Should Brands Get Political? Tune in to hear the risks & rewards of taking a stand with Jeroen Reuven Bours

In today’s polarized world, should brands take a stand on political and social issues—or is neutrality the smarter move?

With the rise of the social justice movement, the debate over if, when, and how brands should engage with politics has never been more relevant. In this episode, we sit down with Jeroen Reuven Bours, founder of Darling Agency in New York, to break down this complex and high-stakes topic.

We explore:
The pros and cons of brands getting involved in political discourse
Real-world examples of brand activism—both successful and catastrophic
How companies can navigate political engagement without alienating their audience
Jeroen’s expert take on when it makes sense for brands to take a stand

About Our Guest:
Jeroen Reuven Bours, a native Dutchman who arrived in New York via Israel, has an impressive legacy in the branding world. As Steve Jobs’ former art director, Jeroen played a role in shaping Apple’s visual identity. He and Joyce Thomas also co-created the iconic “Priceless” campaign for Mastercard, developed new products for American Express, and launched major global campaigns that have stood the test of time.

Seventeen years ago, Jeroen founded Darling Agency, a New York-based branding firm built on the pillars of service, value, and creative excellence. Among his many accomplishments, he also spearheaded the launch of Amtrak’s Acela train.

This is a must-listen episode for anyone navigating the intersection of branding, business, and politics.

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Transcript (Auto-Generated)

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding, the only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

Well, hello folks and welcome to this episode of JUST Branding. We are super excited to have Jeroen Bours with us. He is a native Dutchman who came to New York years ago via Israel. He has the distinction of being Steve Jobs’ art director for a couple of years, and is known together with Joyce Thomas for the creation of the priceless campaign for MasterCard. He has helped American Express come up with actual new products and introducing those, and he has done other numerous global campaigns of which some have been running for decades. Jeroen started Darling, his agency, in New York 17 years ago on the premise of service, value and creative quality. Darling is running as fast as the not-so-fast Acclair train from Amtrak, which he also launched. And I’ve probably pronounced all of those, including Jeroen’s name, probably completely wrong, as I will do throughout this whole episode. But welcome to the podcast, Jeroen. It’s great to have you with us.

Thank you, Matt Davidson. Oh no, it’s Matt Davies. Oh, wait a moment. Sorry. Just call me Bob. Yeah, it could be Bob Davies. Thanks a lot, man. All right. Well, this is exciting.

Yeah, it’s a thrill to have you on. And folks, what is it that we’re going to be talking about today? So this is kind of, I don’t know, I think we’re treading where many podcasts will not naturally tread. In fact, I’m a little bit nervous. I’ve got to be honest, folks, it’s very rare that I’m nervous, but I’m a little bit nervous because we’re going to open up the Pandora’s box of whether or not brands should get involved in politics. Now, I think it’s fair to say that Jacob and I and the JUST Branding Podcast are non-political. We don’t tend to take political sides or comment, and I’m hoping that we can try and tread that careful line together today. But maybe we shouldn’t be doing that, Jacob. Maybe we should be jumping in and getting all political and so on and so forth. But let’s tuck into all of those subjects in a minute. I think it’s going to be a very interesting and insightful podcast to explore with you, Jeroen. So first of all, before we get into all that juicy stuff, tell us a little bit about your backstory, your background, and basically how you’ve become interested in the way brands handle politics.

Well, that’s a great question. I never really paid attention to politics and brands. You grow up in this business, you start off as an art director, you become a creative director, you then are being pulled into the copy side of it as well. Especially when you have your own company, you have to wear so many hats. Actually, the first time it started was probably at Ogilvy. I was a high up creative director there and I had a huge group. Somebody came to me and said, oh yeah, we’re doing our annual gay ad for Miller Beer. I was stunned. I was like, our annual Miller gay ad in print, no less, in those days. It was like in print. Oh yeah, and this is running mostly in San Francisco. I mean, you couldn’t write a bigger cliche than that request. I was stunned. I was like, okay, what is this? We’re just tipping our heads. I mean, if the word pandering would have been invented on that conversation alone, it would have been right, right? So over the years became very sensitive to it. And you could see people in meetings being politically correct, right? PC came up, you know, right around the late 19th. So that’s like 2000 and, you know, everything became PC, PC, PC. So you went into meetings, casting meetings or whatever, and it was like, yeah, well, guess what? We have a blonde, we have a blonde, we have a blonde. You know what’s missing? We don’t have a black person. We don’t have a black person. And it became even more so today where you watch it at television and almost nobody is white anymore, which is another issue. And then we, you know, if you have four people in the room, it’s got to be a black person, an Asian person, a white person, and a Hispanic person. You know, you tick off all those boxes. Now, what does it have to do with politics? Everything, because everything became and was made political in advertising that way. And I thought it was, it just wasn’t genuine. It wasn’t genuine. You know, if you do three, four, five, six spots and you see the right actor and the right actor is black, so what? So the actor is black. That’s it. I’m not choosing the actor because he or she is black. I’m choosing them because they’re great actors. And so I always held that kind of, maybe it’s naive, but that kind of like purist look of things and saying that, you know, it shouldn’t be that way. I was once asked off an account. We were producing amazing commercials, according to other people. And there was an end scene in a commercial of a veteran saluting a grave. And the grave was in a military cemetery. So it was an amazing, you know, amazing frame, right? This lonely man in his, you know, kind of like Vietnam outfit, right? Typical Vietnam vet. And he’s saluting the grave. And he was black. We chose him to be black. And the client says, no, we shouldn’t make him black because blacks were casted for these roles, you know, to become soldiers more than white people. And he made it political like you never would do that even, you know, yourself. And I was fired for it because I became very passionate about it. I said, no, that’s why he should be black, perhaps. I said, but he’s just a great face, a great person, looks fantastic. Let’s put him in this role. And he asked me of the business. So politics are everywhere.

