[tuesdayrain]

>Big Corps, much like liquid flowing downhill, tend to flow towards whatever makes them the most money for the least effort

People say this a lot but it's not the case when the CEO is an ideologue. A few weeks ago I was at a meeting where our CEO said customers were unhappy about the company's choice to insert politicized messages into its products. He said that they could potentially lose as much as 50% of their revenue because of it. And he still felt that he was doing the right thing.

[cheezymoogle]

If you're a self-interested min-maxing CEO that makes a disastrous or unpopular decision, hiding behind ethics or morality will not (immediately) result in charges of incompetence. This could just as easily be dishonest signalling by the CEO as it could be integrity.

In the current cultural climate, putting political messaging in your products creates an immediate double-bind: you immediately anger part of the total market, but if the messaging is then withdrawn, you anger another part that did want it, with residual anger from the original anti-part of the market (some of which won't return in any case). In this situation, if the pro-political market is bigger, then it's just more rational to stay the course and claim the high ground.