Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Like our favorite celebrities, brands aren’t perfect.  Bad PR is a part of life because people aren’t perfect and the companies they run follow suit.  Recently New Balance became the first company to publicly back Donald Trump, a very divisive figure for reasons you would have to be sleeping under a rock to not know already.  

Priding themselves on being a brand that develops their products on American soil, New Balance saw Trump’s election as an opportunity for business growth and one that would bring more jobs to Americans.  However, that is their opinion and not some universal truth.

Politics is a tricky place for a brand to choose sides when there are so many issues that people take seriously.  Thousands of sneakerheads were outraged at New Balance’s political stance. So outraged that they denounced their love for the brand all over social media by literally posting pictures of them throwing the sneakers away and burning them.  Things really spiraled out of control when neo-nazis procclaimed the sneaker to be the official sneaker of white people.  Yes, that really happened.  

Obviously publicly backing a divisive president-elect has some serious downsides with the public, so what do we do as consumers after our favorite brands choose to do something against our personal values?...

New Balance is under (or on) fire — literally.

Following the election last week, the athletic footwear and apparel brand became one of the first international companies to congratulate President-elect Donald Trump, it appears mainly because of what his proposed policies could mean for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Matt LeBretton, the vice president of public affairs at New Balance tweeted, “The Obama admin turned a deaf ear to us & frankly w/ Pres-Elect Trump we feel things are going to move in the right direction.”

Days later, the white supremacist site The Daily Stormer, published an article calling New Balance the “official shoes of white people” and the “official brand of the Trump Revolution.”

In response, some people on social media are showing their disdain for the brand’s endorsement by defacing their New Balance sneakers on social media, or tossing them in the trash.