Business and Politics Part 1. Taking action.

Isaiah O’Connor

In my last post, I wrote about how Gillette ran a controversial ad campaign that backfired. The ads were supporting one side of a political viewpoint and alienating the other.  This seems to be something that his happening more and more these days as several companies take overt political action. They do this in marketing campaigns, posting political points on social media, and or adding politically driven icons and symbols on their websites and print media.  I am going to examine if this is a good idea.

In the case of Gillette, it turned out not to be a wise decision, in the case of Nike it seemed to work out. In other companies, it seems to have little to no overall effect.

Just to be clear, what I am talking about is when you openly push a political viewpoint as part of your business. This is not about companies that have no official political stand as a business, even if the owners/operators may have well known political leanings. I am speaking of companies, as part of their cooperate culture decide to take overt political action, as did Gillette, or even publicly stating to refuse service to people based on their political beliefs alone. 

With this clarified, let us jump into this. I went online and researched what others were saying, and while the advice fell into two categories. They were to leave politics out of your business, most people do not care what your politics are, they are just waning your product or service, the second was, you should do it, and not just that you need to because if you remain neutral you customers could assume the worst about you.

Overall, at an about a 2-1 ratio, the overall advice given was to give politics a wide berth. I tend to agree. Unless your business is political by nature, say a political commenter, a politician, blogger, then my advice is to leave politics alone when it comes to doing business. Now privately I am a very political person with strong views, but when it comes to my business I take care to separate my politics out of the equation. A person hiring me to make a balloon arch for the grand opening of a hardware store does not need or care about my political views. All they care about is a good product, at a reasonable price, delivered on time. This is most customers.

However, there are customers that do decide to support or to boycott a business if they agree or disagree with their political viewpoints, but only if these are known. There are some companies that I would rather not do business with because of their political viewpoints, and others I support for theirs. This is human nature. However, these are the ones that have been very public about where they stand. I do not, in principle, try to find the political leanings of every firm I do business with.  This would drive a person insane.

Then there is the business person who decides to refuse service to a person based on their politics alone. This may or may not be legal, I am not sure, however, in my estimation, it is not a smart idea.  Matter of fact on one other blog on the subject a commenter stated that they were planning on firing a perfect client because they voted for someone they did not like. Personally, when I have a perfect client, that orders a lot and pays well and on time I’ll take the money.  Sure you may have some other clients fill that gap but why leave money on the table? Besides I have kids to feed!

Now if a person is going after you because of your politics, and being a jerk about it, sure, I would drop that client in a heartbeat, if they were being abusive, but because of abuse, not politics.

And one more thing. There are those that if they become offended with your political message will make it their mission to destroy your business. They will spread rumors go on a social media campaign, leave bad reviews even if they have never been to your business, etc.  I have even seen cases where they took business owners to court. They can cause havoc. This is not something you want to deal with.

In summary, if you play politics with a business that is not firmly in the political realm you risk causing some bad press, lose customers or even go bankrupt.

In part 2 I will be discussing should you be politically aware as a business person.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Entrepreneur

Isaiah O’Connor CBDO Atheoz.com

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