I wrote about Woke Capital making inroads into Russia after Netherlands HQ’ed Yandex.Taxi fired a driver who refused service to a rude Black foreign student last year.
However, not all such corporate attempts to signal fealty to progressive values are paying off.
Vkusvill is a nice chain of grocery stores that are somewhere in between budget outlets like Perekrestok (=Carrefour/Safeway in the Western context) and the snobbish Azbuka Vkusa (=Whole Foods). Trader Joe’s would probably be its closest US equivalent. But it is also expanding abroad, with two branches and a cafe in the Netherlands, and planning a listing in New York.
So it is not too surprising that Vkusvill thought that now might be an auspicious conjuncture to do this:
The ad featured a number of real-life VkusVill shoppers such as a student, a single mother, and two straight couples, then ended with the “matriarch”-led family including the lesbian couple, who declined to talk to the Financial Times.
The family of women posed for pictures with meatless burgers and coconut condensed milk as they espoused their support for veganism, recycling and polyamorous relationships.
Certainly not a bad idea to attract more hipsters.
(Incidentally, what’s even funnier is that the lesbian family in question is from pro-Western Georgia. Which happened to cancel its gay pride parade through Tbilisi due to Far Right attacks just a week ago ).
But this provoked a boycott from Orthodox non-GMO type shoppers who happen to form the other wing of their clientele. Quickly it became evident that they were more numerous than the polyamorous hipsters, forcing Vkusvill to backpedal.
They apologized, blaming an activist underling in the marketing department for the debacle, and replaced their photo of a Vkusvill family with a rather more traditional one.
This in turn enraged the liberals, who condemned Vkusvill for its cowardice and retreat before homophobia. Meanwhile, their Amsterdam branch apologized to the Dutch LGBT community.
Such are the woes of balancing between two stools for the managers of a company who don’t give a damn either way and just want to make money in this Clown World of ours.
In my observations, the saying “Go woke, go broke” is largely rightoid cope. It just doesn’t work, at most, the SJWs merely jump the shark by a couple of years.
That said, it might actually be true in a country where support for gay marriage is at less than 20% and most people are strongly repulsed by Woke signaling.