Is the era of brand activism coming to an end?

Consumers say they vote with their wallets. Soon, they might start hearing less about brands’ political bona fides.

Ahead of the second Trump administration, experts told Marketing Brew that they anticipate many brands to continue rolling back messaging around progressive ideals and social causes. Before the election, the pullback had already begun, with some companies quieting initiatives around sustainability and DE&I as a rash of right-wing boycotts, including one targeting Bud Light, has made corporate America queasy.

Last summer, attorneys general from 13 states, including Kentucky and Iowa, sent a letter to business leaders claiming that DE&I initiatives could be classified as a form of discrimination, and Trump has been outspoken in his opposition to DE&I efforts. In late November, Walmart announced that it was rolling back some of its DE&I initiatives and would prevent third-party sellers from listing some LGBTQ-related products on its website.

With an incoming Republican trifecta in Congress and the White House, a growing brand silence on social and progressive causes seems all but certain, experts told us.

“If the political pressure ramps up, then we will continue to see...a deceleration or a de-emphasis, at least from an external comms perspective,” Jay Wilson, VP and analyst at Gartner, told Marketing Brew.

Walking it back

During Trump’s first term, it seemed like every brand was speaking out on social causes. Pepsi made an (ill-advised) ad on police brutality, 84 Lumber centered its 2017 Super Bowl ad on immigration, and even Levi’s took a stance on gun control. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the social unrest of the pandemic era only seemed to fuel marketers’ desire to speak out.

Now, ahead of his second term, some multicultural agencies that saw an influx of interest four years ago have said they are feeling the pinch as clients walk back DE&I commitments, and conservative investors are putting pressure on brands to back down from causes like LGBTQIA+ allyship. Even Target, which had become known for its annual Pride collection, had a notably smaller in-store presence this year.

How exactly do consumers feel about brands speaking out (or pulling back)? It’s a little muddled. An Edelman report published in June found that six in 10 consumers are “buying or boycotting brands to express their political power.” Two months later, though, a Gallup poll found that just 38% of US adults believe businesses should take a public stance on current events.

There could be other reasons for a pullback besides responding to consumer backlash. Marketers in the C-suite are faced with doing more with less, as budgets for advertising and marketing as a percentage of total revenue have fallen from 11% in 2020 to 7.7% in 2024, according to Gartner.

That pressure could mean marketers look to avoid taking big swings or riskier moves, Wilson said.

“CMOs are a little bit more reticent to throw their hat in the ring,” he said. “Facing that budgetary pressure, they tend to get a little bit more conservative—not politically conservative, but conservative—in the bets they’re willing to take.”

Keeping quiet(er)?

Charles Byers, a marketing professor of practice at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, told us that while he doesn’t anticipate the second Trump administration to usher in the end of corporate social responsibility entirely, he expects to see an internalization of it. That could mean fewer campaigns talking about DE&I, even if companies are still “focused on the outcomes of those initiatives” and may feel pressure to meet the expectations from some customers to take a stand, he said.

“[DE&I] is now evolving from being what I will call a brand attribute, if you will, or product attribute, to probably where it properly belongs, and that is as a policy decision,” he said, adding that “we are looking at a maturation and assimilation of these trends into everyday business practice.”

While many brands took stances on social causes a few years ago, Byers chalked some of it up to “virtue mirroring,” noting that some observers questioned whether the actions represented genuine statements of belief. In the case of Bud Light, he said the brand “absolutely, totally misread their target audience.”

Brands whose target audiences expect them to engage in corporate social responsibility, Byers said, will continue to face business incentives to participate in initiatives like Pride and shouldn’t take the election results as a complete rejection of social causes from consumers.

“A huge amount of the electorate said that DE&I and having a sustainable economy is important,” he said. “If you’re a marketer, are you going to ignore 48% of the population?”

Identity issues

There are some brands who have made brand activism a key part of their identity, which seems likely to continue in the coming years. Ben & Jerry’s, for instance, has already said it “[refuses] to be silent or stand idly by” during Trump’s second term, even as its parent company Unilever recently scaled back some of its fair pay and climate initiatives. Ahead of Election Day, outdoor retailer Patagonia spoke out about its opposition to the Trump-Vance ticket, and the brand sued Trump during his first term over environmental protections.

And even as right-wing groups pressure brands, there are organizations attempting to hold brands accountable for walking back their inclusivity and sustainability initiatives. In September, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which issues an annual Corporate Equality Index that evaluates workplaces, announced it would be deducting points from Ford, Molson Coors, Tractor Supply Co., John Deere, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, and Brown-Forman for their “decision[s] to abandon previously stated commitments to the values of inclusion and responsible corporate citizenship.”

Activist group Clean Creatives, which has made a name for itself protesting agencies’ work with fossil-fuel companies at industry events like Cannes Lions, will also continue to put pressure on agencies to stop working with fossil-fuel companies, Executive Director Duncan Meisel told us via email. Next year, he said, he expects to see even more clients integrating its criteria into their RFPs and review processes.

“It’s important to remember that the biggest moment of climate mobilization in history, the global climate strikes, came in September 2019 under the first Trump administration,” he said. “I’d argue that government inaction doesn’t reduce climate concern, it increases it.”

Jon Cook, global CEO of the WPP agency VML, said it would be naïve to think the election results won’t influence how brands represent themselves publicly, but he said he hopes many will continue to support causes their customers and employees care about.

“I hope brands are brave enough to still express themselves,” he said. “Not just to the way they want their consumers to think. It’s still very important for the people that work at those companies to know they work at companies that stand for things.”