And I think it’s interesting to explore that. I particularly be keen to dive into the sensitive area. I mean, you’re talking about race and, you know, there’s a whole tricky minefield of critical race theory and white privilege and all that stuff. And I’m keen that we perhaps don’t go too sensitively into those areas. But I don’t think we can pass this part of the discussion without mentioning the Black Lives Matter movement, which obviously was huge a few years ago. And many, many brands kind of took up an activist stance, a social justice stance and adopted what that organization stood for. So I’d love to be kind of get your thoughts on that. Like, you know, why do you feel those brands were compelled to do so? And what risks do you think that they took whilst entering into such a kind of a decision?

Yeah, Black Lives Matter is a huge example here. BLM, as it’s now just called, started, you know, all the way down in Florida. The drop in the bucket was for three black women. And I say three black women because later on it changed hands and it’s, you know, it’s no longer today what it was then. But it was started for the right reasons after the killer of, I think it was Trayvon Martin. He got off free in Florida and that was it. But think about this, as brands go and they need building, even Black Lives Matter was almost like it became a brand and really, really grew exponentially seven years later. And seven years later, you know, the mass protests began after the killing of yet another black person, George Floyd. And that became, that was it. That became national. Everybody was talking about it. And that inspired Nike, right? Nike to pledge $140 million with the Jeroen brand as well. I’m sure Michael Jordan jumped in as well in support of education, economic empowerment, social justice to black related organizations, right? Nike also ran an ad for once, don’t do it. So this is unusual for Nike, right? They for once don’t do it. Now, in the creative communities, that was like, isn’t that great? They take, just do it, they switch it around, look how creative this is. The next day, I thought about it, and I thought it was major pandering. I said so publicly on LinkedIn and on a couple of platforms, and people attacked me immediately. Then there were a few people who said, you know what? I thought about it for another day and I think you’re right. I thought it was major pandering coming from Nike, who in their long list of sponsoring and supporting education, never ever did anything like it. They jumped on this bandwagon that I thought was like, okay, let’s see who else is jumping on this bandwagon because it’s not the right way to do it. In my view, this is very personal, but if Nike would have come out and say, you know what? We’re giving these $140 million to the cops, and we’re giving them to the cops on the premise that they should educate themselves so that this will never ever happen again. That would have been a move. That would have been like, wow, can you imagine? But now they gave it to supporting education and whatever, and then it disappears. The issue disappears, the money disappears. Hopefully, it’s being used for good causes, but it’s not, it’s pandering. So you have to be very, very careful. You know, Donahue was the Nike CEO at the time. He was only there for a couple of years, by the way. And he literally came out and he says, I’ve been asking myself how to respond during times like these, both as a citizen, as a member of the Nike family. Let me be clear as I can, Nike is opposed to bigotry. Big deal. Of course, they were opposed to bigotry. Why are you even saying that? We are opposed to hatred and inequality in all its forms. At that point, you start thinking like, who’s he saying this to? Is he saying this to his black customers? Indirect and overt, well, Nike cannot solve injustice. You’re right, Nike, you can’t. I believe we have a responsibility to work towards addressing it to the best of our ability. What we can do is inspire and empower ourselves and others to action and try to help shape a better society by serving as a beacon of hope and resilience. Goobily-goop, sorry, sorry, Nike CEO. Where were you a month ago? Where were you a year ago? You know what I’m saying? It’s pure pandering. Look, you have to understand something. This was really the bucket spilling over. I mean, Trayvon Martin was horrible. There were a lot of people in between. George Floyd, that killed us all. That was just pure, pure hatred. So America was emotional and it was emotional for everyone, but you cannot all of a sudden become political. You can’t dive in as a brand and say, I’m going to solve this with $140 million.

So what do you think the risks are like not getting involved? Like Black Lives Matter was such a mass movement, wasn’t it? Like, and brands felt compelled to get involved. You know, everyone, I remember on Instagram, there was a lot of people, where they just put in the black squares up, or like loads of brands were doing it in support. And as you say, it kind of felt, you know, a little bit virtue signally, if you like, without meaning you had to actually do very much. It was just, oh, we just, you know, put a black square up and, you know, we’ve ticked the box kind of thing. As you say, you know, it did become pandering. But like, what was the risks of not joining the bandwagon, do you think, for some of the brands?

