How the culture war is remaking advertising

Irish Times

20-06-2025

During this year's Super Bowl, American viewers were given a blast from the past when food chain Carl's Jr once again rolled out an ad featuring scantily clad women, having ditched its long-time 'burgers and bikinis' approach in 2017.
Bud Light, which attracted boycotts after working with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in 2023, put out a campaign featuring guys drinking beer and barbecuing big steaks for a lawn party in a stereotypical US suburban cul-de-sac.
For many marketers, these sort of ads were the latest signs that big US and international brands, after years of talk about purpose and inclusion in their corporate messaging, are now playing to the Maga crowd.
Some have gone even farther; restaurant chain Steak 'n Shake, for example, sponsored a recent bitcoin conference, and tweeted posts appealing to Tesla Cybertruck drivers. Its pinned post on X features US health secretary
Robert F Kennedy jnr
.
READ MORE
Yet at the same time, senior advertising bosses say campaigns featuring themes of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are now being blocked by some brand owners, who are nervous of a backlash from anti-woke campaigners and Republican politicians.
'We've had a lot of ideas that were pro-LGBTQ, or pro for the black community, pulled back on because of what's happening with the
Trump
administration,' says one senior advertising boss who, like many of the executives that the Financial Times spoke to, did not want to be named for fear of sparking a further negative response.
The election of Donald Trump has brought added fears of legal action against DEI initiatives in the US and scrutiny by regulators and Christian faith shareholders over perceived bias in advertising.
Top marketers in the US say the increased nervousness about being attacked for being 'woke' by conservatives on platforms such as
Elon Musk
's
X
is changing how they approach spending often constrained budgets to reach consumers.
Consumer behaviour is becoming more polarised. A new report from FCB, the advertising agency, and Angus Reid, the Canadian pollster, found that political leaning had a clear impact on consumer choices. FCB's Global chief executive Tyler Turnbull says that brands are now political, and it was 'really no longer viable for marketers to ignore the political perspective of their target audiences'.
It is not only an American phenomenon. Flora Joll, strategy director at creative agency JOAN London, says she has seen 'campaigns get diluted across the board' in part owing to 'increasing nervousness about attracting the wrong kind of public attention'.
She adds: 'The woke wars in the UK are far behind where the US have been for a while, but it is starting to bite here and a [possible] recession would only have an exacerbating effect.'
It adds up to an unusually complicated time for marketers as they congregated in the south of France for the annual Cannes Lions advertising festival this week.
In a poll of global chief marketing officers by the World Federation of Advertisers published this week, more than four-fifths of respondents said the operating environment was now riskier for brands. A similar number said they were taking more time to 'agree what they stand for and how they articulate positions and values externally in their marketing communications'.
PR agency executives say their big workload now is advising brands on how to react to Trump's unpredictable salvos on anything from DEI to tariffs. 'Most of the time they just want to say nothing,' says a senior PR executive.
The nervousness means advertising is shying away from the role it has played for decades in expanding mainstream culture to include historically less-represented people, including those marginalised by their race, sexuality or disabilities.
Often this was ahead of its time; in 1994, the year a gay couple appeared in a US TV commercial for the first time, more than a dozen US states still had laws that prohibited gay men from having consensual sex.
The risk for an industry that still celebrates diversity in its own ranks is that the sort of free thinking that can underpin creativity will be unduly muted at a time when the traditional industry roles are under assault from the emergence of AI.
'There's been a shift towards the more reassuring, more run of the mill. That's what's going to happen until things settle. It's very, very uncertain,' says one agency boss. 'You're seeing a lot less purpose-led ideas around DEI – not because they don't exist but because clients are getting nervous. You don't want to be targeted.'
To a certain extent, advertising has become the battleground for broader culture war conflicts in the corporate world.
Shareholder activists, for example, are now using their clout to influence companies to reverse their positions on matters of diversity and inclusion, following the lead of the White House.
The Alliance Defending Freedom – an organisation set up to protect Christian values – has backed shareholders who have filed more than 60 resolutions for the 2025 proxy season. It claims to have helped push a number of the world's largest advertisers into enshrining 'viewpoint neutrality' when it comes to their creative work.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys and its shareholder partners most recently claimed victory after
IBM
moved to 'viewpoint neutrality' in its advertising policies last month, adding to a list that they say includes PepsiCo and
Johnson & Johnson
. These companies did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement to the FT, the Alliance Defending Freedom said that IBM was the latest company to take steps to 'prevent future viewpoint-based discrimination', adding: 'No corporation should be involved in or allow for censorship at any level. We hope every company ... recommits to doing its part to protect freedom of speech and thought in our nation and throughout the world.'
An antitrust lawsuit filed last year by X against Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a brand safety initiative backed by advertisers and ad agencies, as well as some companies, accused them of co-ordinating an 'illegal boycott' of the site. The initiative, which was part of the World Federation of Advertisers, has since shut down.
The coalition of advertisers, including
Nestlé
and
Shell
, last month asked a federal judge in Texas to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that their decisions to suspend advertising on X were made independently and reflected concerns over the platform's content moderation practices.
