[AKN #45] Are companies progressive or just regular ole capitalist?
another krappy newsletter #45
Sup homies?
Greetings from Cincinnati! Due to geographical ignorance of anything besides the coastlines, I assume I am coming to you live from the center of the United States.
In the last two weeks, I was in several cities around the US including San Diego, New York City, Long Island, San Francisco, and now Cincinnati. Call me Mr. Worldwide.
Of all those areas, the Bay Area is the only area I have been that is still in full pandemic prevention mode.
In the Bay, it is common to encounter:
People double masked outdoors (I find this the most mind boggling of all. Outdoor activity has been so clearly safe for so long that I even wrote a newsletter about it 7 months ago).
Most people diligently masking up indoors at all times except when consuming food or drink.
I figured that was the case everywhere except for Florida.
So color me surprised as I:
Stepped into a bathroom at the beach in New York with roughly 50 people and no mask adherence
Sat down to eat at a restaurant in Cincinnati where there was no mask required at any time
It is an eye opening experience when you realize how different everyone’s pandemic experience was given where they lived at the time. Even now. For example, while the Midwest is allowing maskless indoor dining, California continues to champion unbridled safety culture with OSHA announcing extended mask guidelines past June 15th.
People increasingly live in different realities. And it all depends on where you live and who you listen to.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: Are companies progressive or just regular ole capitalist?
Every company is obsessed with sharing their position on social issues right now.
I hate to be cynical, but does this feel like a marketing campaign to anyone else?
I have a hard time believing that this is a genuine expression of a company’s core value set when most of them just started giving their opinion about it in the last 365 days and some do things like deliberately share a different set of logos by country during Pride week:
Why would Cisco want their American customers to know its support of gay rights, but not be as overt about that stance to their customers in the Middle East?
Because they are appealing to the market they are selling in.
Cisco wants you to buy their product and they believe that aligning with the customers value set will draw said customers closer towards choosing Cisco for their networking needs.
So while they are trying to position themselves as progressive, I posit that they are instead capitalists giving their opinions on social issues because appearing progressive is table stakes towards selling product to the US markets.*** Thus, capitalism is driving this newfound corporate consciousness. Take that, communism.
But is any of this messaging genuine?
While it largely “feels good” that companies are speaking up about social causes, I cannot help but wonder two things:
Do we have any metrics that we are tracking to see if this messaging makes a difference towards the overall social cause’s goals?
If progress could be made using this market mechanism then progress could just as easily be lost in the same way when progressive values fall out of favor, right?
Color me skeptical of the entire trend, but it feels like real change doesn’t start by asking the question “will sharing this opinion make the public buy more of my routers?”
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*** A great opinion piece on the trend of progressive companies is given in the following article. The author goes much deeper into why every institution seems to be liberal right now and makes you wonder about the implications and the response.
LAUGH: Money isn’t real
I think about this tweet a lot.
The year 2020 completely obliterated my understanding of money and how so many things work. Wonder if there is anyone who invested in these highly speculative cryptocurrencies, made a fortune, and then cashed out and invested it in index funds. There has to be some subset of people who completely cashed out and are now literally set for life after following Dogecoin advice from a sub-Reddit. Crazy.
LOVE: Science in the 50s hits different
I would be stoked to go back to the office full time if all collaborative work involved four ladders and chalkboard math.
Closing time
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
K. Rapp
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