The Politics of Speaking Out About Controversies – WWD

Diplomacy is not a subject that many designers dive into, but increasingly some are inclined to air their beliefs cautiously — just as select major brands and retailers have too.

Without question, cultural milestones like the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements sparked many to share their opinions more publicly. But more recently, social media backlash and threats of boycotts — which even large companies like Target, Zara and Adidas have faced — have some reconsidering what they choose to speak about publicly.

Some retailers, fashion brands and high-profile models know that firsthand. Last year, Target came under fire for its tuck-friendly swimwear that was sold and then later pulled from stores during Pride month.

Gigi Hadid and influencer Kelly Piquet have faced social media pushback for their views on the Israel-Hamas war. The Palestinian-American Hadid has been criticized for her pro-Palestine views. In November, she apologized for an Instagram post that falsely claimed that Israel is “the only country in the world” keeping children as prisoners of war. And last month Zara pulled a campaign that some consumers found insensitive to the destruction and human loss in Gaza.

With the first U.S. presidential primary just two weeks away and geopolitical unrest around the globe, the opportunity for hearty clashes is only likely to increase in the year ahead.

The public’s debates surrounding politics, the environment, and societal and racial relations is well-entrenched nationwide. In fact, the U.S. is the second most polarized country in the world behind South Korea based on a May 2022 study by Pew Research. That trend that is likely to only accelerate as we head into the “heated” 2024 election, according to Mark Penn, chairman and chief executive officer of the private equity firm Stagwell Global. “Brands and high-profile people who decide to speak out on possibly controversial issues must remember that in a 50/50 country, wading into political conversations can pose great risk,” he said.

Deciding whether and how to take action, companies should keep in mind the five key pillars of building a strong brand reputation: know your customer; bring people together; back it up with a track record; don’t flip-flop, and get advice from both sides, Penn said.

Dennis Basso is of the mindset: The less said, the better. “In general, in today’s world — no matter what the subject is — everyone needs to keep their opinions to themselves,” he said.

Thomas Murphy, a Clark University associate professor of branding and sustainability, compared the relationship between consumers and brands to friendships. “You don’t want to have your friend lecture you on politics and social issues, even when you generally agree with what they say. Brands should not tell consumers what to think — they should engage consumers in ways to add meaningful value,” he said.

Having consulted with fashion brands, Murphy said, “At the end of the day, consumers do not buy from brands that talk about how socially relevant they are. Consumers buy from brands that include them in actually doing good for others,” citing Toms and Bombas as examples.

A Harris Poll released in May seems to support that stance. Eighty-four percent of the American respondents said companies need a track record of acting on their values to be taken seriously.

Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, highlighted how “extremely polarized” consumers are in relation to politics. That means that any company that takes a side risks alienating some of its consumers, he said. “Like all things, there is a balance to be struck. My view is that most corporations will continue to back things like inclusiveness and environmental issues, but they will shy away from more overt political and party politics matters,” Saunders predicted.

However, the exception would be companies that have well-established stances on various issues such as Patagonia’s roots in sustainability, he said. “Then it makes sense for the brand to continue to push that agenda as it is arguably part of its DNA,” Saunders said.

Designer and stylist Hervé Pierre has dealt with his share of unsolicited opinions for working with Melania Trump in her former role as first lady. If he mentioned that he was working for the Trumps, people would immediately ask why and how he could work “with these people without knowing them,” Pierre said. “It was bizarre because to me, it’s a job.”

Pierre continues to worked with Trump as a stylist and did so for her just-out Paris Match profile. His association with the former first lady has cost him some friends. Acknowledging how now “more and more” people prefer to keep things to themselves, Pierre noted how that is “very contradictory to [the fact] that we are extremely lucky to live in a country where we are able to communicate and express our ideas through communication and social media.”

But Pierre cautioned that a blogger or anyone else could take some of his work or that of a journalist out of context. Consumers need to consider the professionalism of every source, and “not immediately jump into a topic and think that what you are reading is true or accurate.” Allowing that “we always walk on tiptoes,” he said, “I don’t know how to be politically correct, because suddenly I could make a mistake. It’s fascinating how everybody is offended immediately.”

From Pierre’s standpoint, that’s a reality of life — people will always disagree about everything. “But you can’t be offended immediately and immediately comment about how offended you are. That’s a little bit too easy.”

Despite living in a world absorbed by near-constant communication, he finds it “very interesting” that some are increasingly inhibited to speak about their views. “Everything is controversial. You cannot have a point of view without someone having an army-type battle or having people who are with or against you,” Pierre said.

