Dear Leaders,
Welcome to business in 2025, where cultural illiteracy is more expensive than financial illiteracy, and a single Instagram post can erase decades of brand equity in a day.
We used to think CEOs needed to understand supply chains, capital allocation, and market dynamics. Adorable. Those are table stakes now. The easy part.
The real job is reading a room of 330 million Americans who can’t agree on anything, and somehow not pissing off the half that pays your bills.
Remember when Bud Light put Dylan Mulvaney on a can and lost $27 billion in market value? That’s $27 billion for one Instagram post. For forgetting which side of the culture war drinks light beer at NASCAR races.
Jaguar saw what happened to Bud Light but said, “hold my beer,” and went ahead with their rebrand anyway. They unveiled an ad so abstract and politically charged that people couldn’t tell if they were selling cars or feelings. Century-old logo, gone. Classic car imagery, replaced with models in avant-garde fashion standing in a fluorescent void. Their car sales dropped by 75%, and the CEO “resigned” soon thereafter.
Cracker Barrel added Impossible Sausage to the menu. Plant-based breakfast at a restaurant whose entire value proposition is “nothing ever changes since 1969.” Their customers review-bombed them. Then they modernized their logo. The warm, homey design replaced with something sleeker and corporate. Their customers revolted again. The stock is down from $67 in August to $29 today, bleeding daily. The CEO is about to “resign” (best guess).
Here’s the interesting part: some companies take controversial stances and survive. Nike ran Colin Kaepernick ads and the conservative boycott barely dented them. Patagonia’s founder gave away his $3 billion company to fight climate change and the brand got stronger. Chick-fil-A is openly conservative and has lines out the door. Ben & Jerry’s makes statements on Palestinian rights and their ice cream keeps selling.
What’s the difference? Staying true to your brand values.
Nike standing with athletes who protest: they’ve been the rebellion brand for 30 years. “Just Do It” was always about breaking barriers. The Kaepernick ad wasn’t a pivot; it was business as usual.
Bud Light spent 40 years selling beer to middle America with Clydesdales and football. No opinions. No positions. Then the Dylan Mulvaney can. It was a marketing department trying to be relevant. Their customers could smell the opportunism.
Patagonia giving away billions for the environment: they’ve been running ads telling customers not to buy their jackets for decades. It’s their origin story.
Cracker Barrel adding plant-based options: existentially incoherent. Their customers pay for time travel to 1969. Modernizing anything destroys the product.
The pattern: your stance has to match your brand’s values. The backlash isn’t about taking a political position. It’s taking a position that feels fake.
Here’s where it gets interesting: this only matters if you’re replaceable.
Apple gets accused of exploiting Chinese labor and enabling surveillance. You’re still reading this on an iPhone. Meta gets blamed for destroying democracy. You’re still on Instagram. Google, Amazon, same story.
They don’t need authenticity because they sell infrastructure. And infrastructure is too expensive to boycott.
When Bud Light screws up, you grab a Coors. Zero switching cost. When Cracker Barrel annoys you, there’s a Denny’s down the road. But leaving the Apple ecosystem is several grand in new devices plus relearning everything. Boycotting Amazon Prime? Sure, go back to waiting a week for toothpaste.
The culture war only has teeth when customers can afford to care.
So here’s the actual calculus for CEOs:
If you sell replaceable products: beer, jeans, breakfast, cars, you’re in the identity business. Your product is a tribal marker. Your customers chose you because you represent something. Change what you represent at your own peril.
The question isn’t “how do I avoid the culture war?” You can’t.
The question is: “What has my brand always stood for, and am I authentic to that?”
If your answer is “tradition,” lean in. Stop chasing progressive customers who already left.
If your answer is “progress,” own it. Stop trying to win over conservatives who weren’t buying from you anyway.
If your answer is “we’ve always been neutral,” stay there. That’s authentic too.
The only unforgivable sin is opportunism. Taking a stance because you think it’ll win you demographics you don’t serve. Abandoning your heritage because a consultant said to modernize. Pretending to care about causes when everyone can tell you’re checking boxes.
There is no formula. There’s only knowing what your brand actually is, not what you wish it was, and having the courage to stay consistent even when half the country decides they hate you for it.
In a 50/50 country, trying to please everyone means you end up with no one. The brands that survive are the ones that know exactly who they’re for and exactly who they’re not for. And they’re fine with that math.
Know what you are and own it, or the culture war will decide for you. And it won’t pick the profitable one.
Onward,
Hamza
