The transgender encroachment debate has hit the cast of Shark Tank.
“There is a reason almost all the top ten market cap companies in the U.S. can be considered ‘woke.’ It’s good business. Most CEOs have enough experience to know to just wait out the news cycle until they go to the next one,” Cuban said.
But Canadian pizza impresario and fellow billionaire Kevin O’Leary pushed back saying, “When you’re Disney or you’re a beer company or you’re Target, you have customers of every kind. Republicans, Democrats, gender-specific or gender-neutral. It doesn’t matter. When you get involved in partisan issues, you basically lose 50% of your constituency. Their role is not to educate society on the social issue of the day. When you lose nine, ten, 11, $12 billion of market cap, you know that you’ve offended somebody and that person is your customer.”
But the proof is in the pudding. Bud Light used to be the nation’s top selling beer. On Wednesday it was announced they had had fallen to second place behind Modelo, and had lost 25% in sales for May when compared to the same month of last year:
Target actually reversed course somewhat. Previously, the pro LGBTQ clothing was displayed at stores nationwide. But following the controversy, the company put that merchandise in the back of their stores in southern, more conservative areas.
Cuban doesn’t believe that’s the right approach. You gotta’ double down or not go down the woke rabbit-hole at all.
“Just as image is hard to build, it is also hard to regain. And so, it’ll be very difficult for some people to un-know what they now know about Bud Light’s corporate strategy.”
Ditto for Bud Light, Cuban says, after they canned the marketing rep responsible for the Dylan Mulvaney tie-in.
Looks like O’Leary has the upper-hand in this argument, and Cuban sort of half admitted it.
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