That is the question, because we had, at the time we had already a national brand, and it’s, you know, it’s on everybody’s table, it’s salt, you know, it’s table salt. And it’s a 140 year old brand. And they called us the next day, they said, what should we do? And I said, well, the longer you wait, the longer it becomes a me too thing, right? Then it’s no longer, which is another, is another organization, of course, that came out right around the same time. But then it becomes too clear that you’re basically doing it because other people are doing it. I think, you know, Nike was pretty fast with it. But, you know, if you wait too long, then it’s then it’s a me too thing. You have to understand when Nike did it, that was the second time they did it, because they also earlier sponsored or not sponsored, but stood by Colin Kaepern. I don’t know if you remember that that’s an NFL quarterback. And he kneeled during a protest, the playing of the national anthem before an NFL game. He kneeled in protest, right? And then Nike said, you know what, he’s one of us, meaning, you know, he’s one of the long, long list of athletes that we sponsor or we have a contract with. And so they launched the Believe in Something campaign. And they actually lost money on that. They lost, according to Forbes, they lost $4 billion in sales, just by standing by with Colin Kaepernick, right? But here’s the thing, they also, on the other side, so that’s people that disagree with that and whatever, and now they’re cutting up the Nikes and it becomes a social media thing and all that. But on the other side, people were like, yeah, cool, right? Nike is cool. And they gained $6 billion back because they stood with him. So there you go, $2 billion in profits at the end, you know, but it’s now long forgotten. And even at the time of their spot, right? For once, don’t do it. Everybody had already forgotten about Colin Kaepernick. That is the blessing and the curse of joining politics. The blessing is maybe it goes away really, really fast. The curse is maybe it never goes away.

Yeah. What comes to mind is the Pepsi ad when they got involved with it and it just seemed so off, off kilter. I can’t even remember all the details, but are you familiar with that ad?

Yeah. So what happens there is they really made a mistake. It sounded totally off and it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t, first of all, it’s not on brand. That’s the other thing. Politics are not on your brand, on brand, but you know, if you’re joining a popular cause, before you dive in, is that really your brand? This is, you know, this is Pepsi. Pepsi is saying something really important. This is a shoemaker, right? A billion, billion, trillion dollar, who knows? Shoemaker, right? Who comes out and says something like that. Guys, your brands, your things, your products, I like you for it. Stay in your corner, right? Pepsi, make sure you’re cold when I drink you. And Nike, make sure the shoe fits and that’s it, right? And shut up. Don’t go any further than that. So, yeah, in the case of Pepsi, it was so… People actually made fun of it. They felt bad for it. Yeah, I was like, oh my God, don’t do this.

We talked about the one with Kendall Jenner, who was depicted as kind of solving social unrest by handing out pepsis to police officers during protests. Is that the one we’re thinking of?

I thought that was the one. Yeah.

I was trying to think who it was, but yeah, that’s it.

So yeah, talk us through why that probably wasn’t the best idea for Pepsi to do.

Number one, it’s planned. It’s carefully orchestrated. It’s a celebrity. It’s there’s security there. There’s cameras there. It’s a camera opportunity. And then worse, worse than that, it’s actually put in a commercial to sell, right, to sell goodwill. It was the worst thing they could have done, the worst thing. If a brand wants to help out or all that, hey, what are you doing there? But I’m saying, look, if Nike would have come to me and said, we have $140 million, what are we going to do with that? How are we going to spend that? Let’s spend it on education. I would have said, yeah, education of whom? Right? Let’s educate those cops. And yeah, there’s going to be a stir about it. But at the end of the day, the mothers of those kids screaming in the street at night, at dinner will tell them, well, guess what? Nike is actually right. You know what I’m saying? Like that would have been no blur. But I would have voted against anything. Stay out of it. Seriously, stay out of it. Stay out of it. If you want to silently do something, if you say Nike is going to donate to this or this or this, it’s just a box that you tick off and people will say, oh, that’s nice, Nike. Anything else on sale in the store? I mean, you want to stay out of it. Seriously.

You’re very much on the stance of just stay out of it. But when is a good time to get involved? And how do you actually understand when it goes beyond JUST Branding?

I’ve discovered a few ways of how brands enter politics or politics enter brands. There are cases where a brand just goes towards politics. It just becomes political. It decides to become political. And a lot of CMOs, a lot of CEOs, especially founders, ask themselves, look how successful we are. We have a platform, you know, I need to speak out. And you hear this from actors too, right? Actors say, well, I have a responsibility to speak out because I have a platform, right? Whatever that means. It just means that they have a million followers or 10 million followers. Or if they’re lucky, 50 million followers. Brands can sometimes start up trouble themselves. Patagonia is a beautiful example. Patagonia, the founder, very respected for being front runners in the green world, right? Recycling, you know, ecologically aware, right? So they came out with the most ridiculous, I think, and again, that’s my opinion, the most ridiculous statement ever. I’ve ever heard a brand name. And their statement was, the privately held company is reluctant to market to companies it deems ecologically damaging, including religious groups, churches, food groups, political affiliated companies or groups, and financial institutions and more. And why did they say that? Because they didn’t want to sell their vests, you know, and their jackets, their vests especially to certain companies. Why? Because in the world of banks and hedge fund managers and, you know, traders and bond traders and whatever, if you go to these floors, there’s this weird, weird phenomenon that everybody wears Patagonia vests, and nobody knows why. These guys walk around in their, you know, short haircuts and slacks and whatever, and they have nice shoes on, and then they have nice shirts on, and then over that shirt is that vest from Patagonia. And then usually it’s co-branded, right? So the company name is there as well. Well, Patagonia woke up one day and said, enough is enough, we don’t want to sell to you anymore. Why? Because you’re not, you know, you don’t fit our brand. And they called it, and they actually used the term brand alignment. So with other words, and they also announced, by the way, that they only co-brand companies who practice regenerative farming and environmental activism. So what does that mean? That is a brand that seeks out to become political. And you can do that if you’re, if everybody agrees. It’s not nice to your employees, if they don’t believe it, but hey, this is the founder, highly respected, you know, a real pioneer when it comes to green thinking, right? In a company like that, if that’s even possible, but they claim they are and they’re highly respected for it.

