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Could it be that the anti-woke movement has become so organized and influential that brands are now building strategies around it? If weve reached that point, then woke-baiting could emerge as a cheap but effective way for companies with stagnant growth to draw attention and change their fortunes. Anti-woke people increasingly seem to vote with their dollars more than woke people. We just saw it go down with Cracker Barrel in August. When Cracker Barrel changed its logoand removed an elderly man sitting judgily in a chairTrump weighed in and it affected the stock. Cracker Barrel and Budweiser: A case study One could argue that Cracker Barrel used woke-baiting as a marketing strategy, though Im not. I do not know what was said in Cracker Barrel meeting rooms about any plan to wokefy the new logo, nor if the executives had any idea that Donald Trump Jr. and President Trump would publicly weigh in on their decisions. They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity, the president wrote after Trump Jr. spotlighted the companys logo switch on August 20th, shortly after the market closed. The stock market hated the new supposedly DEI-driven logo. Before Trump Jr. made his comments, the stock closed at $59.02. But on August 21, the day after the Trumps criticized the logo, Cracker Barrels stock dropped over 7% to $54.80. Anti-woke people did the same thing when Budweiser featured transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in its ad. The company lost an estimated $27 billion over this. Or consider Target reporting its first quarterly sales drop in 6 years after the 2023 anti-woke response to the retailers Pride clothing collection. The company has faced extended struggles with the CEO recently resigning and the stock down 37% in the last year. Woke consumers dont speak with their money What these instances have in common is proving that anti-woke people arent afraid to speak with their dollarswhether in the stock market or in the grocery store aisleto make their point heard. But woke people dont act in the same way. If woke people wanted to support wokeness, they could do the same thing and vote with their dollars. Woke people could have bought Budweiser beers after the Dylan Mulvaney ad. Woke people could have bought Cracker Barrel stock after the initial logo change. But they didnt. In fact, when Cracker Barrel announced it would change the logo back to the original, anti-woke people again made their voices heard in the stock market, and by the close of that day the stock was at $62.33, or 5.6% higher than before the logo change. If woke consumers dont consistently support causes with their dollars, why would marketers feel any incentive to further those causes? At a certain point, woke-baiting may become the only rational reason to lean into what many in this country believe to be important progress. Because when brands appear to act in earnest, they often end up being left out to dry. To me, it raises the question: Why do these causes seem so important to some in the political sphere, yet they dont appear willing to, say, buy Budweiser stock to actively support the ideals they champion? Take Cracker Barrel as an example. If its recent marketing move was intentional woke-baiting, it worked. By sparking outrage, the company generated headlines, conversations, and relevance at a time when its sales have been stagnant. Now, its unlikely that Jensen Huang of NVIDIA will be dabbling in any woke-baiting gambits anytime soon. But the broader takeaway for executives might be this: For companies with flat growth, a risky, lightning-in-a-bottle strategyprovoking media, influencers, and even politicians through woke-baitingcould be worth the gamble to capture attention and, ultimately, increase company value. George Kailas is CEO of Prospero.ai.
Category:
E-Commerce
Creativity has never been in higher demand, yet agency margins are collapsing. An industry built on the promise of differentiation risks drifting into a sea of sameness, squeezed by automation, technology, and efficiencies. The paradox is clear: As creative agencies are becoming commodities, they are falling victim to the very market forces clients pay them to escape. From my vantage point, the only way out is innovation. Transient advantage: The new norm I was recently introduced to the work of Columbia professor Rita McGrath, whose 2013 essay on transient advantage in Harvard Business Review helped crystallize what Id already been feeling in our industry. Her premise is simple but urgent: Advantages no longer last. What once endured for decades may last only months. Success doesnt come from defending a moat, but from riding a wavespotting opportunities early, scaling them quickly, and having the discipline to abandon what no longer serves. McGrath frames innovation as a cycle: launch, ramp up, exploit, reconfigure, disengage. Repeat. In practice, when growth slows the instinct is to cut. Trim overhead, automate tasks, streamline workflows. But you cant cost-cut your way to relevance. Cuts may buy time, but they dont build a future. Brands that made innovation an operating model Chewy began as a pet-supply e-commerce site. But margins in retail are razor-thin. So they moved into care, not just commercelaunching televets, pet insurance, and vet clinics. By owning the pet lifecycle, Chewy expanded beyond boxes of kibble into services. A24 could have remained just an indie studio. Instead it built a direct-to-consumer engine. AAA24 turns films into membership, merch, and magazines. Content fuels commerce, commerce fuels community, and the flywheel spins. MUBI carved out a space in streaming by fusing curation with vertical integration. Beyond its niche platform, it acquired The Match Factory, expanded festival acquisitions, and added theatrical distribution. MUBI is more than a streamerits a self-sustaining ecosystem of discovery and distribution. Each of these companies refused to mistake early success for permanence. They reinvented themselves before the tide went out. Scale hurts, independence helps Large holding companies are engineered to squeeze every last drop from an old model, not retire it. Investors punish operating model shifts. Systems designed for predictability deter reinvention. Independent companies, by contrast, can pivot faster, test freely, and shed legacy models when they no longer serve. Agility beats scale in a world of transient advantage. A call to action At MOCEAN, were making innovation our operating model. Weve launched an Office of Innovation with dedicated leadership, time, and resources to continually test, scale, and retire approaches as the market evolves. Thats also why Im attending the Fast Company Innovation Festival, joining leaders across industries who are wrestling with the same challenge: How to escape commoditization when the old playbooks no longer apply. From where I sit, the era of permanent advantage is gone. Reinvention must be systemic, not cosmetic. Independent agencies like MOCEAN have both the freedom and the responsibility to show what that looks like. Because in the end, the choice is simple: innovation or irrelevance. Michael McIntyre is CEO of MOCEAN.
