BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: This week, we're connecting the dots between rising pop stars, aging presidents and the bones they both have to pick. I know, I know. How are all these things connected? Well, we're going to find out with NPR's Elena Moore - she covers young voters for NPR Politics - and Stephen Thompson, co-host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Elena, Stephen, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Hey, Brittany. It's great to be here.
ELENA MOORE, BYLINE: Oh, it's an honor.
LUSE: It's an honor to have you both. And normally, we lead our show with analysis of the biggest cultural story of the week. But do either of you happen to have your calendar pulled up? Can you tell me what week it is?
MOORE: Oh, God. What week it is?
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: Yes, no worries. I'm here. I was prepped. It's the first week of July...
THOMPSON: Yes.
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Which means we've made it halfway through 2024. And today, we're going to take stock of what's happened so far this year and what that says about what's to come. Let me just run through some examples of what a year it's been.
THOMPSON: OK.
LUSE: Just about every pop girl has released an album this year, from Beyonce to Taylor Swift to Dua Lipa to Ariana Grande.
THOMPSON: Billie Eilish.
LUSE: We've had two iconic rap beefs - between Kendrick and Drake and Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion. We all got tennis pilled from "Challengers," transported to far away planets by "Dune: Part Two." And the presidential primary season seemed like a blip with Biden and Trump easily securing their party's nominations, respectively. And Trump became the first former president convicted of a crime.
We've seen students and people around the world rising up to protest the Israel-Hamas war. A door flew off a plane in flight. The Baltimore bridge collapsed. TikTok got banned, kind of, and Mother Nature really showed up for us by giving us a gorgeous eclipse and a solar storm that may have given Earth its strongest auroras in centuries.
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LUSE: Oh, my gosh. I'm out of breath.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: Stephen, Elena, I want to dive a little bit deeper into - kind of pulling out some of the themes that we've already seen from things that are happening in politics and culture this year. Elena, I want to start with you because you have your eyes on politics. It's a presidential election year, a pretty big deal. From where you're sitting, what is the most pivotal moment of this year so far?
MOORE: It's crazy, Brittany, 'cause I feel like the - some of the most pivotal moments of this year have happened in the past week.
THOMPSON: Yeah.
LUSE: Yeah.
MOORE: I mean, there was a debate last week. And Monday, there was this huge Supreme Court ruling. It said that Trump - he has presumed immunity for official actions. Basically, this delays former President Trump's federal trial related to his actions on January 6, and it raises so many questions about what official acts mean. I mean, this could change the way presidents act moving forward. This could be a pivotal moment of the next, you know, decades.
THOMPSON: Yeah.
LUSE: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the Supreme Court ruling, but I also want to highlight the other big thing that you brought up, which is the presidential debate...
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Between Biden and Trump. Why do you think that was a pivotal moment?
MOORE: Oh, my gosh. I mean, I think it crystallized a lot of big things in this campaign. You know, we watched Trump avoid committing to accepting the election results this fall.
THOMPSON: Right.
MOORE: That's...
LUSE: Yeah.
MOORE: ...Huge. And then, of course, President Biden had a really bad night. His voice was raspy. He failed to make clear points on issues that Democrats usually do really well on. You know, I go around the country talking with voters, and I hear concerns about Biden's age a lot, and sometimes, you know, I've raised my eyebrows at that a little and think, Is it really his age? Is that really the - you know, the end-all be-all for this vote?
And after watching this debate, for me, as someone who covers young voters, I just kept thinking of the memes, the memes galore that this debate brought out. And, like, that's silly to say, but, like, I think about the young voter who maybe doesn't follow politics and doesn't read the news but follows a meme account and is, like, going to see a meme of Biden looking lost or confused, and that affects voting.
THOMPSON: One thing that I'm curious about with the kind of one-two punch - the shot chaser of that debate and then the Supreme Court ruling. I'm really wondering how the national conversation shifts around the kind of - Joe Biden, but he's old. Joe Biden - he didn't do well in this debate. He seemed kind of feeble. He lost his train of thought. Versus - which candidate do you want to be president with the knowledge that that person essentially has no restrictions on how and whether they follow the law? I think - really changes the calculus of some of these conversations around the, quote-unquote, "double haters"...