See, this is an interesting thought. You mentioned the employees inside these organizations as well. Because if you take any political issue, usually, 50% of people would agree on it, roughly, on a general generalist issue, 50-50. So I often think from a strategic perspective, if a brand does decide to enter a political stance on whatever the issue might be, you’re going to alienate 50% of your audience, right? But the other 50% are going to think you’re amazing, right? But the same happens internally, right? So what do you do if 50% of your staff disagree with the stance that you’re making? This is a huge risk, it seems to my mind, strategically that you are making if you come out and ride your high horse and try and make a political statement. And have you checked with your C-suite that everybody is all aligned with whatever the marketing campaign manager is deciding to push through? Because if you’re not, then you could find 50% of your workforce the next day don’t show up because they’re so appalled at whatever it is that you’re pushing. So it’s something worth considering. And I wonder if in some of these instances, like you talked about some of the brands, if they’ve done that. Another small thing on the side. As you say, sometimes brands deliberately enter those spaces like Patagonia, like you’ve mentioned. Other times, I find politics visits for a period of time. So I don’t know if you heard about this, but in the UK at the time, Richie Sunak did an interview and he was wearing some Adidas, I can’t remember what they were, it was Sambras or something like a particular brand of Adidas trainers. And it kind of blew up online, like because it was like obviously he’s the prime minister, what he was at the time. And there was kind of a lot of discussion. I was actually asked to comment on it by Drapers magazine. And so I was like, they were saying, oh, do you think this is going to have an impact on like Adidas’ sales? Like, do you know, is Adidas going to lose its street cred? And my comment at the time was very much around, well, I think some people will be appalled that the prime minister, who they hate, is wearing that brand. But I think other people will think it’s great. So I don’t think there’s, I think there’s going to be a net. It will make no difference, frankly, which isn’t what Drapers magazine wanted me to say, I don’t think. But that was my comment. And it turned out actually, it had a bit of an uplift, like the Samba brand of shoes, you know, was sold more because of, you know, what you can imply is because of the press that it was given by the prime minister of the time wearing them. But yeah, really interesting. I mean, the press took it in a negative way. I was thinking it was going to be neutral. It actually had a positive uplift. Politics visited Adidas in that instance. And they are, the Drapers magazine asked me, what should Adidas do? And I said they should do absolutely nothing, right? Absolutely nothing. They can’t say that their product shouldn’t be worn by, you know, politicians or a particular brand of politicians. They shouldn’t discriminate on their customers. It’s up to the customer to decide whether or not they want to buy or not. That’s surely freedom of choice. Like if a brand comes out, like you mentioned with Patagonia says, no, you’re not allowed, you know, we deemed you not acceptable enough to purchase our product. Like, is that the role of a brand to do that? Surely, you know, the brand should orientate itself towards a market, but surely we live in free country. Anyone should be able to buy anything that they wish to buy. Seems to me anyway. What are your thoughts on that, Jeroen?

I think in that case, you’re right. You let it blow up because that goes away really, really fast. It did. It goes… Now, you could have… Adidas might have made a joke of it, right? Humor always helps. They could have placed a print ad or digital ad that is a print ad also, because it’s not completely dead yet, or a poster somewhere in London. But even that, you know, a print ad is probably the best, because it only lasts three to four to five seconds, right? You read it, you laugh at it, and that’s it. And it’s over. So, there are cases in politics where you just make a joke of it, and then it blows over. But it’s funny, because Adidas had a tough year, right? This year and the end of last year, they had a really, really tough year. And this is also something that happens with politics, which is, you know, politics can be brought into a brand by a spokesperson, influencer, or a celebrity, right? But sometimes all three are the same person. So a celebrity endorsement, as we all can figure out, can be very risky. They do and will say, you know, if you think about it, anything on social media, right? You can write a contract all you want, but you can’t really stop the damage that it can cause them in an instant. They blow up, they go out, they have a party, they do something, they say something or whatever, it can blow up, right? And drag a brand into a political situation overnight, right? Now, in the case of Adidas, if I may just expand on that, they made two really unfortunate choices in a row, right? They went into business with Kanye West, and he became a spokesperson, but he also became a partner. They started to design shoes together, blah, blah, blah, and that was really, really bad because Kanye West went nuts. And then after that, that wasn’t enough. So then somebody made the not so bright decision to choose model Bella Hadid, right? And Bella Hadid also had an opinion about herself, dragged in her own personal politics, and man, that did that go south fast, right? And not only that, Bella Hadid exposed Adidas and really said, you know, are you with me or not? And people started to investigate Adidas and went straight back to the founding of Adidas and now opened this can of worms, and this is what politics can do. And what did they find out? They find out that Adidas, the original name is Adidasler, right? And he started the company with his brother, Rudolf Dossler, and I won’t go into this for very deep, but that was during the Second World War. And these guys, they became SS, they made boots for the Nazis. And then, you know, in 1947, Adi split up with Rudolf, Rudolf started Puma and Adi started Adidas. And that’s what politics can do, right? They can also dig up the past.

