Armstrong & Getty Bringing You The Business!

Armstrong & Getty are bringing you the business. Why do these companies feel like they have to go woke? Is this what their customers want? 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was gonna call this, well, I couldn't decide Armstrong
and Getty business in focus, Nah.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Cutting music, business in focus.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Armstrong in Getty's business. No, that's even worse. The business
of America is Armstrong and Getty's business.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
About give you How about Armstrong and Getty giving you
the business?

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (00:22):
Do it?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Play it quick?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Business and focus sounds like a fifth grade film strip.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
So a couple of stories from the world to work
found very compelling and interesting. Number One, Vertiefly Farmers Insurance
Group told and it is a giant employer, thousands and
thousands of employees, twenty two thousand, I believe, told employees
last year that most of them would be remote workers,
and so they sold their cars, expanded their home office,

(00:53):
and moved their families near their grandchildren. Whatever. Then last
month Raoul Vargas, who recently took over as the new CEO,
said we're reversing that approach. You're required to be in
the office three days a week, and predictably to anybody
but him, his workforce went insane and said, wait a minute,
I've moved to Omaha that sort of thing. And so

(01:17):
that is an ongoing struggle with farmers, like so many
companies these days.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, that's three seems to be the magic number of
some sort, or there's a belief that two's too few
to do any good. But four is pushing it with
our employees or something. But three is I think what
they're doing around here. And we got a text from
somebody who said the same thing happened where they work,
and they were promised a year ago that they'd be
virtual forever and adjusted accordingly, And just like you were

(01:43):
explaining now, awhile.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
You have every man, woman and child in commercial real
estate touting studies and you know, any opinion piece that
says people really ought to be back in the workplace.
So a lot of messaging going on back and fad.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
I was in a strip mall area where was I yesterday? Someplace?
And I was just it was wild to look at
there's like one store that's still there and all these
empty buildings and grass growing up in the parking lot
because nobody's maintaining it, and uh, just wild. It used
to be thriving.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, nuts moving along is armed? What is it? Armstrong?
And getty give you the business that was really good?

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, So this is such an unintentionally funny article to
a lot of us. It's from the Wall Street Journal.
The headline is company's new cause dodging the culture wars.
Executives rethink if and when away in on potentially divisive issues,
fearing backlash from all sides, and developing crisis plans and
in case things go wrong, and they talk about In May,

(02:48):
clothing company The north Face released a video for Pride
Month featuring drag performer Paddy Gonia. The ad was similar
similar to one from last year. The reaction, though was
not within our calls for the boycott at the company
spread on social media. Quote The north Face wants to
be the next bud Light, etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Sir, I'm always amused by this sort of thing. So
Chris Rock makes a big deal out of his giant,
splashy Netflix comedy thing of Hey corporations, We don't care
what your politics are, Matt, What was that last six
months ago, nine months ago that happened. You've got all

(03:27):
these examples out there, You've got people screaming at the
top of their lungs on top radio or opinion pieces
about it, and then all of a sudden, there's a
move from corporations to get away from politics, wondering if
perhaps it doesn't mean how did you catch on so late?

Speaker 1 (03:43):
It's because everybody is so siloed, so bubbled. They don't
hear our voices in major corporate suites. All they hear
the voices of the media elite, the Eastern bubbled lefty
media elite. And they developed an attitude that, oh, progressive politics.
Everybody's into this, and we get credit for being super

(04:03):
cool and maybe increase our market share, and there's no
downside to it because nobody disagrees with this. I mean,
they didn't state it like that, but that's clearly what
they believed. Getting back to the article, CEO spent the
last few years adjusting to a world in which investors, customers,
and employees expect corporate leaders.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
To align themselves with social causes.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
No, we do, no, just voices you hear in mainstream
lefty media, including Chris Rock don't want that even a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Right.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
We all roll our eyes when we see whatever political
sign you've got in the window as we walked in whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, huge numbers of Americans do. And you know, frankly,
I don't want to walk into I don't know. Some
my favorite golf store and have a big sign that
says abortion is murder. I'm there to.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Buy golf clubs, all right, and I won't be.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Able to hit them any better than the old ones
that are sitting in my garage. But I'm going to
squander my money anyway.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
But keep politics out of it, all right.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Today, Oh that tendency to align themselves to social causes
today that has made companies targets in the US culture wars,
where one step can turn a social media storm into
a corporate crisis that cripples businesses and rex careers. Some
CEOs are rethinking how or whether to weigh in on
sensitive political or social matters with trans and other LGBT issues,

(05:28):
particularly in the spotlight.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
How are you so late to this party?

