New York Post

Customers to Corps.: End Your Woke Shtick

- Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independen­t Women’s Voice.

Anew warning to woke CEOs: Americans don’t want corporatio­ns meddling in divisive political issues, and they perceive such activism as phony pandering. There’s also a huge gap between what consumers believe about woke activism compared with out-of-touch executives, according to a study conducted by the Brunswick Group, a management firm. Amazon yanks a documentar­y about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. EBay scraps Dr. Seuss books. Disney fires actress Gina Carano. Do consumers agree with these moves?

Brunswick found 63 percent of corporate executives “agree unequivoca­lly that companies should speak out on social issues,” but a mere 36 percent of voters agree. Corporate brass also has “a highly inflated sense of how effective corporate communicat­ion has been on social issues compared to voters.”

An overwhelmi­ng 74 percent of business executives think corporate activism is effective, compared with just 39 percent of voters. Companies spend billions building brand equity through marketing campaigns. Turns out their virtue-signaling could be counterpro­ductive because voters believe it’s inauthenti­c.

The study found more than 60 percent of voters think “companies only speak out on social issues to look better to consumers and are not being sincere,” even as 57 percent of executives said companies “speak out on social issues because they want to achieve real change.”

Talk about disconnect­ed narcissism. Will these brands wake up from their woke fantasies?

“Authentici­ty” is a buzzword corporate bigwigs throw around in hopes of reaching younger consumers. Instead, they come across as hovering, obnoxious parents in mom jeans and dad fanny packs.

Brunswick’s findings echo an April Rasmussen Reports survey finding 37 percent of US adults said Coca-Cola’s swipe at Georgia’s voter-integrity law made them less likely to purchase Coke products.

Just 25 percent were more likely to buy Coke, the survey found, and 30 percent said it had little effect. People vote with their wallets: 52 percent of Republican­s told Rasmussen they were less likely to shop Coke because of the Atlanta-based firm’s election-law stance — as did 24 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of independen­ts. Coke’s stock price is down since January — even as the S&P 500 Index is up more than 20 percent. Will Coke shareholde­rs ask

for corporate executives’ pink slips if they keep up this nonsense?

Coca-Cola said Georgia’s law “makes it harder for people to vote, not easier,” but the statute expands early voting, requires funding to stop too-long precinct voting lines and guarantees a minimum number of ballot drop boxes (which didn’t exist in the state until 2020).

Georgia critics denounced requiring mail-in voters to provide some form of accepted ID. But uber liberal New Jersey, Virginia and California demand this also. Georgia voters:

Remember this hypocrisy now that Stacey Abrams — who refuses to

concede her 2018 loss to Gov. Brian Kemp — just declared Wednesday she’s running for a rematch.

Despite woke executives’ widerangin­g corporate bullying, there’s one foreign social-justice cause offlimits: China.

American business leaders back just about every liberal political cause under the sun but won’t utter a peep about vile, heinous modernday slavery and human-rights abuses committed by the Chinese Communist Party. This includes the imprisonme­nt and torture of an estimated 1 million Muslim Uighurs.

Rather than showing a backbone,

Will Coke shareholde­rs ask for corporate slips?’ executives’ pink

major corporatio­ns like Nike, NFL, Tiffany, Marriott and Vans cave to the CCP at every turn. One example: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon groveling before the CCP to apologize for joking that his company would outlast the CCP.

A shining counterexa­mple comes from the NBA’s rank-and-file. Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter is an incredibly bold man yet to receive support from his higher-ups. He’s excoriated the NBA for its cozy CCP relationsh­ip. Immediatel­y after obtaining US citizenshi­p, Kanter legally changed his name to Enes Kanter Freedom. Freedom’s new surname will appear on his jerseys.

Freedom grew up in Turkey, where he angered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — a man growing in violent aggression against his own people. Erdogan’s regime last month issued Freedom’s 10th arrest warrant because of his courageous statements against Turkish human-rights abuses.

Multiple polls show most Americans are also wary of the CCP and want their country to vigorously push back. Shots fired, corporate America. Will you support this authentic cause?

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