Fascinating. In terms of jumping on the bandwagon that you mentioned, and, you know, do you see that happen a lot? Do you feel like brands feel that they need to enter some of these spaces because they’re peers or in their category, others feel the need to jump in? Do you see that happening a lot? What do you think? Because I do. And I wonder what your thoughts on this idea of peer pressure. You kind of hinted at it earlier when you were saying Nike was early to the discussion around BLM, for example. But do you see any other kind of issues? Like the whole green thing is huge, like particularly here in the UK. What are your thoughts on entering because you feel like you have to as a brand?

That is the question a lot of CMOs are dealing with, struggling with. I think they get pressure from all kinds of people. We were just mentioning employees, right? So you get a lot of pressure from employees that way too, which will change the cause of a brand. If every employee says, you know, we really should be this or that, or we really should try to do this or that, and tell the public about it. And it’s about green thinking, recycling. You know, we spoke about Patagonia before. Can you imagine working there? I mean, you’re really aware of it, right? So it can come from the inside, it can come from the outside. The outside, the bandwagon, so to speak. Yeah, green has become a very noble way of saying, you know, we as a brand are evolving, we’re being more responsible, we’re being this, we’re being that. It was years ago when I did an ad for Coca-Cola. We didn’t produce it, but it was at McCann, and we said to Coca-Cola, hey, wouldn’t it be great to do an ad about a Coca-Cola can? It’s crushed a little bit, and the headline is, we don’t mind if this comes back as a Pepsi. And it was all about recycling. I don’t know, they wanted to throw me out of the window. They didn’t get it at all, but here’s the but. Bandwagon is green responsibility, et cetera, recycling, being environmentally aware. That has turned into politics. Think about it. They already are saying that on day one, the president-elect right now in the United States will turn back certain environmental business choking rules and regulations, as they call it. So what does that mean? That means that when you now talk green, you must be progressive and you must be on the left. And that’s unfair, right? I know a lot of conservative people who are green, who are very environmentally aware of things and everything. So you can’t just look at brands that way, but that’s the danger of that particular bandwagon. If you overdo it, that’s it. You must be a lefty. You must be this. You must be that. Now, I don’t think that a lot of people care about that. But if you look at Levi’s, for instance, if I may bring up an example, Levi’s is, you know, everybody who doesn’t wear Levi’s, right? There’s a funny bandwagon they jumped up, which was Gun Control. So Levi’s and Gun Control. They thought it was an issue. I think it’s funny. Maybe you don’t think it’s funny. But it came from an issue because their customers all over the United States, especially in the rural areas, right? They kept coming in with guns on their hips and making people inside the store a little bit nervous. So they said, you know, what is this? We really, what is this? You know, what is that? You know, customers are coming in with guns on their hips. What is this? 1880, you know, are we still in Texas and in the Wild West and we can’t, we can’t, you know. So one thing led to another and they joined with Michael Bloomberg, you know, New York City’s former mayor, who is also very, very gun control aware and he started all kinds of efforts to control it. Now talk about a harder issue, right? That’s the Second Amendment. It’s not the Second Amendment. I think it’s the Second Amendment. I better be right. You know, gun control in the United States.

You’re talking to a British person and an Australian.

You can say that in the Third Amendment. I know, I know. Oh, really?

You’re an Irish guy, carry on.

I don’t know. So the same people, talking to their family over a dinner at night, so should I go for a Glock 17 or Glock 19, with a nice southern accent, are wearing Levi’s. All these people are wearing Levi’s. So you can actually steer a brand away from somebody that is like, what, 100 and X years old. Nothing happened there. Luckily, nothing happened, because there’s another thing happening in the world. If a brand goes haywire and it becomes political, a customer who trusts that brand for a generation, whose pants are Levi’s, whose dad wore Levi’s, whose mom wore Levi’s, is not going to run away so fast. But you find politics even in the pants you wear, because now there’s a very popular cable show. It’s coming back for another season and it’s called Yellowstone. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Now, who advertises on Yellowstone? So Yellowstone is that show about ranch owners, Montana, et cetera, et cetera. It’s very popular, right? So who starts advertising on Yellowstone? It’s Wrangler. Wrangler jeans, where have they been? They never went away, but it’s conservative because it’s Rodeo or Rodeo, depending on who you talk to, cowboy, ranch, horses, those are the people that are supposed to be wearing Wranglers. So now you have two jeans brands. One is gigantic Levi’s, the other one is smaller, but very, very popular. And one is considered conservative and the other one is considered very, not left-wing, but progressive.

Yeah.

So did it go off in a tangent or are we still on track here?

No, I think you’re on track. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? The political stance. I wanted to raise one other thing. You mentioned, you know, like celebrities, if a brand is closely connected to a celebrity, like an influencer or something, or do business. One particular character comes to my mind because of recent political movements, and that’s the enigma that is Elon Musk, right? So obviously in Trump’s government, so on and so forth. And in essence, he obviously is a CEO as well of a number of, you know, SpaceX, you know, Tesla, all of those things. So now he’s entering politics. Now, I think that’s just very, very interesting. What do you think that’s going to do to the brands that, you know, in effect he governs, or at least his CEO of those companies?

