Conservative pressure scored a win against corporate DEI in August 2024 when Jack Daniel’s parent company announced policy changes before activist Robby Starbuck could launch his planned boycott. Brown-Forman dropped diversity targets and moved to stop tying executive pay to DEI progress. The retreat followed campaigns against other major brands, and Starbuck said the prospect of becoming his next target was already producing results.
Starbuck had been preparing to expose the company’s policies after targeting businesses including Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson. Those companies had already backed away from DEI initiatives amid conservative pressure. With Jack Daniel’s next on his list, Brown-Forman announced its changes to employees on August 21st, 2024, before his campaign against the whiskey maker went public.
The concessions reached specific policies that DEI critics had been fighting. Brown-Forman announced it would abandon numerical workforce and supplier diversity goals, withdraw from the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ workplace ranking and tie executive incentives to business performance. For conservatives seeking to pressure companies over their politics, the episode offered a concrete victory: a major business reversed course with the threat of another boycott hanging over it.
As the New York Post reported on August 22nd, Brown-Forman followed Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply and John Deere in retreating from DEI initiatives. Starbuck had been targeting businesses with substantial conservative customer bases. Brown-Forman’s previous approach included tying 10% of executives’ short-term compensation to progress toward DEI goals, according to the company’s 2023 annual report cited by the newspaper.
Starbuck described his preparations in the X post announcing the reversal, saying his team had been examining employees’ LinkedIn pages. He speculated that this activity had alerted the company to his plans. “They must have been tipped off by us going through employee LinkedIn pages,” he wrote.
The company’s employee memo, reproduced in Starbuck’s post, specified how its incentive structure would change. Management committed to “Ensuring executive incentives and employee goals are tied to business performance.” It also announced the removal of numerical diversity goals covering workforce and suppliers. Training programs would undergo a review for consistency with the revised strategy.
Watch Robby Starbuck talk about Jack Daniel’s parent company dropping its DEI policies here:
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Brown-Forman also said it would stop participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index survey. The company explained that the legal and external environment had changed substantially, particularly in the United States. Its message nevertheless retained a commitment to including different perspectives and experiences in business decisions, while identifying particular programs and targets for removal.
By the time Brown-Forman reversed course, conservative campaigns had already pushed several major brands to retreat from DEI. Starbuck could point to those concessions as he prepared to target Jack Daniel’s, giving the prospect of another boycott weight. He claimed the pressure was working before his next campaign even went public, with companies moving to avoid becoming the next target.
The Post also interviewed Mahoney Asset Management CEO Ken Mahoney about the business risks surrounding DEI policies. Mahoney argued that consumers could interpret those programs as evidence that employers were prioritizing demographic criteria over performance. Discussing the reputational consequences, he told the newspaper: “It hurts their image because consumers feel like they’re not putting the best people in place, but rather keeping score.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.