Australian businesses need to think carefully about voting Yes or No
Many businesses are shouting loud and clear about which way they’re voting in the upcoming postal plebiscite. Hotwire PR’s Mylan Vu explains why it’s important to fully realise the ramifications before swinging Yes or No.
With same sex marriage at the top of our political and social agendas in these last few weeks, many brands are tossing up the option of picking a side and speaking up, or playing it safe and staying quiet. Leaders like Qantas’ Alan Joyce are urging other businesses to support the Yes vote, while household names like Margaret Court are championing the No vote.
If you’re a Yes voter, you may be looking at these headlines and assuming Qantas sales just went up. It’s this assumption that I’d like to dig into.
Know your audience and the impact of your words
Too controversial for most Australian and local businesses to take a stand on. Expect lots of multi-national companies to do their goody feel good ads.
Companies are certainly not blind to the consequences of taking a pubic stance which is precisely why they so rarely engage publicly. It takes an issue of such importance; an issue that directly highlights discrimination against their customers, clients and staff to motivate companies to act. I don’t think very many people expected Qantas shares to jump through the roof but good on our glorious national carrier for risking public back-lash from those who disagree with their approach to show their fabulous rainbow colours.
And in breaking news … Typo Of The Day goes to …
… Damian for “taking a pubic stance”.
If more companies took a pubic stance I think we’d all be richer for it.
Just returned from business trip to Asia and a heading in the times ” is there anything going on in Australia apart from gay marriage” !!!
How does a business vote in the plebiscite?
Not all brands will have a choice of whether or not to take a position. If a competitor –
or even a brand in a similar product category – is participating in a public conversation, then attention will quickly turn to you. Look at how quickly Virgin Australia and other airlines had to speak up once Margaret Court announced her boycott of QANTAS.
In ten or twenty years from now when same-sex marriage is as legal as mixed race-marriage or the marriage of someone who has been divorced, we will all look back at the businesses who supported a no vote and think “what the hell was wrong with this company?”
Completely agree. It’s not a case of bumping the share price, or increasing dividend potential, but on being on the right side of history.
Imaging if back in the day Qantas had been on the ‘no’ side of women and Aboriginals getting the vote? SSM is in the same league.
No, SSM is not in the same league. By supporting “yes” you are stating it is okay for a child to be intentionally raised without a mother or a father. That is not the ideal child-raising environment, as demonstrated by the last thousand years of history. So why would a business intentionally want to deprive a child of having both a mother and a father?
It is a pity children cannot vote in this matter, because I wonder how they would react to being deprived of the balanced, natural upbringing only a mother and father can provide??
Matthew – surely you’re trolling here. Should we talk about all the single parents out there? What about the drug addicts who have children simply to benefit further from welfare.
As someone who’s been working in the Foster Care system for the last few years and has seen first hand the incredible damage heterosexual parents can do to their children, I find your argument sickening. If people really cared about the Children, they’d spend a lot more time and effort helping those who are truly disadvantaged and suffering daily abuses instead of trying to prevent loving couples from procreating.
Australian businesses should shut-up. More to the point, STFU.
They represent nobody. They are nothing more than an 8-digit code in the ASIC register, and related paperwork. Their management and staff represent nobody but themselves, because a corporate entity is not a person.
It has no vote, nor should it. The public are more than angry at self indulgent CEOs onanistically proclaiming their personal views, and misrepresenting them as the “opinion” of a company or its staff.