base may help it weather this storm, but even if that boycott stings Target a little, it should cause other corporations to take note. Not everyone has the same customers Target does and their delving deep into the transgender cause could be far more destructive.

Bud Light is a brand that was susceptible to a boycott of transgenderidm due to its customer base being heavily weighted in traditionalism, but the fact that the boycott is burning the business to the core is only giving more power to any other boycotts that arise over the same issue.

Here’s the rub. June is “Pride Month” for many. It’s the time when every corporation dons a rainbow avatar on their social media platforms and pretends to care about the LGBT cause to please their ESG masters…at least in countries where it’s financially safe to pretend to care. You won’t see a lot of corporations waving LGBT flags at Chinese or Saudi audiences.

While the heads of corporations may allow for this, it needs to be wary about this Pride Month given the amount of heat the transgender issue is calling down on businesses that fully embrace it. Things are liable to get a bit out of control thanks to marketing departments that have been infiltrated and filled with woke college grads that care more about political messaging than the product.

If you’re a CEO, a board, or just a high-level executive with two brain cells to rub together, the wise thing to do would be to wade into the mire of the marketing department and do one of two things.

Either you make it very clear that the Pride month advocacy can only hit a certain line that can’t be crossed or you do the smarter thing and begin weeding out the activists that managed to land themselves jobs within the company. Trust me, they won’t be hard to spot. In fact, they’ll make themselves known the moment you give them a line they can’t cross. They won’t be able to help it.

It would be a short-term headache that may save your company millions of dollars.

Failing to do this may very well end up with your company saying something that wasn’t fully approved by brass thanks to rogue marketing departments and the activists that run them believing that it’s both their perogative and their duty to make your company a warrior for “inclusivity, diversity, and acceptance.”

In other words, they’ll think it’s their company, not yours, and if you do nothing about it…then they’re right. Then you’ll watch as their company begins to sink into the mire.

 

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