Conservative Boycott of NIKE May Already be Working
Conservatives are calling for a NIKE boycott after the company launched an ad featuring Colin Kaepernick. In the early morning we saw NIKE stock fall with some outlets reporting a connection to the boycott. So is the Nike boycott actually causing the stock fall or is it just a coincidence? Some people say Conservative Boycotts don't work but there are some examples of companies who have seen sales drop offs and shares fall amid the types of political issues,
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Nike Shoes has decided to enter the culture war on the side of the left.
They've launched an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, who is controversial after he started kneeling at football games.
He's now an unsigned free agent, and many people believe the reason for that is nobody wants to sign him because he's just too controversial.
Even Donald Trump tweeted that the protests were disrespectful.
But people on the left think that the protests were warranted, and Colin Kaepernick was just voicing his free speech, and he was trying to bring up issues about racial injustice.
There's a saying among those associated with anti-social justice movements, which is get woke, go broke.
And this references when a company tries to enter the culture war, they end up losing money.
And now it would seem that it may be the case as already there's calls for a boycott on Nike and Reuters is reporting that their shares have taken a hit.
This isn't the only boycott we've seen in the past week, and there have been other issues related to major companies who wanted to join the political conflict, and this resulted in them losing money.
So today, let's start by looking at the main story about Colin Kaepernick, and then look at some other stories where companies have actually lost money by trying to get involved in the culture war.
The first story from CBS News.
Colin Kaepernick Just Do It ad sparks Nike boycott.
Nike's long-running Just Do It campaign is geared toward getting consumers to pay attention to the brand, but analysts say its decision to add Colin Kaepernick risks drawing the wrong type of notice.
Shares of the shoe and apparel giant dropped about 3% in pre-market trading after the company announced that the unsigned free agent, who is known for kneeling during the national anthem to bring attention to racial injustices, would join the company's signature campaign.
Other players also kneeled during the anthem, spurring criticism from President Donald Trump.
Nike is certainly provoking debate by hiring Kaepernick, Global Data Retail Managing Director, Neil Saunders said in a report.
While noting the risks of company getting involved in a highly politicized issue, marketing campaigns typically aim to generate positive buzz, rather than engaging in ways that may divide consumers.
This means it could ultimately alienate and lose customers, which is not the purpose of a marketing campaign, Saunders wrote.
Although the company's stand may go down well on its native west coast, it will be far less welcome in many other locations.
The reaction on social media veered between support for Nike and consumers saying they would participate in a boycott.
Some people posted videos of themselves burning Nike shoes.
Despite slipping ahead of markets opening in the US, Nike shares are up more than 30% this year through the close of trade on Friday.
And the story highlights this tweet from John Pavlovitz.
He says, Anyone participating in a Nike boycott is proving exactly why Colin Kaepernick was kneeling in the first place.
Because too many white people value their songs and flags and privilege above the lives of people of color.
Now as of the filming of this video, Nike stock is down around 2.63%.
And a lot of people are going to claim this is because of the boycott.
But let's be honest, stocks go up and down all the time and it's only 3%.
So could it be related to the boycott?
Yes, it could.
I think if a company is going to engage in this kind of politicking, they're going to face some kind of backlash.
But it's entirely possible that by the end of the day, the stock recovers and it's not really that big of a deal.
But this tweet That was highlighted by CBS News from Jon Pavlovitz, I believe is actually wrong.
We can see that it has 2,206 retweets, so a lot of people on the left are sharing this.
But there's something they aren't considering.
The left typically does not like Nike shoes because they have been engaged in contracting sweatshops in foreign countries.
They do a lot of things the American public doesn't like.
For one, outsourcing the production of their shoes is seen as negative by a lot of people.
Typically people on the right.
But also, using sweatshop labor.
And this has been going on for decades.
A lot of the people I know that are associated with the far left are actually saying they don't care about this campaign, and they wouldn't wear Nike shoes anyway because of the labor abuses that Nike is involved in.
It was not even a year ago we saw this story from courts.
Nike is facing a new wave of anti-sweatshop protests.
Nike is one of the business world's shining examples of how to clean up an image.
In the 1990s, the company was plagued by reports that used sweatshops and child labor.
Pressure grew until 1998, when Nike co-founder Phil Knight publicly committed to changing the company's practices.
And Nike spent the next decade doing just that.
Now, Nike's sweatshop problem is threatening a comeback.
On July 29th, student and activists around the world participated in a day of protest against Nike organized by United Students Against Sweatshops.
The demonstrations in cities such as Boston, Washington D.C., Bangalore, and San Pedro Sula in Honduras Represented an escalation of allegations against Nike that have been slowly bubbling up.
Among them are claims that workers at Nike contract factory in Hansi, Vietnam suffered wage theft and verbal abuse and labored for hours and temperatures well over the legal limit of 90 degrees to the point that they would collapse at their sewing machines.
Nike is also accused of cutting jobs at the Hanse factory and pulling production from a factory in Honduras with a strong union presence, resulting in hundreds of workers losing vital jobs.
The company has also allegedly denied the independent monitoring group Workers' Rights Consortium access to inspect its contract factories.
The WRC was founded in 2000 by universities, international labor rights experts, and student groups, including USAS, to ensure that product-bearing university logos were made under conditions that respected workers' rights.
The argument put forth by many people, including this one tweet that's been highlighted, that people are more concerned with their white privilege, as opposed to the strife of colored people, is absolutely factually incorrect when you realize that Nike has been criticized for decades over their treatment of sweatshop workers in foreign countries, most notably in Asian countries.
