Breitbart News’ #DumpKelloggs petition initiative has garnered a whopping 250,000 signatures within 48 hours of Kellogg’s decision to pull its advertising in an attack on the “values” of Breitbart and its 45 million monthly readers.
“We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren’t aligned with our values as a company,” said Kellogg’s Kris Charles, who failed to mention exactly how Breitbart failed to “aligned” with Kellogg’s values. “We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com. We are working to remove ads from that site.”
Kellogg’s decision was spurred by efforts from left-wing pressure groups, who unleashed a social media campaign to pull companies away from advertising on Breitbart by accusing the news network of racism and antisemitism.
“Breitbart News is the largest platform for pro-family content anywhere on the Internet,” said Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow. “We are fearless advocates for traditional American values, perhaps most important among them is freedom of speech, or our motto ‘more voices, not less.’ For Kellogg’s, an American brand, to blacklist Breitbart News in order to placate left-wing totalitarians is a disgraceful act of cowardice.”
The #DumpKelloggs petition quickly gained steam online, generating more 75,000 signatures in the first few hours and becoming the #1 trending topic on Twitter.
Following Kellogg’s announcement on Tuesday, a string of disturbing reports began to surface about the Michigan-based company’s alleged racism toward factory workers and its profiting from the use of child labor.
Indeed, business and media experts have taken notice and have criticized Kellogg’s decision to publicize pulling ads off Breitbart.
Yahoo! Finance senior writer Rick Newman said Wednesday that Kellogg’s made a mistake choosing to publicly appease left-wing activists at the expense of insulting Breitbart’s millions of “devoted” readers.
“Breitbart has a devoted and not small audience, and it’s not hard to imagine Breitbart supporters saying, ‘Well, we’re going to boycott Kellogg,’” Newman said. “Even if that doesn’t hurt their business that much, that’s the last thing any company wants, is to get in the middle of political stuff going on in the country right now. You have to think: there must have been a quieter way they could have done this.”
What’s more, Kellogg’s clash with Breitbart could be dragging down the value of its stock, The New York Post’s Claire Atkinson reports.
“Kellogg’s stock has fallen 3.6 percent in the last two days, in part because of the Breitbart brouhaha,” Atkinson writes.
There are parallels between Kellogg’s attack on Breitbart burdening its bottom line and the Target boycott this summer that vaporized billions in value.
The retail giant’s decision in April to weigh in on the transgender bathroom issue provoked a massive boycott that gained over 1.2 million signers in less than a week. The resulting drop in revenue amounted to a $10 billion loss of overall Target shareholder value.
Whether or not Kellogg’s (NYSE: K) is set to suffer the same fate remains to be seen.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.