Consumers’ Research, the nation’s oldest consumer protection agency, is launching an advertisement campaign targeting companies perpetuating “woke” culture.
The Consumers’ First ad program calls out progressive corporations that are catering to “woke” politics rather than prioritizing customers. The ads expose major companies’ hypocrisy, business failings, and unethical labor practices, such as Nike’s use of forced labor in the Uyghur region of China in its footwear manufacturing.
The ad about the athletic shoe company includes videography of minority Uyghur women working in factories as well as forceful quotations like, “Nike, stop exploiting foreign labor.”
The American Airlines ad highlights the contradiction of the company’s requirement for identification to board a plane and its repudiation of Texas’s version of a voter ID law, all while receiving billions in taxpayer bail-outs and laying off record numbers of staff.
In an interview with National Review, Executive Director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild said that these companies are failing to serve their customers and are pandering to woke politicians to distract from these shortcomings. For instance, the Wall Street Journal recently rated American Airlines the worst airline in the country.
“America Airlines shrunk legroom for passengers and laid off thousands of employees during the COVID pandemic while receiving billions in taxpayer bailouts. Coca-Cola and Nike have both been exploiting foreign, potentially forced, labor in China while American workers suffer,” Hild said.
“They do not want to have to answer questions about all the problems with their business model,” he continued.
The first phase of the Consumers’ Research campaign starts with a seven figure ad buy targeting American Airlines and Coca-Cola, in addition to Nike, for their politicized business objectives and workplaces.
The ads are scheduled to air nationally on cable as well as local markets where the featured companies are located. The headquarters of Nike, Coca-Cola, and American Airlines are in Oregon, Georgia, and Texas, respectively.
“It is time these corporate giants were called to task. We are giving consumers a voice. These companies should be putting their energy and focus on serving their customers, not woke politicians,” Hild added.
The ad campaign comes as many prominent national companies embrace what some have called woke capitalism. Coca-Cola was recently lambasted for integrating critical race theory into employee diversity and inclusion programming, instructing Caucasian workers to reduce their “whiteness” to accommodate and appear less aggressive to people of color.
In June 2020, the soft-drink giant boycotted advertising on Facebook and Instagram and joined a coalition of left-wing advocacy groups “as part of a campaign forcing the social media network to more stringently police hate speech and disinformation.”
The CEO of Delta Airlines, another corporation to join the “woke” bandwagon, Ed Bastian attacked Georgia’s latest voter integrity legislation requiring voters to present ID when turning in their ballots, blasting it as systematically racist. Delta currently has business partnerships with China, which has snuffed out the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and continued its severe repression of ethnic and religious minorities, including Uyghurs and Tibetans.