MOORE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...The people who really do not truck with Donald Trump and really do not truck with Joe Biden, and what do they do about this election? Do they sit it out? I really wonder if this Supreme Court decision is to 2024 what Dobbs and the striking down of Roe v. Wade was to 2022 in terms of galvanizing people who might have been viewing this election in a different way before this ruling came down.
LUSE: You know, speaking of politics, one of my biggest pivotal moments this year - the moment when Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene verbally attacked Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett.
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MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you're reading.
JASMINE CROCKETT: No, ain't nothing...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Hold on, hold on.
LUSE: And, you know, her words were instantly denounced as racist. And then we had Jasmine Crockett's response.
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CROCKETT: If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach-blonde, bad-built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: What now?
LUSE: We did a whole episode about the back and forth. It was this crystallizing moment where it really felt like the gloves were taken off. And it seems like across culture, we are not putting them back on. You know, in the world of music, we also saw Kendrick Lamar and Drake take off their gloves, using women and children as pawns in their rap beef.
Stephen, I know grievance is a word that's been on your mind as you've been following music. Talk to me about how you see this theme popping up across popular culture.
THOMPSON: I have referred to 2024 on several occasions as the year of pop cultural grievance, extending not only to - we've mentioned these hip-hop beefs between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Same goes for the beefs between Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj. But also, we have seen kind of album-length grievance-mining from major pop stars. Taylor Swift put out "The Tortured Poets Department." That is a two-hour collection, 31 songs...
LUSE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...Kind of marinating in grievance around past relationships. Beyonce's album "Cowboy Carter" is, like, a 78-minute treatise that extends from her being snubbed at an awards show. A lot of these big pop singles, big pop albums have kind of revolved around stars pushing back against things that have angered and frustrated them.
A lot of the new faces we've seen, a lot of the fresh moments we've seen in pop music, a lot of the people who were not big names at the beginning of 2024 who are big names now - I feel like have, in many cases, injected notes of warmth and positivity and connection in ways that I have felt really optimistic about. I've been really optimistic about the rise of Chappell Roan, who I just love.
MOORE: Yes.
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CHAPPELL ROAN: (Singing) H-O-T T-O G-O, snap and clap and touch your toes. Raise your hands, now body roll. Dance it out. You're hot to go.
MOORE: I can listen to that music at any time of day. It sounds like I'm going to a bar, but I'm writing about Biden's trip to Wisconsin. Like, it's, like...
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MOORE: It's amazing.
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ROAN: (Singing) H-O-T T-O G-O. You can take me hot to go. H-O-T T-O G-O. You can take me...
LUSE: It's so interesting touching back on this theme of grievance. Grievance is a really big theme. Obviously, not just in music - you know, I'm even thinking about the latest season of the "House Of The Dragon," you know? Sure, they're all fighting for a throne, but really, the basis for all the drama is grievance upon grievance, attacking each other's families because they attacked yours first, eye for an eye. And to connect this back to politics again, President Trump has used, quote, "I am your retribution"...
THOMPSON: Yeah.
LUSE: ...As one of his campaign...
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Slogans. Elena, I wonder, as someone who follows young voters, does grievance speak to them?
MOORE: Well, I think on the politics side and the pop culture side, like, it's their life. This is all they've known, especially Gen Z. Like, the oldest Gen Zers are 27, which means the first presidential election they voted in was Trump versus Hillary Clinton. The geriatric Gen Zers' first election was Trump.
THOMPSON: Geriatric Gen Zers.
MOORE: There's something really kind of grievance-like about the way that young people have come of age. They grew up in middle school and high school during the movement for Black lives and the movement for, you know, gender equality, environmental justice...
THOMPSON: Gun violence.
MOORE: ...Curbing gun violence. This generation may overwhelmingly vote for Democrats and have, you know, Democratic ideas or ideas that Democrats support, but there is a subset of this generation that has moved extremely to the right, that is conservative and almost like - I've been thinking of it like a counterculture in some ways. Like, they love Trump. And on both sides, you know, they are over this, like, two-party system, establishment, government when, like, they've really seen a lot of flaws in it.