Now, I love the question because it can make this up. Last Sunday, I was at a supermarket and a park marked car next to a Tesla. And there were quite some Teslas parked there. Tesla is very, very popular everywhere, right? They can make it up. So this is in an area that’s considered very conservative, by the way, on Long Island in New York. And I got struck by looking at this, at a bumper sticker, like one of those round stickers that looks like a, you know, like a do not enter kind of sticker. And it said Elon, right, on the sticker, was a black sticker with a red stripe through his name, right? So Elon with a red stripe on a Tesla. I should have made a picture of it. I’m sure. This is an interesting, this is an interesting phenomenon. I think you like the Tesla brand, you drive the car, but you want to distance yourself from the owner, right? He’s not necessarily the founder. I mean, it was founded by two other guys, I believe, and he bought it and then he kicked them out. But whatever, he makes it possible.

The sticker was placed by the driver of the Tesla. So it wasn’t like an activist has gone by and slapped a sticker on it. No, no, no.

This was very deliberate, very deliberate. Yeah. So that person should be on the podcast right now, because we should ask that person, hey, what happened here? So I think that Elon Musk is a phenomenon. He’s politically involved. He was always politically involved, by the way, but he lifted that. He’s just playing with everybody. This guy is like a billion followers, whatever. He changes Twitter to X. He changes whatever. He does what he wants to do. There’s a couple of things that he’s very good at. And so the brand, Elon Musk, the person Elon Musk, is really being, stock is being lowered there, because a lot of people are just sick. He’s like an enfant terrible, right? He’s just really, really bad, but he wants to be bad. He wants to be in the news. So it happens often, and sometimes brands have that, but certainly celebrities have it, that’s when they get into trouble, and they drag the brand with them. Elon Musk wants to be talked about. So just like Trump, by the way. And when you want to be talked about, you do everything. Bad news is good news, and good news is good news, right? So it’s all good news, because people want to be talked about. He, his ego must be so, so big. I mean, can you imagine being him? So, he’s important.

I do it all the time. I am imagining being Elon Musk right now. Happens to me all the time. It’s an interesting phenomena, I think, in society, just generally, you know, brands are obviously operating and serving customers and trying to manage the meaning people attach to them. And, you know, I do think it’s interesting around CEOs, because they’re also individuals, right? So they’re also, you know, people. But should CEOs express personal views on these issues, seeing as they’re so influential, do you think? Or do you think it’s wiser for them to keep out of these circumstances? It’s an interesting question, right? I guess for brand owners to ponder.

Right. But if you listen to us, right, we have so far in this conversation, we’ve talked about politics as one thing, right? And politics obviously are, there’s hot issues that you stay away from, there are sensitive issues that you stay away from, and there are political, like abortion, et cetera, you know, you stay away from all that, right? But there are also good politics. We can’t just, you know, dig a hole for politics and bury it in this conversation. I mean, there’s good politics. Green politics are good politics. Gun control politics, when it makes sense, are good politics. But you have to be very careful, because after all, you’re a brand. So if you’re, you know, Ben and Jerry’s, right? And you make ice cream, and from the very onset, you were kind of like this hippie company, you know, and you make hippie ice cream, and you could have been from San Francisco, right? From the summer of love, you know? But no, you’re from Vermont, of all places, and you’re known for being, you know, an obstinate, very left-leaning brand, then it doesn’t matter anymore. But, you know, they did get into trouble, right? They got into trouble overseas for making political statements in the Middle East, and actually lost their license there. Somebody bought it away from them, but they don’t care. They don’t care. They’re owned by a big company now, and they do what they want to do. So you expect that from them, right? You expect from them to go nuts. If they don’t go nuts, then there’s something wrong with the ice cream almost.

Another interesting kind of thing that just came to my mind as you were talking then is there’s a brand here in the UK, quite famous for confectionary sweets and stuff called Round Trip, right?

Of course.

And they make like gummies and stuff like this. And they were born hundreds of years ago in the industrial revolution, and were very well known for treating their work as a particular way and for really campaigning for kind of social reform, philanthropy, all of that stuff. Their founder, Joseph Roundtree, has got a trust and all of this stuff. And it’s interesting to watch them because they’ve also started stepping into addressing historical injustices and all sorts of things and political engagements. And you think, well, fair play to them because that’s how they were born, right? That’s something that’s kind of in their DNA. But then you look at other brands trying to enter the space and you think, oh, is this authentic? And I think that’s the conundrum as brand builders, that we’ve got to think through. Is this something that is something worth the brand getting involved in? You know, I go to my bank and I’m getting, like, political statements shoved down my throat, if you like. Is that the job of my bank to wave flags in my face and push certain agendas into my thoughts as I’m queuing to pay a check-in? Is that what we want? You know, I don’t know if it is, but it’s kind of like, it seems strange to me that we’re starting to live in a world where everybody has to be political, where everything has to be divisive. You know, I don’t know, I question whether we’re stepping into a healthy space myself. What are your thoughts on all of that?

Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, you can’t, you know, if you make toilet paper, just make the most amazing toilet paper and I’ll thank you for it every day. But if you’re, for instance, Amazon, right? Amazon is a brand and quite a big one, by the way. And if you say, yeah, that’s my store to go to, well, guess what? They also have a supermarket chain here, which is all about the healthiest foods possible, right? Whole foods, you know, they make movies. When they started making movies, they got already an Oscar the first year, I believe. So this is a real, real brand, a multi-faceted complex brand. They actually are working with, and we mentioned EVs before, not Elon Musk, but Rivian, because they bought, that’s another electric car. They bought a stake in their company, and they’re actually changing their trucks. And these are not the big trucks on the road, but these are the trucks that you see in neighborhoods. And I thought it was just great that they’re doing it. They’re putting the money where their mouth is. They’re not jumping on the bandwagon and saying, look at us, look at us, look at us, and trying to buy souls that way, right? They’re doing it quietly. And by doing it quietly, by the way, social media will pick up on it, because it’s true. They don’t ask me to do a post on that particular truck, but I did. I showed it up. I said, look at that good looking wacky doodle truck that is completely electric. And I asked the driver about it. What do you think of this truck? Right? And he was kind of like, yeah, it’s pretty good. I miss the old one, but I like this one too. So, you know, brands need to stay in their sandbox. And yes, they can pick out the right political issues, but there are very far few in between.

So do you believe black brands can stay neutral and still relevant?

Absolutely. If your brand is a sweater or a tweed jacket company, if they still exist, or somebody who makes, you know, the best British umbrella in the world, you don’t go there for a statement. You go there for the quality. You know where you’re going. You feel at home. If you want to buy tomorrow a Triumph motorcycle, as I do, you want to go there because you know Triumph is really, really good at what they’re doing, right? They don’t leak oil anymore for the last 30 years. I mean, I miss that, but okay, they don’t do that anymore, right? Triumph has become a trust brand almost in the motorcycle world. Good luck doing that. It’s very hard. And that’s why you go there. You know, if you’re in the business of making widgets, then let it be the best widgets possible and stay there. Now, there’s a guy in America. We all know him. He’s doing his own ads. He’s absolutely nuts. Probably a billionaire, many times over even, I would believe it. And that’s the MyPillow guy. So, everybody talks about the MyPillow guy, right? MyPillow is a company that makes pillows. That’s it. And he’s on TV and he sells them for very less, for a nickel. And this guy is a personal friend of Trump. So, in the last two weeks, in the first run of president, then president Trump, right? He got himself in so much trouble because he went to the White House as if to save Trump’s defeat from Biden. And his name is Michael Del. You know, have you ever heard that name before? No. Okay. Well, he calculated his audience. He said, who’s buying the pillows from me? And I, you know, most people that buy the pillows from me, I know they’re conservative. So I’ll just go there. Let me just go there. And Mike Lindell, and everybody’s making jokes right now because the cabinet is being formed, right? It’s almost, I think it’s done now, but everybody was saying, what is Mike Lindell getting? You know, what secretary is he gonna be? Secretary of sleep or something. But Mike Lindell is one of those brands, right? My pillow that doesn’t give a hoot about what they do and they just get away with it. And you know what? It is what it is. If you want a pillow, you want a good pillow, you want a cheap pillow, go to Mike Lindell, go to my pillow and let the politics be the politics. There’s gambles and risks, right? It’s just a known fact that the consumer, this is what bothers most brands, that the consumer reacts really, really well to brands that align with their own belief system, right? If you buy a pillow from a guy who thinks exactly like you, maybe you sleep a little better.

Nice. It goes back to my point about the risk that most issues are 50-50, so if you enter, you’re going to do 50% damage, but you may get 50% uplift. But in so doing, what we’ll end up with is a very divisive society, and it’s just a question whether we really want to go there, or as you say, just sell pillows and be done with it.

It comes down to what you want to align yourself with. As an example here, so I was looking for an electric car, and I was looking at Tesla’s and Polestar, and I was going through a foreign company.

You’re actually signalling in now, Jake.

No, no. This is everyone. Yeah. I was trying to understand why people were buying this car versus another one. The number one reason was I don’t want to buy Tesla because of Elon. They didn’t want to be associated with this, coming back to that sticker, and that was the number one reason on this Reddit forums, this is why I bought a Polestar. So I bought a Polestar because I didn’t want a Tesla. I didn’t want a Tesla. I didn’t want a Tesla. You can just imagine how many billions of dollars have been lost because he just doesn’t want to be aligned with a certain CEO.

Yeah. I don’t blame you because he goes too far. He definitely goes too far. He makes the brand about himself. First of all, that’s not right. Can you imagine? We spoke about employees before. It’s really important. Employees are just as important as your customers, because they are your brand in many cases. Think about it. I mean, we haven’t even gone to social media yet. We haven’t even spoken about reviews. I mean, reviews are a gigantic persuader nowadays, whether to go with the product or not. Now, Elon Musk is just through the roof. I mean, that is such an unusual example. He’s on his own planet. I mean, literally almost, right? Think about it. I mean, he’s doing amazing things and he gives people… I mean, this is the first recycled rocket that was grabbed out of the air. You’ve seen it, right? Launched and then coming back. It’s amazing what he’s doing or what he lets other people do. But he’s so into your face that, yes, eventually it can damage the Tesla brand. Absolutely, I agree with you. Which also leads you to think about, when I think of politics, by the way, what I usually look at is that when a brand goes conservative, right, they usually are. The brand is conservative. But that’s not always true on the left-leaning side, I feel. When brands, because brands often, they want to act left, right? They jump into green, they all of a sudden are woke, right? Or they wave at minorities like the gay community. That’s what pandering is. I mean, if you’re a conservative guy, you have a conservative brand, and you don’t care about your, you know, customers that much, you’re just going to say, I want to be conservative, and my brand should be conservative too, then, you know, you may not like it, at least it is who he is, right? And it is what it is. And I’m sure that the employees that work there are probably also conservative, otherwise, you can’t work with a founder like that.

