Out of Scope Issue 113: It's Pride Month & Brands Are Feeling the Heat
Plus: Shopper behavior and TikTok’s newest crime trend
This week had no chill. With car brands catching heat from consumers over lax security protocols, America’s culture war heating up, and, well, the Heat in the NBA Finals, it’s a hot one out there, folks. Step into the shade, grab a glass of ice cold lemonade, stay cool, and unwind with the HL team’s weekly insights into reputation and culture.
💡ON OUR MINDS: This Pride Month, Brands Are Feeling the Heat
Last week, we brought you the story of the LA Dodgers’ swing and miss with their Pride Night celebration plans. Two days in, and it already is shaping up to be a long month ahead for brands looking to market directly to LGBTQIA+ communities in external ad campaigns and internal initiatives.
To sum up the big ones: Target is taking flak for removing some pride month merchandise; DeSantis’s legal war against Disney was ignited by the company’s public opposition to the Florida governor’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill; and of course, AB InBev, which owns BudLight, found itself rocked by global controversy.
It seems no brand is safe— just this week, Chick-fil-A, a brand known for its adherence to Christian values and its conservative political tilt, has been under fire from right-wingers for “going woke” and pursuing new diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
If there was ever a time to take a strategic, long-term view of reputation management, this is it. Social media sentiment toward brands moves too fast for comms teams to wade into any issue without a clear idea of what they want from a given engagement with any stakeholder, and, more than that, what the balance is between possible benefits and harms.
Now is the time to decide what your brand stands for on a range of social issues. It’s the moment to expand your capacity for listening to the culture and deciding which stakeholders, customers, and values matter most.
📡 ON OUR RADAR
The era of bold statements from editors on AI has begun, with this letter from FT’s EIC, Roula Khalaf. The paper announced its commitment to publishing pieces written by human beings at the top of their field. We expect similar statements from other world-class publications and see the FT’s overture as a signal that newspapers and magazines may provide a safe harbor for readers navigating an internet increasingly haunted by AI-generated misinformation.
Big consumer chains like Costco and Macy’s have noticed shoppers changing what they buy, raising eyebrows and unnerving retailers. Macy's experienced an 8.7% decline in same-store sales last quarter, reflecting a trend where US consumers prioritize spending on services over goods. As we vacillate between a potential recession and business as usual, macroeconomists advise that shopper behavior can be a key indicator of pending financial strife. After all, the customer is always right!
Move over, Megan thee Stallion, it's Kia Boy Summer. The young self-anointed "Kia Boys" are TikTokkers exploiting a hardware flaw in Kia and Hyundai cars, filming themselves joyriding in the stolen vehicles. Brands sucked into risky internet crazes are nothing new— remember the Tide Pod challenge? While Hyundai and Kia face reputational damage and lawsuits, the biggest victims are the consumers with stolen cars and unexpected costs in the name of someone else's internet fame.
🥊QUICK HITS:
In case you missed these stories.
With a new in-flight ReachTV partnership, TikTok has reached new heights: a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.
It’s curtains for Succession, the HBO hit that never failed to make dramaturgical sense.
You can decide for yourself if Hannah Gadbsy’s new Picasso exhibit warrants the buzzy Times’ review.
The battle for the rightful claim to ‘Taco Tuesday’ got a bit spicier this week—with Lebron James repping team Taco Bell and Taco John’s pointing to the scoreboard.
Thanks for reading,
HL
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This week’s newsletter is brought to you by the inability to keep a good dolphin down.