Most big companies want to avoid politics or being seen as taking a side on any key issue. Some brands, however, have built their businesses on being partisan or at least appealing to people based on their political agendas.
It doesn't hurt brands like Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A when they take a political stand because people already know their agendas.
When Walt Disney (DIS) does it, the impact to its reputation can be severe because the public previously saw the company as a neutral party on political and cultural issues.
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"The lesson here is that when you divide you subtract," said Harris Poll Chief Executive John Gerzema. "When you divide audiences, you're ultimately going to be subtracting customers for your business."
Walt Disney ranked as the fifth most polarizing brand of 100 on this year's Axios Harris Poll 100 Reputation Score. The poll, which surveys more than 16,000 people, measured the gap between the assessments of Republican and Democratic respondents.
Image source: Walt Disney
Disney Is Stuck in an Impossible Place
Disney makes movies for broad family audiences. Its films have never featured much in the way of adult content and even its more grownup movies -- like Marvel and Star Wars films -- carry a PG-13 rating.
The company has portrayed gay characters and shown kisses between same-sex characters, but its romances, even between straight characters, are very mild and not explicitly shown on screen.
In a broad sense, Disney has made films and moves designed to reach the broadest possible audience. That has generally meant avoiding controversial topics, but the company has not sanitized its content so it does not reflect reality.
Admittedly, reality is a weird thing to address in a Marvel or Star Wars film, but it's fair to say that both of those universes include LGBTQ+ even if they're shown only very peripherally.
So while some extreme right-wing groups have taken issue with the existence of gay characters in Disney films, the company had largely been seen as apolitical.
That changed when former CEO Bob Chapek, at the behest of employees, took issue with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's so-called Don't Say Gay legislation.
Taking that position made the company a target of the right-wing presidential candidate and what he describes as a war on woke.
Disney Has Picked a Side
Unlike brands like Patagonia or Chick-fil-A, which already are identified with ideological or policy views, Disney "didn't have a track record for speaking out on this issue," came to the issue late, and flip-flopped, Gerzema said.
Now, Disney sits at No. 5 on the Axios Harris Poll 100 Reputation Score poll. You can see that many of the brands on the list are ones that have taken explicit political views.
- Trump Organization
- Fox Corp.
- Hobby Lobby
- FTX
- Walt Disney Co.
- Pfizer
- Facebook (Meta)
- TikTok
- Chick-fil-A
Disney's Reputational Quotient, or RQ score, was 70.9 out of a possible 100. That's down from 73.4 in 2022. The score represents measurements across multiple dimensions that touch on character, trust, and trajectory.
- Among Democrats, it jumped to 80.3 from 72.5. But it plunged 14 points with Republicans, to 61 from 75.
- The average RQ gap between Republicans and Democrats in this year's survey was 4.4. In Disney's case, it was 19.3. While Disney's reputation score has been declining since the 2017 survey, that trend had been bipartisan — until this year.
Disney declined to comment to Axios about the results of the poll.
Bob Iger, Disney's CEO, has tried to defuse the fight with DeSantis while also asserting his company's right to free speech. He spoke about the issue during his company's second-quarter-earnings call.
"Regarding Florida, I have got a few things I want to say about that. First of all, I think the case that we filed last month made our position and the facts very clear and that is really that this is about one thing and one thing only and that is retaliating against us for taking a position about pending legislation. And we believe that in us taking that position we are merely exercising our right to free speech," he said.
The CEO also made clear that his company has a lot of financial leverage.
"We have a huge opportunity to continue to invest in Florida. I noted that our plans are to invest $17 billion over the next 10 years, which is what the state should want us to do," he shared.
