Woke Brand

Abas Mirzaei, a faculty assistant professor in branding at Macquarie Business School, observes that woke branding has become the new wave that brands can no longer avoid. Avoid going woke, and your brand risks irrelevancy, especially with younger consumers. Go woke, and you’re likely to experience a backlash.

Until relatively recently, people wanted to buy high-quality cameras, reliable cars, and durable shoes and active wear. Today, however, many people want to buy a camera (to capture scenes of social injustice), shoes (that weren’t made using child labor), and cars (that emit minimal carbon and are safe for the environment). Likewise, we purchase “animal-friendly” vegan handbags that are not associated with animal cruelty and use ride-sharing services that promise not to exploit drivers.

In getting woke, fighting discrimination, and questioning the status quo, there are questions to address, steps to follow and considerations to take note of. This book unpacks the dynamics of woke branding, identifies its ingredients, and offers a roadmap for those wanting to walk into the uncertain world of wokeness. This book is neither a pro-woke nor an anti-woke polemic. Instead, with the appropriate critical distance, it presents a range of different views about wokeness: from woke authenticity, to cute wokeness, to woke sacrifice, and woke execution ingredients.

So, if you’re weighing the risks of engaging in “woke” moves and aren’t sure how consumers will respond, then this book is for you.