'There is a genuine fear of reprisal, based on not just opinion, but actually some real fear of legal ramifications at some point down the line which people have to take seriously,' says a UK marketing head. 'Because they have a duty of care to ensure that they're not creating an illegal jeopardy by doing some of these things.'
Musk – although now out of the White House – is still seen to have considerable sway over the direction taken by regulators in the US.
The US Congress has held hearings looking at potential collusion among advertising firms, while the Federal Trade Commission is also looking at whether advertising and advocacy groups have colluded in working with brands to boycott platforms such as X.
Turnbull says that brands now needed to consider the choice of marketing platform as a political act. 'Where you're advertising is as much of a statement now about what your brand is and what you stand for as it's ever been before. What message are you sending? Should you be on Joe Rogan or Michelle Obama's podcast?'
The trend is also affecting M&A in the industry. In December, Jim Jordan, a Republican who chairs the House judiciary committee, wrote to Omnicom boss John Wren to say that they were looking at the takeover of rival Interpublic in relation to their work with Global Alliance for Responsible Media, adding that the proposed merger raises potential anticompetitive concerns.
Even if there is yet to be any tangible impact from these threats, the combination of lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny has had a chilling effect on brands and DEI, ad bosses say.
Richard Exon, co-founder of independent creative advertising agency Joint, says that commitment to DEI 'has recently become a politicised position' in the US. Larger businesses were facing the challenge of achieving broad appeal in a highly polarised media landscape, he adds. 'It's not surprising if these larger businesses proceed more cautiously on social justice issues.'
Some marketers say they are being more closely monitored by their boards about delivery, with the focus now on effectiveness of campaigns that can yield tangible sales.
Brands are often working with tightened budgets, says one UK advertising boss, meaning that 'anything unrelated to pure growth, including purpose, could be seen as a distraction and therefore harder to gain traction within a business'.
But the move in the cultural landscape has also shifted marketing budgets, with organisers of
Pride
marches and other LGBT+ events saying that there has been a retreat from corporate sponsors this year in the US and the UK.
In New York, a number of sponsors such as
Mastercard
did not renew their top-tier corporate sponsorships of Pride. Mastercard said that, this year, it was 'proudly participating in the NYC Pride March and related events with a strong employee-led presence and a community engagement programme'.
[
A quarter of major US corporate backers pull out of Dublin Pride over Trump fears
Opens in new window
]
Polly Shute, founder of Out & Wild, the UK's largest LGBT+ festival and former board member of Pride in London, says that corporate sponsors have been less keen to back events.
Plymouth and Liverpool have both pulled their Pride march events – the latter blaming 'significant financial and organisational challenges' at a time of rising costs.
Shute says that, in 2017, Pride 'was turning brands away as they did not meet criteria' but 'it's very different now'. She notes that some brands and companies had stopped changing their logos to Pride colours on social media such as LinkedIn.
In the UK, these include firms that have extensive operations in the US such as WPP, Linklaters and Freshfields.
Linklaters said its 'commitment remains unchanged. We are proud to be celebrating Pride at Linklaters ... with events and activities taking place across our global offices'. Freshfields has used other Pride branding this year, including a Pride banner across its LinkedIn page.
Shute says that demand for influencers to be used in external marketing, and for speakers for internal corporate events, has also been more muted this year. 'It used to be that the social media was really positive but now the reaction has scared off sponsorship as they don't want to be associated with the negativity.'
However, dog treats company BarkBox showed there are dangers in shifting positions. Matt Meeker, the group's chief executive, was forced to apologise after a leaked Slack message suggested the company would pause paid advertising for its Pride kit, with the 'current climate' making such promotions 'feel like a political statement'.
Target, the US retailer, has also been boycotted by some customers since February owing to its decision to scale back DEI initiatives. 'Target is another example recently where a changed policy has resulted in people voting with their wallets and from a purchase perspective,' says FCB's Turnbull.
The People's Union USA, a grassroots consumer-led group, has organised 'economic blackouts' against other companies such as Amazon, Walmart and General Mills.
[
Meta introduces advertising to WhatsApp in push for new revenues
Opens in new window
]
'This blackout isn't symbolic. It's strategic. We are the economy. We are the machine they profit off of. And it's time to show them what happens when the machine stops,' it says.
These shifting cultural sands – and the now ever present risk of alienating customers on any side of a political or societal divide – means that it is in brands' interest to play it safe, according to marketers.
'People are just leaning back, particularly our big clients,' says one ad boss. 'There's just less of a focus on purposeful, super-targeted work right now.'
Some point to a focus on humour or universal themes as risk-free ways to get to the biggest audiences.
The shift is particularly sensitive at the Cannes Lions festival, which for several years was seen by some as having moved potentially too far towards social issues in the sorts of advertising work it celebrated and rewarded.
In Cannes, much of the talk was about how
AI
would replace a lot of the work carried out by creative teams, resulting in unoriginal and bland advertising campaigns, exacerbating the shift to safety-first approaches.
But some are hopeful that the industry can withstand external pressures, finding new and clever ways to reach audiences irrespective of political allegiances. And they point out that Cannes Lions still has an award for work that addresses inequality and prejudice by representing and empowering marginalised communities.
'Purpose always has a place,' says Karen Martin, boss of BBH and president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. 'Cannes may have become too purposeful for a while, but getting different creative voices in the room, and making sure you are addressing all audiences, will always be the centre of what we do.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025