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This is a PR strategy from Patagonia. And it’s one that will play perfectly to their customer base. There are a million businesses they could target as bad fo

This is a PR strategy from Patagonia. And it’s one that will play perfectly to their customer base. There are a million businesses they could target as bad for the environment. Like, I don’t know, oil companies. Oil companies whose product they use to make their fleece. Instead they go after a company that is moving to carbon neutrality, why? Because they don’t want to pay for advertising and would rather get free PR from the media, who also hates Facebook.

mikeryan 5y ago
If this was a one off event I could see your point of view but Patagonia has a long history of putting their money where there mouth is including donating 1% of all revenues and pretty much alienating about half of their addressable market with stunts like putting “Vote the assholes out” in their tags and suing the federal government to prevent a scale back on designations of federal monuments. Corporate activism frequently does seem to be a bit about PR but Patagonia is one of the best examples we have of it in practice.
- ISL 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure "vote the assholes out" is a strategy most of us can get behind. We might disagree about who they are, exactly, but voting for good governance is a widely-shared aspiration.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ISL 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that by targeting recycled materials for many decades, Patagonia has been doing its best to separate itself from petrochemicals. I have a fleece that was given to me in the late 90s that was made from recycled plastic. Still works great. It is a PR strategy from Patagonia, but not necessarily for sales. For as long as Chouinard is steering the ship, Patagonia's goals are much broader than financial success.
neaanopri 5y ago
To be fair I would rather have Oil go into Patagonia shirts, than be burned and release CO2 into the atmosphere
unsui 5y ago
This is actually a much better reason for boycotting than taking on some quixotic initiative based solely on principle (however honorable that may be): the market has decided that FB is now the poster child for bad business behavior. That is, it makes financial sense for (some) companies to disengage from the FB brand. For a company whose business models rely on leveraging social network dynamics to sell more ads, it seems welcomingly ironic that FB should be labeled the social pariah, if even for a short moment in time. (let's hope it sticks)
throwaway894345 5y ago
¿Por que no los dos? Fuck fossil fuel AND social media companies. They are toxic for different reasons, and social media companies deliberately fuel polarization which prevents us from making progress on climate or anything else.
- oarabbus_ 5y ago
  So posts the user on a social media site using their smart device or computer, which required incredible amounts fossil fuels to produce, manufacture, and distribute, while using electricity which globally is also predominantly generated via fossil fuels.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Not only that, but I have the audacity to eat food that is grown and transported with machinery powered by fossil fuels, what a hypocrite I am! Of course, my consumer choices are absolutely negligible and the most significant thing I can do by far is vote and advocate for the climate. Fussing over my consumer choices is penny-wise and pound foolish, and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters bank on convincing consumers that if they just buy the stuff with the faux burlap packaging the climate will be just fine. Similarly, whether I use Twitter/etc or not won’t move the needle on the harm they do to our democracy. Systemic problems like these aren’t significantly altered by individual choices to partake or abstain—political intervention is required. And of course, comparing HN to Twitter and Facebook is just absurd.
    - oarabbus_ 5y ago
      > Fussing over my consumer choices is penny-wise and pound foolish, and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters bank on convincing consumers And yet, aggregating over the populace, this mindset that "my choices are negligible (it's the non-climate-change-voting populace's consumption that's the problem), and it's penny-wise and pound foolish to focus on my choices" is actually penny-foolish and pound foolish. You (and I) are in fact yet another consumer they've convinced that our choices are "negligible".

mikeryan 5y ago

If this was a one off event I could see your point of view but Patagonia has a long history of putting their money where there mouth is including donating 1% of all revenues and pretty much alienating about half of their addressable market with stunts like putting “Vote the assholes out” in their tags and suing the federal government to prevent a scale back on designations of federal monuments. Corporate activism frequently does seem to be a bit about PR but Patagonia is one of the best examples we have of it in practice.

ISL 5y ago
I'm pretty sure "vote the assholes out" is a strategy most of us can get behind. We might disagree about who they are, exactly, but voting for good governance is a widely-shared aspiration.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ISL 5y ago

I'm pretty sure that by targeting recycled materials for many decades, Patagonia has been doing its best to separate itself from petrochemicals. I have a fleece that was given to me in the late 90s that was made from recycled plastic. Still works great. It is a PR strategy from Patagonia, but not necessarily for sales. For as long as Chouinard is steering the ship, Patagonia's goals are much broader than financial success.

neaanopri 5y ago

To be fair I would rather have Oil go into Patagonia shirts, than be burned and release CO2 into the atmosphere

unsui 5y ago

This is actually a much better reason for boycotting than taking on some quixotic initiative based solely on principle (however honorable that may be): the market has decided that FB is now the poster child for bad business behavior. That is, it makes financial sense for (some) companies to disengage from the FB brand. For a company whose business models rely on leveraging social network dynamics to sell more ads, it seems welcomingly ironic that FB should be labeled the social pariah, if even for a short moment in time. (let's hope it sticks)

throwaway894345 5y ago

¿Por que no los dos? Fuck fossil fuel AND social media companies. They are toxic for different reasons, and social media companies deliberately fuel polarization which prevents us from making progress on climate or anything else.

oarabbus_ 5y ago
So posts the user on a social media site using their smart device or computer, which required incredible amounts fossil fuels to produce, manufacture, and distribute, while using electricity which globally is also predominantly generated via fossil fuels.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Not only that, but I have the audacity to eat food that is grown and transported with machinery powered by fossil fuels, what a hypocrite I am! Of course, my consumer choices are absolutely negligible and the most significant thing I can do by far is vote and advocate for the climate. Fussing over my consumer choices is penny-wise and pound foolish, and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters bank on convincing consumers that if they just buy the stuff with the faux burlap packaging the climate will be just fine. Similarly, whether I use Twitter/etc or not won’t move the needle on the harm they do to our democracy. Systemic problems like these aren’t significantly altered by individual choices to partake or abstain—political intervention is required. And of course, comparing HN to Twitter and Facebook is just absurd.
  - oarabbus_ 5y ago
    > Fussing over my consumer choices is penny-wise and pound foolish, and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters bank on convincing consumers And yet, aggregating over the populace, this mindset that "my choices are negligible (it's the non-climate-change-voting populace's consumption that's the problem), and it's penny-wise and pound foolish to focus on my choices" is actually penny-foolish and pound foolish. You (and I) are in fact yet another consumer they've convinced that our choices are "negligible".