Division Doesn’t Pay

Tough Things First

In business, we want to see the bottom line grow! But in the last few years wading into politics and the latest social trend is having the opposite effect on sales. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explains the basic problem with divisiveness.

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Rob Artigo: Well, I noticed that some companies have recently come out and said they’re changing the way that they attach their names to certain causes because some issues, and gosh, the last few years, almost any issue could, but some issues have proven to be so divisive that they’re not helpful. And Scripps is a company, for example, that has made some changes. It is apparently shutting down its 24-hour news channel and blaming advertisers because the advertisers are saying, “We don’t want to be involved in programming that has politics because it reflects on us.”

Rob Artigo cont… And the divisive nature of politics right now means that half of their customers are going to boycott them or stop buying their products simply by appearing to support one side or the other.

And as we know, the media right now doesn’t have the greatest reputation of unbiased. I don’t know anything about Scripps TV news work, so I don’t know. I’m not going to comment on whether they’re biased or not. But the CEO of Scripps had said this, “Many brands and agencies have decided that advertising around national news is just too risky for them given the fact that it’s so polarized in this country.” So Ray, put on your CEO hat, but also your past experience in marketing and sales. What have you seen in recent years? Do you support this idea? Do you see this happening in the corporate world?

Rob Artigo: Well, it depends upon if your product is agnostic, meaning it doesn’t matter what political party you subscribe to. If you’re selling cars, that’s pretty agnostic. It doesn’t matter except maybe if it’s electric or whatever, but-

Rob Artigo: Right, but it should be agnostic anyway you’d think.

Rob Artigo: Right. It should be agnostic. Or clothing, well, certain clothing. I guess there are clothes that are not agnostic.

Rob Artigo: No.

Rob Artigo: And food the same way. I mean, if you’re going to go to a pizza parlor, you wouldn’t expect to get steak or hamburger as you would. You have to gear your product around what group you’re trying to attract. The people at Old Navy try to attract younger people. If you’re a jewelry store, you’re not going to be selling clothing. You have to look at your product and whether or not it’s politically agnostic. Again, jewelry stores is pretty much politically agnostic. Now, news media, that’s very, very politically oriented, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican or liberal or whatever, libertarian I should say, you’re going to listen to certain stations because that’s the ones you want to hear because they agree with you. It’s really strange that most of us look at ourselves in terms of who we associate with.

Brands tend to be the kind of people that agree with us either religiously or politically or sports-wise, whether you’re a football fan or whether you’re a baseball or basketball, whatever. You want to gear your advertising, your marketing to attract the people that will most help grow your product line as you would. Obviously in this highly divided political environment we’re in, especially with this presidential election coming up, if you want to attract more advertisers as you would, you’re going to have to make your news, as you would, your product more agnostic. What I think is more interesting to our listeners is we can be different but not differ. If everybody looked alike, acted alike, it’d be pretty boring. And so we are all different. Every one of us. You and I are different, Rob. Just look at the way we dress. Look at our age difference, look at where we live.

So we are all different, but we don’t have to differ. Differ means to disagree. What we need to do is become less disagreeable or to differ less. We got to acknowledge that people are different. I think that Republicans and Democrats can get along perfectly fine, or we say liberals and conservatives can get along perfectly fine if they don’t focus on what differentiates us, as you would. The challenge here, I think is finding a way to attract people without differing as you would. I go to a particular restaurant because that’s the food taste that I particularly want that night or day or whatever. They provide that that means that they’re not going to get every single customer wanting to have that particular food that day. That’s why we have different restaurants, some Mexican food, Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian. What we need to do is not badmouth the Chinese because we want Japanese food or badmouth the French because we want Italian food. We just need to be less vocal about our differences. I particularly don’t like venison, which is deer meat.

Rob Artigo: But based on where you live, that’s pretty surprising.

Rob Artigo: I know, I know. But I don’t badmouth people because they like deer meat.

Rob Artigo: Yeah.

Rob Artigo: I don’t particularly like it myself, but I’m saying just because you like it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or because I like it or don’t like it doesn’t make me a bad person. Again, my focus here in this podcast is to talk about to be different but not differ.

Rob Artigo: Yeah.

Rob Artigo: Or to not be so disagreeable, as you would. We tend to get caught up in all these ways of differing with each other. We need to stop doing that, whether the subject is abortion or immigration or economy. Now an economy would think we’d all agree on that. So that’s one where I don’t think that’s politically agnostic or it is that political agnostic, I should say, the economy.

Rob Artigo: More, certainly.

Rob Artigo: More, right.

Rob Artigo: Yeah.

Rob Artigo: Now, abortion that tends to polarize and so does the immigration thing tend to polarize. And so we just need to, where we know it’s polarizing, we should just not become so vocal about it or so polarized about it because we drive away. We don’t bring together, we drive away. So stay away from those areas where it’s polarizing.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, don’t lose friends over disagreements on… And particularly when it comes to politics, and if you’re an advertiser or a business owner, you might want to think about your messaging and try to make it more agnostic and to avoid triggering people out there and your buying audience. Ray, I want listeners to know that they can go to toughthingsfirst.com. If they have questions for you, they can also make contact there. They can continue their education and this conversation and all the others with all the podcasts, blogs, and links, information about your books, Ray, Tough Things First, and of course, Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3. Great podcast and I do appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next time.

Rob Artigo: Thanks, Rob.