Mark Cuban Claims Going Woke Is 'Good Business' In Aftermath Of Bud Light Disaster
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban believes going woke isn't a bad thing at all.
In fact, Cuban believes going woke might be a great business decision.
Over the past few months, American consumers have watched as Bud Light and Target have been slammed for making questionable decisions. None are more infamous than Bud Light deciding to team up with Dylan Mulvaney.
The beer brand under Anheuser-Busch's umbrella has seen sales fall off a cliff, and it appears there's no end in sight. Turns out teaming up with Mulvaney was NOT good business, but overall, Cuban seems to think the idea of going woke has limited downside.
Mark Cuban says going woke is good for businesses.
"First a dip in market cap is meaningless. You have to realize that there aren’t many individual owners of stocks — almost all ownership is via funds, and most trading is quantitative. So, it’s not like the drop is because tens of thousands of individual holders sold their stocks," Cuban told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Mavericks owner then cited the success of major brands that go woke as proof it's actually a positive.
"There is a reason almost all the top ten market cap companies in the U.S. can be considered ‘woke.’ It’s good business," Cuban told the outlet.
If there's a problem, Cuban believes most CEOs know it's best to just ride out the chaos and wait for people to start caring about something else.
"Most CEOs have enough experience to know to just wait out the news cycle until they go to the next one," the billionaire businessman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Is Mark Cuban correct in the aftermath of the Bud Light disaster?
Overall, Cuban's point about going woke not really harming businesses is pretty correct. That's why so many brands have been comfortable getting into the culture wars.
Brands see very little downside. ESG (environmental social and governance factors) scores and investing have become incredibly popular. It forces companies to do and promote certain things in order to get investing, and major corporations have willingly decided to be slaves to the ESG scores. For example, companies are motivated to support abortion or BLM in order to secure more investing, according to Fox News.
Bud Light might have changed everything.
However, it does seem like people have hit a turning point ever since Bud Light teamed up with Dylan Mulvaney. Since then, the public has watched a backlash unfold unlike anything we've seen before. We're two and a half months into the boycotts and an unrelenting pressure campaign.
Mark Cuban might claim a tanking stock price might not mean much, but Anheuser-Busch investors almost certainly feel differently. A-B's stock price is $55.16 as of Monday morning before the stock market opening. That's more than a 17% decline from where it was at the end of March before Mulvaney's ill-fated March Madness promo.
Mark Cuban wants us to believe that's not a huge deal? People simply don't believe that.
Will Bud Light ever recover? (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
We'll see how things continue to shake out, but for now, going woke was definitely a terrible decision for Bud Light.