Speaker 1 (05:34):
I know, so late to the knowledge that this stuff
is extremely controversial and represents a minority viewpoint. I don't
mean the viewpoint of minorities. I mean very few people
think it. But because they have the campuses, they have
the media, they have entertainment, those who don't really mix

(05:57):
and mingle with normal America start to think that's the
only point of view.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
They're talking about.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Glitten paints for God's sake, where the CEO as senior
leaders at the company to review its processes for engaging
on polarizing topics.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
You're a paint company.

Speaker 5 (06:12):
The only polarization you should be talking about is do
we want to go with approachable gray or something a
little more blue tinged. Don't tell me about drag queens
freaking make paint that looks good on my walls.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Holy cow.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
They go into various companies that are are now bending
over backwards to try to figure out exactly how to
balance this stuff, and they you know, there's not the.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Systems, the team.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
They're wrong. They're wrong. They're wrong, they're wrong. There's nothing
to balance that. The sentence you had at the beginning
where companies believe their customers want socially active corporations, No
they don't, so there's nothing to balance.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Just stay out of it.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Well, and if you're not just twenty four year old
employees are insisting on it, tell them to be quiet
or work somewhere else because they're going to ruin your
freaking company.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Crazy that you think you need to be involved in
this at all. Hellululemon sell your pants and your shirts
and everything like that don't tell me a thing about trands,
or black lives, or abortion or anything else.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
So this parent company of Glitten Paints used an internal
scoring system to determine if and when it makes sense
for the company to comment on matters that may offend
some of its customers and employees or affect its brands.
Senior leaders, including representatives from the legal and human resources departments,
meet regularly to discuss the pros and cons of taking
a position. Sell pay you, morons, and again it feel

(07:36):
free to ignore your employees. And if they say we
need to take a stand against these fascist states that
are denying gender affirming care for children, tell them shut
up and go back to your desk.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Shut up and go back to your desk.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
We'll figure it out soon enough. And the other thing
is corporate America. And first of all, thank you finally
for listening to the Armstrong and Getty Show.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
The other thing you need.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
To understand is that the woke mob we're talking about
in the universities, the media, entertainment, they are on a
campaign to push things as far left as they conceivably can,
and where they were only five, six, seven years ago
is very different than what they're asking people to swallow.

(08:22):
Right now, it's gone from you can't fire somebody because
you find out they're gay, to experimental surgeries that dismember
children in the name of adolescent confusion over gender should
be permitted in all cases. That's a hell of a
journey they're asking us to take. So, yeah, hey, target,

(08:43):
we're not going to fire anybody for being gay. Talking
to the target of six years ago, nobody is. But no,
we're not gonna We're not gonna say yay for mutilating
children either, And you ought to quit pitching it.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
End of rant.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh you know what, I have one more bit of
that rant. I thought it was so interesting. A couple
of sources, New York Posts to end, I think it
was Wall Street General are reporting on why some of
these companies are feeling so much pressure to make left
these statements. And I've got to throw that in in fairness.
Some of the giant investment firms, Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street,

(09:21):
they're managing the retirement funds of giant states like California
and New York in particular, and are being told by
these state retirement funds, you can handle our trillions of
dollars and you can get those commissions and all the
benefits of that, but you've got to push the woke stuff.
And so the black rocks of the world are saying okay,

(09:45):
and so they're forcing companies, are pressuring companies to take
stands on social issues because they're giant benefactors in the
state retirement systems are telling them to.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Well, I'm glad you threw that in because that explains
the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
It explains some of it.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
I couldn't figure out where they were doing well a
lot of it, though, I don't want to attribute all
of it to that, because not true. In all cases,
you do have obnoxious activists, you have obnoxious employees. You
have the media. How many how many media outlets didn't
repeat don't say gay, which is so incredibly dishonest. All

(10:22):
of them did, And again, the corporate CEOs they see that,
they hear that, and they think, oh, everybody agrees on this.
So anyway, it's a stew of dishonesty and and poisonous activism.