I’m curious, like, how would you manage the pressure, you know, for companies or CEOs, there’s going to be a lot of external pressure, like you’re staying neutral, you’re not saying anything. How do you manage that?

I think by doing something quietly. If I were made head of Tesla, the escape valve would be, you know, let’s do something quietly, let’s do something together with all the employees. And we don’t, you know, tell the world that we’re doing it. If it leaks, it leaks, but we’re not going to leak it. And we’re going to do something good quietly. That’s what brands can do. They have the power, they have the money, they have the, you know, connections, whatever. Let them do that. And a lot of brands do it, by the way. Can you imagine tomorrow having a brand like IBM doing something that’s completely out of their style guide, right, out of the brand voice? It would sound too crazy. It would sound so untrue, so fake, you know? I mean, I say to clients, brands cannot win in politics. They can’t win. Politics can win in politics, but brands do not win in politics. They lose.

So let’s start bringing our discussion, our fascinating discussion to a bit of the head. I think listeners would probably love to hear what your kind of top tips might be for brand builders who, you know, are perhaps in this space, perhaps get under pressure, like Jacob sort of hinted at just then, perhaps, you know, from within, or even, you know, they feel that they’re under pressure from without to enter a political space. What is your kind of views on if they should or shouldn’t? And, you know, what are your tips in relation to that?

Well, I would say, put your money where your mouth is. And if you are a brand that believes in gun control, then support something or start up something, not under your brand, by the way, but start up something that has the most, the fastest, the most measurable, you know, effect on what you want to repair in this world. That’s what I would do as a brand, right? And some brands have that. They have their own organization, they have their own foundation, they have their own, right? Walmart, a gigantic, gigantic brand. They have a foundation that does amazing work. McDonald’s with Ronald McDonald, for instance, by the way, that is pretty out there in the open, but people forget about it. But Ronald McDonald, millions and millions and millions and millions to the right cause, right? So if you want to be political, if you could call that politics, because sometimes it’s just not, just it’s outside the politics, then go for that. But I warn every client not to do it. And there’s a lot of local politics, by the way. Think about that. We have a client in Chicago, Midwest, you know, should we do this or should we do that? Local politics are perhaps even more dangerous than national or international politics, because local politics, believe it or not, don’t go away so fast. If you’re doing something locally, and we’re not talking about LA or New York, but we’re talking about cities where people have a memory, like Chicago and Atlanta, that kind of sign, probably Melbourne, Australia, that would versus Sydney, right? And you do something there and it’s the wrong thing to do, that’ll last, that’ll hurt.

Okay. All right. Any other tips while we’ve got you?

In my view, there’s like four ways politics can come into a brand. Yeah, the first one is started by the brand itself or by the employees, right? That’s your choice. Can’t help you with that. And the second one is joining a popular cause. That’s one of the most dangerous one. We spoke about it, right? Then it’s the brand’s origins or roots. It’s kind of like number one, which is, you know, if it’s in your roots, you know, and all of a sudden there’s a cause, you know, you’re a brand in, you know, in a very woodsy area, and all of a sudden, you know, something has to do with that woodsy area or whatever, and you want to jump on it, then yes, let it in, but also be very careful. And number four is politics by spokesperson, influencer or celebrity. Of course, we can talk about that all night. It’s a very juicy subject, but stay away, it’s very difficult, very difficult. We had ourselves, we took on an Olympian twice for a company, and they were really, they were sweating while signing the contract, because they knew, you know, anytime, you know, something would happen with the trainer or whatever, you know, all of a sudden, this person is now in the news for the wrong reason, or for the right reason, but not aligning with your message, it’s all over, right? And no contract is going to fix that. So the gambles, the gambles are great, but the risk is greater. And that’s why I say stay away.

Fascinating. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on the show and dancing around that very tricky podcast for quite some length, Jeroen, and we really appreciate you doing so. Tell us, if anybody wants to get in touch with you or get more familiar with your work or hire you or whatever, how do they get in touch with you?

I would say go to the website. It’s very simple, darling.nyc. We actually called it Darling many years ago. I didn’t want my name on the door. I don’t feel like working for other people. Why should other people work for me? So we’re working for Darling, right? Darling, the name came from killing your darlings. Killing your darlings means that if you come up with an idea within five minutes, kill it immediately. Because if you fall in love with it, then you don’t know if there was a better idea, right? So true. We didn’t invent that. That was a female playwright in New York, in the early 1900s. She came up with that one. Dorothy Parker. There you go. Dorothy Parker.

Love it. Good stuff. All right. Fascinating conversation.

Thank you.

Listen, I’m particularly interested in your thoughts. Like, comment, reply, respond. We’ve deliberately tried not to be provocative and tried to tread that careful neutral line. I don’t know if we’ve always achieved that throughout this podcast, but we have attempted to. But love to hear other people’s thoughts. Please do drop us a review as well. I know we’re super thrilled whenever we get anything through like that. But from me, Jacob, thank you so much for coming on and all the very best. Cheers, everyone. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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