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Why Woke Capitalism Works for Ben & Jerry’s

Exactly. When you open up an ice-cold Spritlzer Report you pour down your gullet some clean unadulterated tabloid sheet! You want the news served "in your face" with a large dollop of "offense".


Can CNBC get away with this? No! Their audience likes to drink warm tea, listen to Helen Reddy and watch Richard Simmons videos. Actually, Richard is fricken hilarious.


Why Woke Capitalism Works for Ben & Jerry’s

Politics is central to its mission but a distraction from Anheuser-Busch’s, Disney’s and BlackRock’s.

By Anson Frericks, WSJ

Aug. 8, 2023 12:10 pm ET


Companies ranging from Anheuser-Busch to Disney and BlackRock have recently lost loyal customers and billions of dollars in market capitalization and assets after wading into controversial political issues. The reason customers left and investors bailed is simple: These companies failed to carry out what they had promised in their mission statements.


Clear mission statements are critical for company success. A 2016 Harvard Business Review study found that companies that clearly establish their purpose innovate more successfully and increase revenue faster than companies that don’t. That’s because clear mission statements explain why a company exists and what it hopes to achieve. They also identify its present—and, ideally, future—customers. This aligns internal employees and external investors in pursuit of a common goal: delivering great products and services to increase shareholder value.


Anheuser-Busch’s mission is clear: “Dream Big to Create a Future With More Cheers.” The company has several brands to achieve this aim with different consumers. Michelob Ultra is for athletes who understand “it’s only worth it if you enjoy it.” Busch Light is for hunters, farmers, and fishermen who want to “crack a cold one” and head for the great outdoors. Bud Light is supposed to be for everyone because it is “Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy.”


Bud Light’s controversial partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney in April didn’t create a “future with more cheers,” or make Bud Light “easy to enjoy.” It thrust the brand into a charged political discussion unrelated to the company’s mission. Loyal consumers left, and shareholders are paying the price as billions of dollars in market cap have been erased.


Disney experienced similar mission failure last year. The company’s stated mission is “to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.” Creating movies like “The Lion King” and “Star Wars” is on mission. Less so is public criticism of such legislation as Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibits the state’s educators from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in classes from kindergarten through third grade.


When Disney announced its opposition to the bill in 2022, the majority of its customers disagreed. Disney’s public approval rating cratered to 33% in 2022 from 77% in 2021. Customers spoke with their wallets. The company’s streaming service, Disney+, saw canceled memberships, and attendance at Disney theme parks suffered. The company’s stock remains depressed even after it swapped in new leadership.


BlackRock, the world’s largest asset-management company, has also struggled with fidelity to its stated mission “to help more and more people experience financial well being.” Studies have shown that use of ESG—environmental, social and governance—criteria to inform the allocation of client capital isn’t profitable. Nevertheless, reports show that BlackRock gave greater investment to companies with lower carbon output and better diversity-and-inclusion scores. These standards cost the company billions from investors who prefer asset managers that steer clear of divisive ESG policies.


Amid the capital outflows in recent months, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has retreated from his previous positions and has added Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, to BlackRock’s board. Saudi Aramco is controlled by the Saudi government, which is one of the world’s leading violators of human rights, making Mr. Nasser’s appointment at odds with ESG’s social component.


Caught between his company’s activism and the reality that a mission of helping “more people experience well being” requires not alienating investors with different views, Mr. Fink has choices to make for the future. Climate activists are already pressuring him to step down over perceived failures to implement ESG more broadly. New York City’s comptroller wrote a letter questioning BlackRock’s investment actions compared with its ESG commitments.


Anheuser-Busch, Disney and BlackRock could learn about proper mission control from Ben & Jerry’s. The ice-cream company has been aligning customers and shareholders behind a progressive and social mission for decades. Its mission states: “We believe that ice cream can change the world. We have a progressive, nonpartisan social mission that seeks to meet human needs and eliminate injustices in our local, national, and international communities by integrating these concerns in our day-to-day business activities.”


Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in New York, March 24, 2022. PHOTO: ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS

When Ben & Jerry’s supports returning to Native Americans what it claims is stolen land, when it advocates overturning voter-integrity laws, or when it favors defunding the police, its customers aren’t surprised.


This is because Ben & Jerry’s has been advocating such change since two Vermont hippies founded the company in 1972. When they sold the business to multinational conglomerate Unilever in 2000, they maintained an independent board to make decisions on the company’s social mission. Their customers expect this activism and buy such ice-cream flavors as “Save our Swirled” and “Empower Mint” to support social causes.


Given the companies’ longstanding purposes, it would be inauthentic for Anheuser-Busch, BlackRock and Disney to change their mission to support the same social and political agendas as Ben & Jerry’s. It would also alienate most of their existing customer base. A recent poll found 58% of consumers don’t want companies taking stances on political and social issues. To maximize market potential and shareholder value, most companies should cater to the larger group of people who don’t want politics with their beer, their theme-park vacations or their investment accounts.


Mr. Frericks is a co-founder of Strive Asset Management, which competes with BlackRock, and a former Anheuser-Busch executive.



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