Target’s sales are in freefall. Brian Cornell, the company’s longtime CEO, has fallen on his sword and stepped down.
There is no shortage of glee in the press about all this. Target was one of the companies that abandoned DEI policies in the wake of Trump’s election, and the general shift in the national mood.
But what really happened? We may have a chicken-and-egg conundrum here. Did Target ever really benefit from its carefully cultivated “woke” reputation? Or did its former notoriety lose more sales?
We may never know the answer to that question. One thing is for certain, though. Prior to 2024, Target cynically practiced rainbow capitalism. After 2024, Target just as cynically abandoned it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Perhaps. But Ralph Waldo Emerson never ran a major retailer amid America’s 21st-century culture wars.
With the country so divided, a company can carve out a niche as a “rainbow” enterprise, à la Ben and Jerry’s. Want some leftwing, revolutionary ice cream with an unwashed hippie vibe? Ben and Jerry’s has you covered.
A company can also court conservatives in the manner of Chick-fil-A. Whether you call that chicken “family friendly” or “homophobic”, you can’t deny that Chick-fil-A has a strong following.
A company that jumps back and forth, however, will end up annoying everyone. We have seen two examples of this: Bud Light and Target. Both brands staked out (leftwing) positions in the culture wars in 2023. Then they backpedaled when faced with conservative backlash.
If a company picks a side in the first place, then the company should stick to its guns. In the case of Target: once you’ve become known as the retailer of LGBTQ apparel for kids, hold your freak flag high, and dare the normies to pry it from your cold, dead hands. There are some public positions that you simply can’t come back from. So why try?
Or a company could simply stick to the fundamentals from the get-go. In my youth, retailers competed on simplistic factors like price and selection. They didn’t go out of their way to talk about anyone’s race, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
What backward, benighted times those were! And how sophisticated are the business leaders of today, when compared to those of the past!
-ET