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The real reason beer companies are going woke
Washington Examiner ^ | May 16, 2023 | Jon Miltimore

Posted on 05/17/2023 7:34:56 AM PDT by Mr. Mojo

[[Excerpt]]

Why are Bud Light and Miller Lite making commercials that alienate their own consumer base? More importantly, why are they wading into controversial matters such as transgenderism, third-wave feminism, and nonbinary gender at all?

The primary answer is the rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance, a term coined during a 2004 United Nations initiative (“ Who Cares Wins ”) that grades companies on social performance.

ESG was born from the idea that traditional capitalism needs to be replaced with a more caring, socially conscious capitalism that serves other “stakeholders.” And what started as “guidelines and recommendations” have become explicit standards set by ESG rating agencies that impose steep costs on publicly traded companies, especially those that don’t comply.

The thing is, companies are not jazzed about having to dance to the tune of a small cabal of central bankers and asset managers. A 2022 CNBC survey showed that while executives support ESG publicly, privately, they harbor serious concerns. Yet not playing ball is not an option.

“If a company has to do disclosures, and it has some executives who are ‘not into ESG,’ it should be thinking about the cost of not becoming more concerned,” Eileen Murray, a former executive of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, told CNBC .

Miller Lite and Bud Light drinkers have every right to be annoyed by ads they don’t like. But they should understand these publicly traded companies are playing a balancing act on who they risk alienating, their consumers or ESG puppeteers.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: cowardcompanies; esg
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To: Mr. Mojo

They can ride ESG all the way to bankruptcy - and I hope they do.

Miller has been known to make huge donations to lefty causes.


21 posted on 05/17/2023 8:06:07 AM PDT by Bon of Babble (What did Socialists use before Candles?..... Electricity)
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To: Mr. Mojo

The thing is, the free market (not capitalism) does care. Make a product or service people want and don’t piss off the customer, you win. Do things people don’t like and piss them off, and you lose. It’s self-correcting.


22 posted on 05/17/2023 8:08:26 AM PDT by IYAS9YAS (There are two kinds of people: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.)
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To: Gnome1949
What is the confusion? The customer is king.

Some customers are king. It seems that a minority of customers want this ESG crap. The axiom I learned in B-school, many moons ago, was the goal of business is to maximize shareholder wealth. Things were much less divisive back then and customers were not divided in what they wanted from business. They just wanted value for their dollar. Now businesses have to choose which customers to piss off. It’s so bad that the flaming faggots and freaks on the left are pissed off when a business doesn’t promote some sort of justice. To them, it is more important than the product itself. America needs to make it clear to businesses that faggots and freaks are the minority and they are to be sacrificed to maximize shareholder wealth. Concurrently, shareholders need to send a message that they want to maximize the return on their investment and that strictly means profits. Virtue signaling is not a profit. (And any signaling to faggots and freaks is not a virtue.)

23 posted on 05/17/2023 8:09:40 AM PDT by ConservativeInPA ("How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly." )
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To: Gnome1949

“ What is the confusion? The customer is king. No customers = no company. Period.”

Not under socialism.


24 posted on 05/17/2023 8:09:44 AM PDT by rey
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To: ConservativeInPA

But now that basically we’re down to a few mega-corporations, they don’t have to worry about profits, they have power.


25 posted on 05/17/2023 8:11:32 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: BipolarBob

‘Next month the godless WHO org. will start setting guidelines for the whole world.’

they wouldn’t do this if they weren’t godless...? some of the worst tyrants in history have claimed divine right to rule...


26 posted on 05/17/2023 8:17:36 AM PDT by IrishBrigade
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To: Mr. Mojo

Beer sales are down overall. Beer sales are especially down in the “big 4”. Craft and import is growing, though not growing as much as the “big 4” are losing which leads to the overall math. This trend has been going on for years. The “big 4” have basically taken a 2 pronged approach:
buy companies in the craft and import space
find a new market

That 2nd one is pretty typical of companies in a market that’s dropping. Try and get new customers. What’s a “new” customer? Well it depends. In the case of beer it’s getting away from the “trucks, labor and sports” crowd that has been the “traditional” beer market for decades. While I often say they should be looking at improving the product. But when you look at the big numbers that won’t help that much. Sure it would help them not lose market to the craft and imports, there’s still that general shrinkage in the beer market to deal with. Somebody needs to expand the general beer market. But I think that charge would be better led by good beers. Nobody who hasn’t been a beer drinker into their 30s is going to pick up a Bud or Coors and say “woh, can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this”.