THOMPSON: My generation is Generation X, and one thing that I've seen studying the political leanings of different generations is that Generation X is considerably more right-wing...
LUSE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...Than most other generations. Well...
LUSE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...When you think about how Generation X came up and a lot of the language that we were given, a lot of the feelings that we felt, was this idea of one generation took something from us. The baby boomers stole our future. We are the first generation that is not better off than the generation before it.
And I'm really curious to see the difference between how a millennial coming of age compares to a Gen Z coming of age compares to a Generation X coming of age compared to a Greatest Generation coming of age. Gen Z has been fed a lot of hopelessness, has been fed a lot of isolation. And I'm very curious to see how that generation takes shape, bearing in mind, of course, that no generation is a monolith.
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh. Y'all have given me so much to think about with this today.
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LUSE: And I'll tell you what. This has been a great review of the first six months, but now I'm sitting here, like, with some trepidation but also some anticipation for what the next six months will hold. Oh, my gosh. Stephen, Elena, I have learned so much here. Thank you so much.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
MOORE: Thanks for having me.
LUSE: And as a thank you, I'd like to teach you something by playing a game with the two of you. Can you stick around a tiny bit longer?
THOMPSON: Absolutely.
MOORE: Yes, please.
LUSE: All right. We'll be right back with a little game. I like to call But Did You Know?
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LUSE: Stick around. All right, all right, we're going to play a little game I like to call But Did You Know? Here's how it works. I'm going to share a story that's been making headlines this week. And as I give you some background on that story, I'll also ask you trivia related to it. But don't worry, it's all multiple-choice, OK? So the right answer is going to be in there somewhere. The first one to blurt out the right answer gets a point.
THOMPSON: Oh boy.
LUSE: The person with the points wins. And their prize, of course, is bragging rights.
MOORE: I'm so good at blurting things out. Sounds great.
LUSE: (Laughter) OK.
THOMPSON: What I love about this is that Elena Moore - I did not consider Elena Moore to be among my chief rivals...
MOORE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...Until about 30 seconds ago.
LUSE: It's on. The grievance has begun.
MOORE: It's funny, Stephen, because I've been preparing for this for years, and I've been watching you, and I'm ready.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: All right. Well, let me get started. Let me get started. OK, it's July Fourth weekend, and sales for a very particular kind of food are about to peak. I am, of course, talking about the hot dog. Love 'em or hate 'em, chances are you're going to smell, see or maybe even eat one in the next couple of days, if you have not already. But do you know how many hot dogs are allegedly sold every year on Independence Day?
MOORE: Oh, my God.
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LUSE: Is it A, 15 million, B, 50 million or C, 150 million?
THOMPSON: I'm going with whatever the highest number is. But I feel like it's one of these things every once in a while where it's like 900 billion hot dogs are eaten every day. And everyone's like, how is that mathematically even possible? I'm going to go with whatever the highest number is.
LUSE: You're going with C, 150 million. And what about you, Elena?
MOORE: Just to make it spicy, I'll go B, but I kind of also...
LUSE: OK.
MOORE: ...Feel like America likely buys as many hot dogs as possible.
LUSE: All right. Well, Stephen, your hunch was correct.
THOMPSON: Yes.
LUSE: The answer is C, 150 million hot dogs.
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THOMPSON: Weren't watching me closely enough, Elena. You've got to get up pretty early in the morning.
(LAUGHTER)
LUSE: OK. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council...
THOMPSON: (Laughter) No greater an authority.
MOORE: Very aware.
LUSE: Yes, that is a real organization. Americans are expected to buy 150 million hot dogs during July Fourth, just on that day alone.
THOMPSON: Just on that day alone.
MOORE: Yes.
THOMPSON: I just want to say if this NPR thing does not work out for me, I'm...
MOORE: You're going to start...
THOMPSON: ...Glad to know that I can go to work for the Hot Dog and Sausage Council.
MOORE: I work for Big Hot Dog.
