Go Woke, Go Broke: The High Cost Of Woke Marketing In Global Brands

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Australian outdoor retailer KMD Brands wanted to be hip, to follow the zeitgeist, and launched a transgender campaign. Now the company is in trouble. Once again, it shows: those who bed down with state ideology often find their final resting place there.

The Australian outdoor giant KMD Brands, known for functional clothing, backpacks, camping gear, and surf products, teeters on the edge of the financial abyss after a transgender advertising campaign.

For over a decade, the company posted steady profits, grew vigorously, and carved out a clear identity: masculine, cool, independent, nature-oriented. KMD Brands sold lifestyle products that embodied exactly what young men and family-oriented customers sought – tangible, authentic, identity-defining.

Arriving in the Red Zone

But the engine of the successful company has started to sputter. After a loss of 48.3 million New Zealand dollars (NZD) last year, KMD Brands reported for fiscal 2024/2025 a doubled loss of 92.06 million NZD, roughly 47.5 million euros.
The driver of the loss was none other than the lifestyle surf brand “Rip Curl,” whose sales dropped by 27 percent.

The catastrophic result has consequences. KMD Brands operates around 300 stores worldwide. In light of rising costs and falling sales, the first 21 stores are set to close this year, with 16 more likely to follow next year. The company is trying to restructure, regain control of costs, and launch six new premium stores to refresh its image.

Transgender Campaign Flopped

So what happened? Just a few months ago, KMD Brands launched a transgender campaign for the Rip Curl surf brand, featuring a trans person presenting products for female surfers. As expected, customers called for a boycott, giving management a severe reality check. A lesson in how marketing messages that ignore the core customer base can become expensive – woke-minded, revenue forgotten.

The collapse at the surf brand has a name: Brent Scrimshaw. After 18 years at the helm of Nike, with senior roles in Australia, Europe, and the U.S., Scrimshaw was a global brand strategist. Vice President, CEO Western Europe, Chief Marketing Officer EMEA, General Manager East Coast USA – he ranked among the 30 top executives worldwide and shaped Nike’s global brand and sales strategy.

On March 25, Scrimshaw took over as CEO of KMD Brands. His approach, as they call it: inclusive, zeitgeist-oriented. Owners trusted him to open new markets in a climate of rising costs and declining sales. The Rip Curl transgender campaign was an expression of this strategy – brutally ideological, aligned with the politically dictated, supposedly modern zeitgeist. The boycott was the logical consequence: they overshot the mark by miles.

Out of Touch and Politically Compliant

At its core, it’s almost incomprehensible. One wonders in what world the management of such companies lives – have they not heard from the United States that the woke wave has ebbed with the new administration in Washington?
Anyone who doesn’t understand by now that political eccentricity in brand marketing no longer wins hearts and minds is truly beyond help. It’s playing with fire and the capital of the owners – in KMD Brands’ case, the shareholders.

The ideological entanglement of leftist identity politics – gendered language, transgenderism, woke absurdities – with brand strategy and corporate decisions is more than problematic. It’s a dangerously misaligned development if executive suites have no counterweight or resistance to ideological decay.

At the same time, the boycott of KMD Brands’ transgender campaign shows that customers are responsive, that in many cases reason still prevails, and that the vast majority do not fall into the woke trap conjured by the leftist mainstream. The customer boycott thus becomes a socio-political corrective, a slap in the face to those who overstep their competence and try to implement divisive ideologies through the market.

In Bad Company

“Go Woke, Go Broke” has become the mantra of marketing catastrophes in recent years. 

As early as 2019, Gillette’s management and marketing team demonstrated, with a classic masculine core product, how willing they were – perhaps in a kind of reaction to Donald Trump’s presidency – to submit to the leftist zeitgeist. The “woke” #MyBestSelf campaign featured transgender teenager Samson Bonkeabantu Brown, whose father guided him through his first shave. Part of the overarching “The Best Men Can Be” campaign, it aimed to address toxic masculinity and promote a supposedly “positive image” of men – including transgender men.

While conservative groups criticized and called for boycotts, #MyBestSelf was celebrated by the leftist mainstream for its inclusive, positive portrayal. Gillette wanted to show that masculinity is not rigid but dynamic and responsible, that the “best self” is measured not by gender but by attitude. Attitude – that residue that remains when civic values, ethics, and morality have already eroded.

The issue of politicized advertising hit the public consciousness in 2023 with Budweiser and Bud Light as a textbook example of management failure. The beer brand ran a “woke” campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. For her “365 Days of Being a Woman” anniversary, Mulvaney received a personalized Bud Light can with her face.
The reaction: a full-blown culture war. Conservatives called for boycotts, online hate spread, celebrities like Kid Rock spoke out, political actors such as Ron DeSantis intervened.

The result: revenue dropped by up to a quarter, market share fell, Bud Light likely lost forever its status as America’s most popular beer. Budweiser tried to reach Millennials and Gen Z with this derailed strategy but failed with a now-sensitive audience. Two marketing managers were suspended, criticism came from all directions – the European executive later called it a “misstep”: the audience wanted fun, sports, and music, not a political statement – what a revelation.

Disney as Ideological Spearhead

The madness doesn’t end. Disney has been setting off an ideological fireworks display for years. In its series and films, unclear gender roles, transgender hysteria, and woke babble often take center stage – in short: the destruction of traditional roles. A targeted, leftist diffusion campaign flopped at the box office while management stubbornly clung to what it believed was the zeitgeist.

Credit goes to every participant in boycotts against this unethical corporate policy. They erect a protective wall against the politically forced degeneracy of a bourgeois-destroying ideology, multiplied by compliant corporate collaborators, and they show the co-opted management teams the red card.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.