Noting how many no longer say things openly that they would have a decade ago, he said, “It looks like we are going backwards a little bit. We protect ourselves behind emojis and whatever. That goes back to caveman people and that type of civilization. The cavemen didn’t know how to write so they were sketching. Now we are not expressing ourselves with words and explanations, but with images, ‘LOL’s, ‘WTF’s’ or whatever,” he said, adding that preference does not bode well for word-based professions like journalism. He added that culinary trends have turned in a more “primitive” direction too with utensils-free food becoming more popular even in France, where he was reached Tuesday and had seen that advertised.

What matters in the end for every individual, he said, is “your integrity, and how good and smart you are as a person, because unfortunately you won’t be able to win [over] a lot of people. That’s what it is. As long as you are OK with yourself, it makes it a bit easy. But sometimes it’s really tough.”

Describing some freelance assignments, Pierre said, “Sometimes when I go to a job, it’s interesting to see how they operate and communicate.” He has been advised, “‘You cannot say that’ or “‘We don’t have trash so you cannot use paper.’”

However polite that approach might be, given the ongoing discourse about myriad subjects, many consumers are more inclined to sound off about their views. Reminded that some people are more readily sharing their standpoints unsolicited, Basso said, “Most of the people that we know as clients or socially stay away from controversy. Nobody wants to be confrontational. Unless, you are really with someone who is like-minded and you share the same view [about a topic], that’s a different situation altogether. Then you are basically speaking privately,” Basso said.

Designer Nanette Lepore recently took action after her alma mater Youngstown State University tapped Bill Johnson, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, as the school’s president.  She returned an honorary doctorate that she had received from YSU and publicly criticized the choice of the new leader. Some critics suggested that she had been motivated by her brother’s status as a local politician, Lepore said during an interview last week.

However, Lepore said her father, a former YSU professor, had advised that she had to return it — so she did. “It’s a hall of education — it’s not where politics should be played out,” Lepore said. “This university has worked so hard to get accreditation. My dad had worked through the whole period of it changing from a private college to a state college to accreditation. And then they bring in these people who have no regard for education.”

She added, “It’s just fascinating how our world is becoming less about education. They just want to control people through ignorance.”

Despite her willingness to air her disapproval about that matter, Lepore said corporations and other individuals are being more conservative in speaking out about certain issues. “For a few years, you had to take a stand. Now people are feeling like it’s dangerous to take a stand, because of the backlash that has happened in so many places,” she said.

Lepore prefers “to tread lightly around certain issues, not wanting to weigh in on every issue.” But when it comes to Democratic politics and women’s health care rights, she will weigh in. But all in all, there are a lot of subjects that she avoids now and those issues were too tempestuous to identify, Lepore said.

However, she does plan to use her voice to support Joe Biden in his presidential re-election run. “But I think I will limit that to abortion rights and our president. People don’t need a fashion designer weighing on everything,” Lepore said.

From her perspective, there was a point where women were in a safe zone about sharing their views. That is no longer the case, according to the designer, who cited the backlash to the female presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, who were widely criticized for their tetimony about campus antisemitism during Congressional hearings last month. Both have subsequently resigned.

All in all, Lepore said, “It’s a hard moment. There is a lot of pain in the world and people don’t want to rub it in.”  

Stagwell’s Penn noted that consumers and fans are “more suspicious than ever about false sincerity from their favorite brands and influencers, but they still respect consistency.”

The aforementioned Harris Poll, which was released in May, seems to support that idea. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they think most companies’ apologies for controversies are insincere.

Penn said, “Consumers ultimately care most about the quality of products and services — a lesson that applies just as much to fashion brands selling style and luxury.”

Former Gap executive Jennifer Sey, who caused a social media firestorm and news coverage with her essay advocating for school reopenings during the pandemic, expects “bigger broad-reach brands” to start to back away from weighing in on highly polarizing and controversial issues. Last year’s backlash against Bud Light (for partnering with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney) served as “a warning” of the potential business impact of doing so, according to Sey. “We’ve seen very few, if any brands, weigh in on the current war in the Middle East — though plenty weighed in on Ukraine,” she contended.

Over time, Sey thinks businesses and brands with large target audiences are going to get back to product and “inspiring product-centric marketing in order to sustain and grow their businesses. Smaller, more targeted brands will continue to appeal to their narrower audiences by sometimes weighing in on issues. Because that engages their consumer and they don’t need to worry about who it turns off because they aren’t trying to be for everyone.“ 

Sey expects individuals — executives, regular employees, influencers and anyone else — to continue to hold back if their views are counter to what she described as “coastal, left-leaning Democratic Party platform views,” since that “doesn’t ever go well for anyone who does.” However, leaders will feel free to express views that are consistent with these left-leaning views because “there seems to be no harm in doing so. So it’s will be POV centric approved views versus unapproved views (which will remain under wraps/un-expressed),” Sey said.