LUSE: They'll have heard you get this answer correct, and they'll say, this is a guy who knows his stuff, OK?
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: All right, next question. Next question. Now, you hopefully know about Detroit's Coney dog. You probably know about the Chicago dog. But do you know what city eats the most hot dog?
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LUSE: Is it A, New York, B, Chicago or C, Los Angeles?
MOORE: Oh, it can't be LA, right?
THOMPSON: No. There's no way it's LA.
MOORE: Unless we're counting, like, a veggie grass dog. No.
THOMPSON: There's no way it's LA.
MOORE: I think it's New York. I'm from New York, pro-New York. I'm going New York.
THOMPSON: I'm going to go for Chicago because I am from Wisconsin, and we are a gluttonous people. I suspect Elena is right, but I'm going to go with Chicago.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh. Well, you were actually both wrong. The answer is C, Los Angeles.
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LUSE: Despite many other places being known for their signature dog, it's Los Angeles. Look at this, we're learning so much. We're blowing so many minds today.
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: (Laughter) OK, to recap the score. Stephen, you are at one point. Elena, you're at zero points.
THOMPSON: Don't worry, Elena. The last question's always worth 5 million points.
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: (Laughter) All right, well, without further ado, the final question worth 500 million points, as Stephen said. Hot dogs were the first two words ever spoken by American icon Disney's Mickey Mouse. They were one of the first foods eaten on the moon in the Apollo 11 mission. FDR once served hot dogs to Queen Elizabeth. But what defines a, quote, "hot dog"? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, what is required of a hot dog?
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LUSE: A, it contains no more than 30% fat, B, it contains at least 90% beef or C, there are no rules.
THOMPSON: C, there are no rules.
MOORE: Yeah. C, there are no rules.
LUSE: All right, well, unfortunately...
THOMPSON: Elena, you've got to pick a different one 'cause it's either going to be one to nothing or 500 million and one to nothing.
LUSE: Well...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: ...The answer is A.
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LUSE: Hot dogs must contain no more than 30% fat, according to...
THOMPSON: Wow.
LUSE: ...The USDA. And according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, hot dogs are also officially - this is from them - not sandwiches. Do we agree?
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: OK, Elena, you're immediately like, no, these are not sandwiches.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: Stephen, what say you?
THOMPSON: I - you know, what I've always found about this debate is that I do not care.
MOORE: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: I'm just too busy hoovering them...
LUSE: That's fair (laughter).
THOMPSON: ...To pay attention.
LUSE: That's fair. That's fair. All right, that is it for this week's edition of But Did You Know? Congratulations to Stephen on your...
THOMPSON: Woo.
MOORE: Congrats.
LUSE: ...Win.
THOMPSON: Yes.
MOORE: You deserve it.
LUSE: And I want to tell you a new grievance was born today.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
MOORE: I know.
LUSE: Let me tell you what.
MOORE: New beef.
LUSE: And you know what? Y'all are going to have to come back and duke it out. And maybe, Elena, that'll be your day.
MOORE: It'll be my redemption album.
LUSE: Exactly.
THOMPSON: (Laughter) You have to make it three hours long.
MOORE: Yeah.
LUSE: Well, until that rematch, Elena, Stephen, thank you so much for joining me today.
MOORE: Thanks.
THOMPSON: Thank you, Brittany.
LUSE: That was NPR Politics' Elena Moore and Pop Culture Happy Hour's Stephen Thompson. I'm going to take a quick break, and when I get back, we're getting into why brands are suddenly de-wokeing (ph).
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LUSE: Stick around.
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LUSE: My big question this week is, why have brands gotten quieter about politics?
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LUSE: I don't know if you all remember, but there used to be a time where it felt like brands weighed in on pretty much everything. For example, Burger King supported net neutrality. Levi's called for stricter gun laws. And Gushers, like, the fruit candy, said unequivocally, that Black lives matter. Now, I don't know if I needed to hear that Gushers stands with the Black community, but recently, it feels like brands generally are hesitant to take a stand on anything. And to be clear, there's a difference between taking a political stance and being inclusive of diverse groups of people. But anything that could be seen as, quote-unquote, "woke" has gotten more risky. But why did brands get political in the first place? And why were these last 10 years in ad land different from everything that came before? To find out more, I'm joined by Michael Serazio, professor of communication at Boston University, who specializes in the study of advertising.