27 posted on 05/17/2023 8:19:24 AM PDT by discostu (like a dog being shown a card trick)
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To: Mr. Mojo

Do the puppeteers provide revenue ? If not. . .ignore them


28 posted on 05/17/2023 8:23:54 AM PDT by Salgak (You're in Strange Hands with Tom Stranger. . . .)
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To: Chgogal
Question:

Are there any investment capital firms that are NOT ESG?


29 posted on 05/17/2023 8:26:08 AM PDT by MIA_eccl1212 (When the bad guys have leverage they use it)
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To: Mr. Mojo

“...should be thinking about the cost of not becoming more concerned”

Sounds threatening to me. Something an extortionist would say. Oh, wait


30 posted on 05/17/2023 8:30:07 AM PDT by Justa (If where you came from is so great then why aren't Floridians moving there?)
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To: Mr. Mojo; All

Lots of great posts on this thread.


31 posted on 05/17/2023 8:30:20 AM PDT by Pajamajan ( PRAY FOR OUR NATION. Never be a peaceful slave in a new Socialist America)
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To: Mr. Mojo

By local beers. There are a million of them.


32 posted on 05/17/2023 8:32:55 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: Gnome1949
"What is the confusion? The customer is king. No customers = no company. Period."

The confusion comes from the over-sized weight some people put in their $20 dollar purchase, particularly when most companies who go woke don't actually get punished for it.

I know several people who are die-hard soap opera watchers. When they found out that the soap cast are vocal Trump haters - kept right on watching. Others who are as pro-life as any I know, and then found out that their favorite yogurt company Chobani supports abortion. Kept right on purchasing.

Pretty much every company in the tech industry is woke. I have to search around like I'm inspector clusoe to try to find a conservative willing to boycott a tech company.

The woke NFL is another. To my knowledge, everybody who claimed to be turning them off only did so for one year. Now its back to normal. Same for NASCAR.

The confusion stems from the customer. Woke doesn't always get people to stop purchasing.

Did you see any boycotts of Advanced Auto Parts when that company embraced the Woke and DEI agenda? Yeah, me neither. If customers don't have a unified message regarding Woke, why would corporations react to that which doesn't exist?

33 posted on 05/17/2023 8:34:17 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica (The historians must be stopped. They're destroying everything.)
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To: stanne

Fascism is the melding of politics and capitalism.


34 posted on 05/17/2023 8:35:17 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: rollo tomasi
Yes! The government has assets in excess of our debt but they plan to keep them for themselves.

Seniors, you will suffer and even starve but the government (rich families) will sell our oil, coal, timber, water, copper, farmland, etc. to our enemies.

Makes ya' proud, don't it?

Fellow veterans, how you feel about all this?

35 posted on 05/17/2023 8:36:02 AM PDT by Aevery_Freeman (Wow, they shut down FOX News pretty quickly!)
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To: dfwgator
we’re down to a few mega-corporations, they don’t have to worry about profits

That has lead me to be more of a national populist than a conservative in recent years. Some trust busting is in order. If you asked me about trust busting twenty years ago, I would have been vehemently against it. Some basic macroeconomics that I learned some forty plus years ago has taken on greater meaning to me. Specifically, pure competition seems to be needed these days. The major tenants of pure (or perfect) competition are:
1.) Ease of entry and exit from markets.
2. Many small competitors selling homogeneous or near homogeneous products.
3. Perfect information on price and product.

We are missing #1 due to government and regulations. We are missing #2 due to government approving large mergers and acquisitions. #3 actually exist to a greater extent today than in the past due to the Internet and technology.

36 posted on 05/17/2023 8:37:02 AM PDT by ConservativeInPA ("How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly." )
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To: Mr. Mojo

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4145238/posts?page=55#55


37 posted on 05/17/2023 8:38:54 AM PDT by Roccus (Veritas, non verba magistri)
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To: Mr. Mojo; All

The CEO of a company I worked at for 40 years, when asked by another employee who was most important, the employees, the customers, or the stockholders, replied, “The employees, the customers, and the stockholders form an equilateral triangle, with the stockholders at the top.”


38 posted on 05/17/2023 8:40:11 AM PDT by mozarky2 (Ya never stand so tall as when ya stoop to stomp a statist...)
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To: ConservativeInPA

Yes, I pretty much have taken the same path as you.

The me of 20 years ago, probably would have called today’s me a “Commie”, LOL!


39 posted on 05/17/2023 8:46:18 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Mr. Mojo
"If a company has to do disclosures, and it has some executives who are ‘not into ESG,’ it should be thinking about the cost of not becoming more concerned,” Eileen Murray, a former executive of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, told CNBC ."

We need to be taking names, those like this woman.

40 posted on 05/17/2023 8:52:20 AM PDT by Eagles6 (Welcome to the Matrix . Orwell's "1984" was a warning, not an instruction manual.)
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