Category:
E-Commerce
Back-to-school season is here, and with it, comes a decision that will define the next decade for K-12 education. Do district leaders adopt curriculum-connected AI that builds on progress toward high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials? Or do they rely on a mix of standalone tools that risk undermining that progress? This might seem like a technology choice. But in schools, curriculum isnt just a set of books or lesson plans. Its the roadmap that makes sure every child in every classroom is taught to the same high standards. States and districts have spent a decade working toward this reality by strengthening instructional coherence: When each lesson connects those high standards, students are building knowledge in a logical sequence rather than starting from scratch. Now, AI stands to either strengthen those hard-won gainsor unravel them. Thats why this moment is so consequential. Choosing which path to follow is a strategic decision that will shape coherence, teacher capacity, and student outcomes for years to come. The right move could turn AI into a powerful, trusted classroom ally. The wrong one risks fragmenting learning by generating random, disconnected activities with no link to what students or teachers actually need. As the CEO of an education technology company, I have a stake in these choices. And as a parent, I understand the impact it will have on families and students alike. What I see most is the potential for AI to serve as an assistant that can give teachers newfound insights on their students learning progressand then help create activities, materials, and communications aligned to those needs. In the process, it can give teachers hours back in their day that they can spend deepening their relationship with students. But only a few systems can connect all these pieces; plenty of others can devise a lesson, but do so in a vacuum. The real choice for district leaders today isnt AI or no AI. Its whether to invest in a coherent AI strategy that puts student learning first or in patchwork apps that meet short-term needs. The patchwork trap From the outside, giving teachers a menu of standalone tools might look like flexibility. In reality, it comes with steep hidden costs paid in time, trust, and potentially in student achievement. Weve seen this before. During the remote-learning era, when schools were flooded with apps, coherence sufferedand students paid the price. Teachers were overwhelmed with training on new systems. Student data got trapped in silos. IT teams (often composed of teachers working double duty) juggled duplicate contracts, inconsistent privacy standards, and rising security risks. While todays learning environment may look different, similar problems still persist. Many AI tools are pumping out generic worksheets or lessons with no connection to a districts curriculum. Others continue to raise red flags on privacy, asking teachers to paste in sensitive student work or data without clear protections. In both cases, the results are the same: The tools lack context, undermine coherence, and create more problems than they solve. The case for curriculum-connected AI There is another way, one that treats AI not as a grab bag of tools, but as a strategic layer within a coherent instructional system. Curriculum-connected AI flips the script on patchwork selection. It doesnt just generate content; it aligns instruction with what teachers are already teaching. It personalizes next steps by drawing on real-time student insights. And it keeps students’ data secure within education-specific boundaries. Its not just responsive, its relevant. And that approach is what builds teacher trust, not burnout. Ask any new teacher what it feels like to sift through hundreds of student responses on a test, and theyll tell you its overwhelming at best. Spotting patterns in all that data in real time is nearly impossible for just one person. Curriculum-connected AI can change that. By analyzing students work, AI can instantly highlight which skills most students have mastered, where a few need extra support, and what lesson comes next in the curriculum. That gives teachers the time back and the insight they need to personalize instruction without losing the curriculums throughline. The future belongs to districts that think like systems leaders. Districts that embrace an integrated approach are making a bet not just on technology, but on quality, coherence, and scale. Theyre recognizing that the future of AI in education isnt about how many tools you have; its about how well they work together to serve the teacher-student relationship. Curriculum-connected AI scales what works: quality instruction, real-time insight, and a secure, sustainable AI strategy. This fall, district leaders will face countless decisions. This is a pivotal one. The path they choose will determine whether theyre building for short-term convenience or long-term impact. Jack Lynch is CEO of HMH.
Category:
E-Commerce
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