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LUSE: Michael, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
MICHAEL SERAZIO: Thanks so much for having me.
LUSE: Our pleasure. To jump right in, we all remember when brands had consciences. Can you talk to me about some of the most strangely political statements brands have made that you've seen in the past few years?
SERAZIO: Yeah, absolutely. So probably the most bonkers ad that I think I saw - and to the degree you can call it an ad. You know, maybe that's being too generous. But on January 6, in the midst of the assault on U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump's supporters, there was trash that was sort of, like, left out. And one of the pieces of trash that was left was a can of Axe body spray. And Axe felt compelled in this moment to respond to that detritus with a tweet that read, quote, "we'd rather be lonely than with that mob. Axe condemns yesterday's acts of violence and hate at the Capitol. We believe in the Democratic process and the peaceful transfer of power." And I'm pretty sure this is the first time in history that a deodorant has weighed in on matters of democracy, the transfer of power, constitutional affairs. Things like that.
LUSE: (Laughter) That kind of language and these very serious statements from, I don't know, brands like Gushers, weighing in on these serious political matters, that kind of behavior has seemed to slow down a bit. Like, we just finished Pride Month. And I've seen some reporting that there are fewer Pride brand activations this year than in previous years. Like, Nike didn't offer a Pride collection this year after having done them since 1999. Also, there were a number of brands posting about Black Lives Matter back in 2020. And today, I'm not seeing brands jumping to talk about the big protest movement of 2024 with Gaza. It seems that anything that could be interpreted as political or called woke is getting less championed, if at all, in brand land. When and why did that change?
SERAZIO: Yeah, it's a great question. I think with regard to advertising, you're absolutely right, it has been in retreat for the past few years as it aligns itself with political causes. I think it crescendoed largely in 2020 with that wave of Black Lives Matter ads that came out, particularly in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder. But what you saw in the years since was a couple of things. One, you saw increasing numbers of surveys showing that consumers were less interested in their brands being super political. And this was a reversal from what had been the case in the late 2010s. And you had a couple of instances, but by far, the most famous example that really served as a kind of cautionary tale was the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney controversy...
LUSE: Right.
SERAZIO: ...A year ago. Just to refresh for listeners, Bud Light had run a sort of influencer campaign with a variety of influencers. Dylan Mulvaney had been one such influencer - trans influencer on TikTok.
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DYLAN MULVANEY: This month, I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever - a can with my face on it. Check out my Instagram story...
SERAZIO: Bud Light and Mulvaney became targets for a kind of transphobic boycott that happened. Most prominently, Kid Rock wound up shooting up a bunch of Bud Light with, like, an assault rifle in his backyard.
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KID ROCK: Grandpa is feeling a little frisky today. Let me say something to all of you and be as clear and concise as possible.
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KID ROCK: [Expletive] Bud Light and [expletive] Anheuser-Busch. Have a terrific day.
SERAZIO: The estimates on the loss in revenue to Bud Light - I mean, CNN had some reporting pegged at approaching $1 billion in terms of a sale slide, which I don't have the means to fact-check that, but what is clear is that in the aftermath of that, there was a real pullback from brands wanting to engage in political causes, issues of culture identity, issues of DEI, trans rights, etc. That's partly also, I think, what's kind of dictating the shift.
LUSE: Geez. Of course, all brands think about what consumers want because they want us to buy their stuff. What do consumers want from their brands right now?
SERAZIO: Cheaper stuff. It's very surreal and difficult to be living through an inflationary period. I mean, the U.S. hasn't experienced this since the late 1970s. I wasn't alive then. But consumers want relief. I think that refocuses your attention on something more practical and a little bit less symbolic than some of the brand politics of the late 2010s.
LUSE: Is political consciousness in brands a luxury good for consumers? Like, do they only want that when they have more money?
