“It’s a divided world that we live in,” said Raja Rajamannar, the chief marketing officer at Mastercard. “Can you afford to exclude half of your audience?”Other companies are avoiding politically engaged ads out of simple fatigue. “People have simply had enough — enough outrage, enough disdain, enough shock value to the point where making a statement feels a little tired.”And then there is the risk of offending Mr. Trump and how that could affect business. When Nike announced in 2018 that it had entered into a new marketing deal with the former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who had angered the administration by kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racism, Mr. Trump said on Twitter, “Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts.”

Source: New York Times January 20, 2020 07:52 UTC