Good day all. In the last couple of months we have seen Transheuser-Buesch and then Target getting hit hard for their Woke marketing and product sales. (Chick-fil-A may be next) Both Transheuser-Buesch and Target have seen major hits to their stock price and shareholder have lost significant value because of it. (Disney is also taking major hits, but they have other, structural problems ongoing)
All of these issues were basically self inflicted by the management’s decisions to basically ignore the desires of 70% of their customers and instead try to show how “Woke” and Politically correct they are as a company. Now another show appears ready to drop. Here are the details from Newsweek:
A former top advisor to former President Donald Trump is gearing up to sue Bud Light’s parent company (as well as a number of other brands) for allegedly tanking their shareholder value through the marketing of LGBTQ-inclusive merchandise and promos amid a large-scale conservative boycott of any brands who show public support to the community, but one expert told Newsweek why it may not work.
On Tuesday, America First Legal—an activist conservative law firm founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller—published an open call for anyone whose shares in companies like Kohl’s, Anheuser-Busch, Target or any other LGBTQ-friendly company lost value to reach out to them to join a class action lawsuit they potentially hoped to file against the companies.
“ATTENTION: Are you a shareholder of @Target, @Kohls, @abinbev, or other companies that are promoting transgender, LGBTQ and PRIDE products and diminishing shareholder value?” the post asked with a link to the organization’s email address. “We want to hear from you.”
Well, first off, you can see the progressive slant in the writer’s copy. He repeatedly refers to the fact that the lawyer used to be a Trump advisor. There’s is noting wrong with informing people that the lawyer and the law firm may be associated with the Greatest president of the 21st Century, Donald Trump, but do you really need to keep hammering on the subject? There is plenty of other things that to write about, like the actual legal stuff involved?
The effort, should it come to fruition, would represent another act of lawfare against the embattled Bud Light brand, which recently fell against Congressional scrutiny for allegedly violating rules regulating advertisers of alcoholic beverages after a one-off promotion it did with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney in late March.
It might help if the writer of this story had actually followed the link he posted. It goes to another Newsweek story where Senator Ted Cruz called for an investigation, which went no where. (And was probably just a throw away line which politicians of all stripes use) The story goes on to mention the other companies being hit with boycotts due to their Woke policies, such as Target, Kohl’s, (Which I missed), and as I mentioned at the beginning, Chick-fil-A.
The fury has even spread to privately owned companies like Chick-Fil-A, which attracted scorn over the weekend from some conservatives over its inclusion of a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on its website, all despite a longstanding reputation of company executives’ hostility toward the LGBTQ community.
As a privately held company, there are no shareholders to file suit. Also, with regards to Chick-fil-A, they still have time to pull back and save their company. Since it is privately held, those discussions won’t be made public unless the family decides to post them, or there is a sudden change in the management.
Whether Miller’s strategy to sue the companies will be successful, however, is another question.
The strategy America First Legal appears to be weighing is commonly referred to in the legal community as a “Stock-Drop Lawsuit.” The practice, first emergent in the 1930s, came at a time the federal government began to require publicly traded companies to publicize their financial information, therefore allowing shareholders to dispute that information’s accuracy—or the company’s aversion to sharing bad news about their company’s financial future—through litigation.
However, at the end of the 20th Century, Congress passed legislation in an attempt to curb frivolous lawsuits against companies that perform poorly on the stock market, leaving disgruntled investors with a higher burden of proof to meet in order to successfully sue.
I am not a lawyer, so I have no knowledge regarding the potential success of these suits, if brought. It might be very tough to sell to the courts, however the way these companies are now basically supporting what amounts to grooming of children could resonate with a jury. They could show that management ignored the potential risks of the advertising campaigns in damaging their products, and in doing so, damaged the share value of the plaintiffs. (As an aside, I don’t directly own shares in any of these companies. It’s possible that some of my mutual funds do, but I haven’t checked)
But more recent cases, like one 2014 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a securities fraud case involving energy giants Halliburton, could have potentially lowered the threshold for successful suits to make it through, dissidents on the court noted, with conservative Justice Clarence Thomas arguing the decision would lower the burden of proof litigants would need to accuse companies of dereliction their fiduciary duties ahead of a drop in stock price.
In plain English: To be successful, America First Legal would likely need to prove the companies involved in the suit moved forward with LGBTQ-inclusive marketing initiatives with the advanced knowledge it would hurt their share price.
And given that pro-LGBTQ brands generally proved popular prior to the boycott, according to public opinion polling, that could be a high threshold to meet.
What public polling? Is the writer referring to internal Marketing research? If so, then these companies need to go after them for sheer incompetence. For Bud Light and Transheuser-Buesch, the remarks made by the former VP of marketing could come back to haunt them. (She basically bashed Bud Light drinkers as “Frat boys” who could be ignored)
I have no idea if any shareholder suits will actually be filed or if they would work. What is working are the boycotts. Woke companies are discovering that pissing off your primary customer base to pander to a very small minority of generally mentally ill people is not the way to stay in the black.
Thatisall
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~The Angry Webmaster~
It will be interesting to see if Stephen does file a lawsuit!