SERAZIO: Yes, I think that when the price of a product increases, folks are more attuned to that than necessarily how the product might symbolize their political identity.
LUSE: We're in this moment right now where many brands have clearly gotten away from engaging directly and signaling really anything about their politics. Is this kind of, like, a cycle in advertising that we're in? Like, are there previous eras where brands became way more political, and then much less so?
SERAZIO: Not really. To be honest, if you look at the long arc of advertising history, the Trump years were the anomaly. Like in other words, we're returning...
LUSE: To, like, our stasis.
SERAZIO: ...To our stasis. Hey, just buy our shoes, buy our soap. We don't want to, like, say anything about anything that's controversial or political. Like, that's been most of the story of advertising history.
LUSE: No, it's, like, you want as many possible customers as you can get.
SERAZIO: Exactly. The sense within the industry is just that it's better to be safe again. They are either not feeling the pressure that they felt in the late 2010s to take a political stance, or the reverse is true, which is that they're feeling pressure in the form of that kind of Bud Light boycott from consumers who actually want them to sort of revert from their positions on these cultural identity issues. And the other thing we haven't mentioned in all of this conversation but is relevant to some of this, is that there are brands that have staked themselves politically to an anti-woke identity. The Black Rifle Coffee Company, which...
LUSE: The what?
SERAZIO: It's called the Black Rifle Coffee Company. Their kind of whole brand motif is all around gun culture.
LUSE: So interesting.
SERAZIO: Yeah, that's an example. Chick-fil-A has been identified with its conservative Christian ownership. But, again, if you look at the arc of advertising history, mostly it has been one of brands wanting to stay out of politics, and the anomaly was last decade.
LUSE: That's so interesting. So what does it say that brands even attempted this kind of marketing? Like, what does this change, this shift in advertising say about that era?
SERAZIO: Well, I mean, historically the story of brands is an evolution from practicality to lifestyle identity, right? Like, a hundred years ago, advertising would be like, you should buy these paper towels because, like, they're going to be really good at mopping up whatever you spill. But brands, particularly in the late 20th century, evolved away from selling you what the product did, and it became much more about, by buying this product, I'm going to be a certain type of person. I'm going to be a certain kind of beautiful person or cool person or active person - right? - something like the Mac versus PC computer ads - right? - where it's like, if you're creative, you have a Mac. If you're a square that wears khakis, you have a PC.
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JOHN HODGMAN: (As PC) I have some very cool apps that are bundled with me.
JUSTIN LONG: (As Mac) Like, what have you got?
HODGMAN: (As PC) Calculator.
LONG: (As Mac) That's cool. Anything else?
HODGMAN: (As PC) Clock.
SERAZIO: So what you had happen is, again, in the last decade, suddenly brand identity and lifestyle became also a way to signal your political identity. This, like, politicized everything. That was a new thing. Your Patagonia vest signals that you're against the Trump tax cuts of 2017. Your Colin Kaepernick jersey signals that you are against the extrajudicial killing of Black men by police, right?
LUSE: You have also said that you think the rise of politics and ads is kind of related to Trump. Why is that?
SERAZIO: Because branding was so central to Trump's rise as a politician, as a media figure, Trump himself has long considered himself to be a kind of human brand. I think that brands somewhat naturally perhaps became the terrain in which consumers and companies would react to his presidency. The other thing to say in all of this is that brands are also just desperate to get our attention. Like, to put this in the context of the advertising industry itself, almost all the time, Americans want to avoid advertising. There are precisely three hours in a given year that Americans do not run away or try to click away or try to filter out ads, and that is during the Super Bowl. So one of the other things I think that came about in the 2010s was this was a way in which brands could be, quote, "relevant," that they could be, quote, "authentic." It's - the holy grail is authenticity. You cannot listen to someone - an advertising professional speak for more than 10 to 15 minutes before they're required to use the word authenticity.
And it's the case that, like, in the 2010s, I think, advertisers and brands realized that, oh, because Trump and our sort of political experience was so dominating news headlines 'cause it felt like things were shaken in a really profound way, that's where people's eyeballs are. That's where people's attention is. If we want to be relevant, we better have something to say about this thing that's roiling the public square. Advertising follows. It doesn't usually lead. This is how they could get our attention because it's so hard to get our attention otherwise.
