Well, if you wear Levi’s and are infuriated by Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney ad, then it’s time to find a new brand of jeans. That’s because Levi’s, over the summer of 2023, followed in Bud Light’s footsteps and came out with an ad that many of the right have described as “woke” for much the same reason as they resisted the Dylan Mulvaney ad.
The ad came alongside Levi’s May of 2023 decision to expand its gender neutral”product line. CEO Chip Bergh, announcing that new plan, said, “We actually have a gender neutral line. It was a small collection. We know that some women buy some men’s products and some men buy women’s products, we know that that goes on, we’ve got the research and the data to show it. That’s great. We are building out slowly, it started with a small collection of gender neutral or gender fluid line, and there’s definitely consumer appetite for that. And we’re there for that.”
That came in response to a question from Axios’ Hope King, the moderator, who said, “Bud Light’s recent marketing stunt shows where the backlash can come from. How do you market products in a world where people are more aware of their gender identities?”
Bergh also, during the conference in which he spoke on that issue, hand-waved away any fears of a Bud Light-like reaction to the company’s new gender-neutral line. Though true at the time, as few people found out about it, a slow burn could lead to trouble for the company as more and more people find out about it, see the ad, and decide to get jeans from someone else.
Commenters on the video pointed out how confusing such commercials must be to young people, saying things like “I feel bad for young people. I am confused watching this. I remember being 14 and trying to figure out the world. The cultural rules are constantly changing. God never does. He leads us on a good path that is never confusing. Only life giving” and “I don’t know even want to comment because what wants to come out is not nice. I’m noticing the intention here – not only to groom the younger ones, but to keep us in lower vibrations.”
Others used the opportunity to say that they are done with Levi’s for good, saying, “And I’m done buying Levis!” and “My Wranglers are more comfortable and have lasted forever.” If you want to support a company that makes its jeans in America, check out Origin Jeans.
Still others noted that this woke, terrible advertising doesn’t make any sense if the company aims to make money. Instead, it must be up to something else. In their words: “I always thought that marketing tried to capture the largest audience. Is ESG so powerful that profits are secondary? We are devolving 😕” and “Not sure why any company wants to advertise to a very tiny percent of the population?”
But, of course, the goal isn’t to make money off the ad. Rather, it’s to signal ideological conformity to those that control the purse strings (Blackrock and its ESG-oriented funds and voting) and to signal ideological conformity to the woke individuals in charge of the government and bureaucracy.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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