How To Navigate the Culture War

There’s a cul­ture war raging for our minds.

It’s the social justice war­ri­ors versus the pop­u­list­ic tra­di­tion­al­ists. They con­sume much more than their fair share of the online agenda.

Where does this leave the rest of us?
Where does this leave reg­u­lar businesses?

Let’s dive right into it:

The Just War

Today’s cul­ture war is a jus bel­lum justum (a just war) for our mor­al values.

The just war the­ory dic­tates that “[… ] war, while ter­rible (but less so with the right con­duct), is not always the worst option. Important respons­ib­il­it­ies, undesir­able out­comes, or pre­vent­able atro­cit­ies may jus­ti­fy war.”

And this cul­ture war is spelling dev­ast­at­ing con­sequences for busi­nesses world­wide. Wokeness. Populism. De-plat­form­ing. Cancel cul­ture. Political cor­rect­ness. Bot attacks. Free speech infringe­ments. Coördinated troll attacks. Reputation destruction. 

Businesses are try­ing to rise to the chal­lenge, but how?

To start, we need to under­stand this polar­ised media landscape.

Online Jurors and Judges

So, how should your busi­ness nav­ig­ate this inflam­mat­ory cul­ture war? 

We can identi­fy three crit­ic­al online pub­lics based on how they com­mu­nic­ate their under­ly­ing mor­al philo­sophy. And they use the inter­net as their primary tool for organ­ising them­selves and exert­ing mor­al extortion.

Social justice war­ri­ors will not accept any per­ceived “injustice.” They regard them­selves as mor­ally super­i­or and see all oppon­ents as imme­di­ate threats to their con­vic­tions. According to this pub­lic, online aggres­sion is an appro­pri­ate polit­ic­al expres­sion (if per­pet­rated by them­selves).

Read also: Woke is a Fucking PR Problem

Populistic tra­di­tion­al­ists see “com­mon sense” derived from gen­er­a­tions of empir­ic­al mor­al insights to trump all oth­er forms of dis­cern­ment. They cel­eb­rate homo­gen­eity and pat­ri­ot­ism and are often reli­gious. According to this pub­lic, online aggres­sion is a prop­er polit­ic­al expres­sion (if per­pet­rated by them­selves).

Read also: How To Fight Populism

The silent major­ity are mod­er­ately inves­ted in mor­al philo­sophy; they are more focused on mak­ing ends meet in their per­son­al lives. They avoid tak­ing any such aggress­ive stands — at least pub­licly. However, they con­tinu­ally “vote” online by click­ing, watch­ing, read­ing, and listen­ing.

Read also: The Spiral of Silence

How should a brand nav­ig­ate this cul­ture war?
Either pick a side and stick with it — or steer clear?

The Art of Online Grandstanding

For any brand strug­gling with envir­on­ment­al, social, and gov­ernance (ESG) issues, it’s tempt­ing to try and score quick points with short-lived pub­lic “out­rages.”

Businesses that pose as beacons for mor­al mod­el­ling could gain trac­tion with the chosen minority.

But does grand­stand­ing make busi­ness sense?

From a pub­lic rela­tions per­spect­ive, con­flicts such as these could fuel media atten­tion, but it’s far from evid­ent that these brands will increase their mar­ket shares; the share-of-voice for the loudest agit­at­ors is rarely pro­por­tion­al to their actu­al numbers. 

A recent example would be Gillette’s cam­paign, which attacked its cus­tom­er base with accus­a­tions of not being account­able enough for tox­ic masculinity. 

Investment advisor Jack Hough writes:

“That raises the ques­tion of wheth­er Gillette’s fin­an­cial res­ults are suf­fer­ing because of its tox­ic-mas­culin­ity mis­fire. On Tuesday, Procter & Gamble (PG) beat earn­ings and rev­en­ue fore­casts, but the stock fell 3% on a day the S&P 500 closed at a new high.”

In short:

Most brands will likely do bet­ter if they real­ise that it’s not their core busi­ness to teach grown-ups about what con­sti­tutes mor­al behaviour.

Few ordin­ary busi­nesses are suited to serve as mouth­pieces for hun­dreds — or even thou­sands — of cowork­ers. Or cus­tom­ers, some­times in their millions.

Like me, you prob­ably have your mor­al con­vic­tions, but these con­vic­tions aren’t neces­sar­ily the right baseline for all cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions activities.

Moral Conformity and HR

Brands must stand for some­thing and be brave enough to see these fights through. A brand must find its core mes­sage, which must res­on­ate with own­ers, lead­ers, cowork­ers, and customers.

But the cul­ture war isn’t just a PR chal­lenge; the found­a­tion for long-term stra­tegic suc­cess in man­aging the organ­isa­tion­al cul­ture befalls HR, too. 

HR is being encour­aged to hire and fire with diversity in mind. But when it comes to mor­al con­vic­tions, diversity of thought sud­denly becomes the no. 1 enemy of the HR department.

Today, HR must decide wheth­er to hire or fire based on mor­al clas­si­fic­a­tion — or com­pet­ence levels. It’s a tough choice for many.

The abil­ity to find cowork­ers with highly com­pat­ible mor­als, yet are still highly diverse in every oth­er way, is an impossible HR strategy.

Additional Resources