Could it be that the “anti-woke” movement has become so organized and influential that brands are now building strategies around it? If we’ve 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 logo—and removed an elderly man sitting judgily in a chair—Trump 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 I’m 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 company’s logo switch on August 20^th, 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 Barrel’s 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 retailer’s 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 don’t speak with their money

What these instances have in common is proving that anti-woke people aren’t afraid to speak with their dollars—whether in the stock market or in the grocery store aisle—to make their point heard.

But woke people don’t 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 didn’t. 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 don’t 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 don’t 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, it’s 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 strategy—provoking media, influencers, and even politicians through woke-baiting—could be worth the gamble to capture attention and, ultimately, increase company value.

George Kailas is CEO of Prospero.ai.