These are people who are not white, who are suffering at the hands of Nike, allegedly.
And activists on the left have been decrying these labor abuses for decades.
To see now people claiming that the boycott supports some kind of idea of white privilege is just wrong.
I don't know who these people are, and I'm not sure who's calling to support Nike in this instance, but I can say that I do know a lot of far-left activists, and they're posting on Facebook that They're going to boycott Nike, too, because they've been this whole time.
But it's not just this boycott of Nike.
We're seeing political boycotts happen all the time.
A couple days ago, the left was calling for boycotts of In-N-Out, and then a bunch of conservatives and Trump supporters went and bought burgers.
We're even seeing some people claim that previous boycotts the right has engaged in haven't worked.
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But now let's get back to the main point, that often there are problems faced by companies that try to get in on politics.
This story from Reuters just this morning, Nike shares hit as Kaepernick ad spurs boycott.
In the story they have this quote, The alt-right calls for a Nike boycott will fail just like the boycott of Dick's Sporting Goods failed, said Matt Powell, a senior advisor with market research firm NPD Group.
Old, angry white guys are not a core demographic for Nike.
The story goes on, gun-right supporters called for the boycott of Dick's Sporting Goods earlier this year after the retailer stopped selling assault rifles and high-capacity magazines following a massacre at a Florida high school in February.
I do need to stop right here and point out this factual error.
Dick's Sporting Goods has never sold assault rifles.
They are illegal to sell.
What they're referring to is modern hunting rifles like the AR-15.
But the man they quoted said that old white men are not the demographic for Nike, and that the boycott on Dick's Sporting Goods failed.
Well, he's technically wrong on both fronts.
I mean, yes, old white people probably aren't the demographic for Nike, but I'm sure some of them do buy shoes.
But at the same time, the left is also not the demographic for Nike because they've been protesting them over their labor abuses.
The thing he's mainly wrong about, though, is Dick's Sporting Goods, because they did see sales slump after they pulled guns from their stores.
And this story from Reuters is just from a couple days ago.
Gun policy under armor weakness hit Dick's sporting sales.
Dick's Sporting Goods reported a bigger-than-expected drop in quarterly same-store sales on Wednesday and forecast further declines this year hit by tighter gun controls and a drop in Under Armour sales.
Shares in the company fell as much as 10% after it posted a 1.9% drop in same-store sales, bigger than analysts' average estimate of a 0.62% dip.
Dix was one of the first retailers to stop selling modern sporting rifles, not assault rifles, and high-capacity magazines, as well as bar the sale of guns to people under the age of 21 following a massacre at a Florida high school in February.
The company had predicted that its hunting guns business would be pressurized by the change in policy, but said the move would also attract more people to its stores.
An analyst was quoted as saying, Now to be fair, whether or not the drop in sales is the
result of a boycott, or simply if they're not offering the products, people aren't
going to come and buy it, is up to you to debate.
A lot of people claimed to boycott Dick's.
A lot of people told stories about how they were legal adults who had a right to buy a gun, but Dick's turned them away because they weren't 21.
And this led to a lot of people on social media saying they wouldn't go there.
So I can't sound surprised to see that their sales are down substantially more so than they actually predicted, and it resulted in a drop in shares.
I can't speak for anybody else as to why they would engage in a boycott, or why they would or would not go to a store, but all I can say is, personally, I don't care for boycotts.
If you're gonna boycott In-N-Out, I'm gonna say that's silly, and I'm gonna enjoy my cheeseburger.
Actually, this is something most people don't know this, I don't really eat beef, so I don't eat In-N-Out anyway, because it's all they sell.
But...
Just boycotting a company because of their behind-the-scenes practices of making political contributions doesn't bother me.
However, I will say that I probably won't buy anything from Nike, not because they endorsed or hired on Colin Kaepernick.
I really don't care about that.
I think it's a silly debate for the most part, but I understand.
It's the culture war.
The reason I'm not going to engage with this company is because they decided to enter the culture war, and they shouldn't.
They're a shoe company.
They're trying to get political, in my opinion, because it's a marketing tactic.
They know that a lot of people are going to be talking about it, they know that people like me will make videos about it, and it's going to generate buzz from the company.
But it does produce a risk for the company, because right now their shares are down.
As I mentioned, we don't know why their shares are down.
It could be because of the boycott, maybe not.
But we've seen some other companies lose money, have their sales go down, and their shares fall following similar controversies.
I don't want to have anything to do with the culture war in my personal life.
If I'm going to wear shoes, it's because I need shoes.
Not because I want to make a political statement.
And a lot of people, I guess they're hoping, will make the political statement by buying their shoes in support of their political move.
Like with conservatives and Trump supporters buying cheeseburgers from In-N-Out to support the company following the boycott, I think a lot of companies hope that by engaging in the culture war, something positive will happen.
Most of the time, I think companies engage in this kind of culture war rhetoric simply because they want to expand their market to groups they didn't normally sell to.
I think the endorsement or the hiring on of Kaepernick might actually be because the left doesn't like them due to their bad image as it pertains to labor rights.
And now you have people on the left saying you should support Nike and if you don't, you're alt-right or things that affect.
But how do you feel about it?
Do you support their right to hire Colin Kaepernick and do you agree with their message?
Or do you think that they're being silly and simply trying to make money off of a controversy?
Comment below, we'll keep the conversation going.
Stick around, I've got more videos coming up on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews, in just a couple hours.