LUSE: So we sort of understand where this came from and how brands were trying to engage their customers and stay relevant and meet the moment. But did this so-called woke advertising actually get people to buy stuff?
SERAZIO: There's a famous quote in the advertising industry. It's attributed to a department store owner in the late 1800s, John Wanamaker, and the quote goes like this. "Half of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half." And the question of does advertising work is a really thorny question. It's obviously the basis for an industry that, you know, is hundreds of billions of dollars in value. And trust me, if you got somebody from Madison Avenue in here, they would absolutely say that it's the case that it did work, or it can work, or it does work. But I think it's - in some cases it works, in some cases it doesn't. An example of what's held up as a successful ad would be the Nike Kaepernick ad.
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COLIN KAEPERNICK: (As self) Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
SERAZIO: Initially, you had lots of Kaepernick haters burning their jerseys and burning their Nikes in the front yard and filming that and putting it on YouTube. But then you had, you know, a stock bump, a sales rise. But on the flip side, you have one of the most disliked ads in brand history when, in 2017, Pepsi enlisted Kendall Jenner...
LUSE: (Laughter) Oh, yes.
SERAZIO: ...To take part in a sort of protest-type ad where Kendall Jenner led the way. And she ultimately made peace with the police officer at the very end of the ad by offering him an open can of Pepsi. And...
LUSE: I remember.
SERAZIO: ...This was something that was widely mocked and criticized across the internet. So that would be a case where brands stepped into politics, and the execution came off pretty ham-handed.
LUSE: As you say, advertising doesn't lead culture, it follows. But I imagine it also definitely reflects things. What does advertising reflect back to us?
SERAZIO: What advertising does, generally speaking, is reflects our values back to us. It does so in a very cautious way. It wants to, like, read the room, make sure it's not offending anybody. And by and large, you can look at advertising most of the time and see a kind of cultural consensus around what's happening in society, even at a time when society is incredibly polarized.
LUSE: Interesting. So what is advertising reflecting to us now in this moment specifically?
SERAZIO: I guess the way to reverse your question about, like, what does advertising say about politics right now would be to say, well, what are the issues that are kind of roiling our politics right now, and can we see any of those reflected back in ad land? I haven't seen any ads that have taken any position on the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. I haven't seen any ads that have had any statement on the war in Gaza. And by and large, I hear crickets. Culture is a fluid thing. It moves back and forth, and the absence of advertising on those subjects speaks volumes.
LUSE: It almost seems like if brands are silent, there's kind of no safe position for them to take publicly.
SERAZIO: Yeah, I would say that there's not really a safe position to put forward. Even if you aligned yourself with one side or the other, you might not satisfy everyone on one side or the other because there's such complicated fraught issues.
LUSE: So I wonder, is it accurate to say that brands being more political was a kind of experiment? And now we're in a more depoliticized era of ads, like, do you think we'll see this kind of experiment again?
SERAZIO: I think that's a perfect way of putting it. It was absolutely an experiment. Will we see the experiment replay itself? Trump is leading the polls right now, right? It's probably a coin flip. A decent chance that he gets reelected. I'm very curious about what happens then with regard to ads and brands because, on one hand, you could for sure see another swing of the pendulum - right? - where suddenly, you know, brands were interested in projecting themselves as an avatar of the anti-Trump resistance as they did in the late 2010s. That could absolutely be possible.
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LUSE: Michael, thank you so much.
SERAZIO: Thank you, Brittany. I appreciate it. It's been a wonderful conversation.
LUSE: Thanks again to Michael Serazio, professor of communication at Boston University.
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LUSE: This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
BARTON GIRDWOOD, BYLINE: Barton Girdwood.
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LIAM MCBAIN, BYLINE: Liam McBain.
COREY ANTONIO ROSE, BYLINE: Corey Antonio Rose.
LUSE: This episode was edited by...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
LUSE: Engineering support came from...
KWESI LEE, BYLINE: Kwesi Lee.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right, that's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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