17549: On The Political Fallout Of Bad-Boy Behavior, Blatant Bias, And Bashing Bud Light.

 

At the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, President Donald J. Trump delivered a disturbing monologue that included comparing CNN News Anchor Kaitlan Collins to transgender actor and influencer Dylan Mulvaney, making repeated references to the latter’s infamous Bud Light promotion.

Trump later shared the social media post depicted above, extending the crass comedy routine.

Now, Trump and his sycophantic supporters continue to position the Commander-in-Chief as a famously successful businessman. Yet would any executive—even in a White advertising agency—be allowed to present such words, visuals, and actions without consequence today? Behavior like this typically results in immediate reprimand, rejection, and termination.

Sorry, Trump is a thoroughly outdated businessman, representing cartoonish characteristics of the Mad Men era.

POTUS proudly declared, “We ended DEI in America!” Despite the vehement denials, it appears the man also resurrected, reinvigorated, and reinvented racism.

What’s more, will Trump’s latest antics reignite the political protesting, bashing, and boycotting for Bud Light?

The entire spectacle catapults Trump to probably repeat his White Man Of The Year honor.

17544: On Banning Advertising For Junk Food And Junk Perspectives.

 

MediaPost reported the 4As, ANA, and AAF sent a letter to lawmakers expressing concerns over a proposed bill that would ban advertising junk food to kids under 13, citing First Amendment rights as part of the opposing argument.

 

When industry revenue is at risk, the trade organizations prop up First Amendment rights.

 

Yet when DEIBA+ and Civil Rights come up, there is only political, patronizing, performative propaganda. Or crickets.

 

Ad Groups Raise Concerns Over Bill Banning Junk Food Ads To Children

 

By Wendy Davis

A bill that would ban junk food advertising to children under 13 raises “significant” First Amendment concerns, ad industry groups said in a letter sent to lawmakers Tuesday.

The Childhood Diabetes Reduction Act of 2026, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), includes provisions that would prohibit companies from marketing or advertising junk food “in a manner that reasonably appears to be directed at children.”

The measure “would regulate truthful, non-misleading advertising concerning products that may lawfully be sold in commerce,” the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and American Advertising Federation say in a letter sent to Sanders and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana).

The groups add that the bill “may have the practical effect of discouraging lawful advertising for ordinary food and beverage products, including, for example, restaurant advertising and advertising for products lawfully sold in commerce, even where the intended audience is not primarily children.”

The bill provides that ads will be considered child-directed if they use “themes or promotional strategies that appeal to children” — such as “fun or fantasy” themes, cartoon characters, social media influencers, free toys, interactive games or apps.

The ad groups write that those factors “are inherently subjective, making it difficult for regulated entities to determine in advance what advertising conduct is prohibited.”

The organizations add that many of those factors “are commonly used in mainstream advertising regardless of the intended audience.”

The bill also provides that ads are child-directed if placed in media where children make up at least 30% of the audience.

The ad groups say that threshold is low enough to “encompass a substantial portion of mainstream media.”

“While well-intentioned, this bill misses the mark by imposing broad restrictions on protected commercial speech that may extend well beyond advertising directed at children, while relying on vague standards that create substantial uncertainty regarding the scope of the prohibition,” the organizations write.

The bill would also require warning labels on junk food.

Some advocacy groups, including the nonprofit National Center for Health Research, support the bill. That organization said this week that the measure “would greatly improve children’s health by banning ads for junk food that are aimed at children.”

17539: WPP CPO WTF.

More About Advertising reported on impending layoffs at WPP, spotlighting the new WPP Media Chief People Officer, who will likely be among key players executing the latest RIF.

 

The content closed by asking: Is there a People job in [Adland] that doesn’t really mean less people?

 

That’s a good question, prompting a Google search to define the C-suite function. According to M&A Executive Search, CPO responsibilities include:

 

• Shaping organizational culture and employee experience

 

• Developing DE&I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) programs

 

• Creating leadership development initiatives

 

• Driving employee engagement strategies

 

• Aligning the workforce with the company vision and values

 

• Building talent acquisition competitive advantages

 

• Fostering a sense of purpose and belonging

 

Okay, except no way can a new CPO shape organizational culture and employee experience at a global flaming dumpster that is burning out of control.

 

DEIBA+ programs have already been abandoned.

 

Leadership development cannot commence until after dealing with honcho redundancies, resignations, and restructurings.

 

Employee engagement strategies likely involve mandated rah-rah events.

 

Expressing the company vision and values won’t happen before WPP CEO Cindy Rose hatches and articulates the grand scheme. For now, it’s chirping crickets.

 

Talent acquisition competitive advantages are trumped by talent termination.

 

Sense of purpose and belonging? Nonsense of purpose and belonging would be a more appropriate term.

 

In short, given WPP’s current death-spiraling direction, the CPO role could be handled via AI—or eliminated entirely.

 

WPP sets sail for another round of job cuts

 

By Stephen Foster

 

WPP is reportedly embarking on another round of job cuts and newly-hired chief people officer at WPP Media Darren Minshall looks as though he’s been hired to lead the charge. Or maybe retreat. WPP Media employs about 40,000 people.

 

Like all such execs Minshall [above], who’s worked at numerous companies including, back in the day, Havas and MullenLowe, says the right things including “AI isn’t the hard part. Leading people through it is” and “AI should improve work, not blindly replace it” which may reassure some WPP Media folk although the embattled holding company, first under Mark Read and now under Cindy Rose, has made no secret that it sees AI as the secret sauce to put it back on the road to growth.

 

So will Minshall be the grim reaper, on the lines of George Clooney in the movie Up in the Air, where he plays corporate downsizer Ryan Bingham or someone to bring a little balance to the seemingly AI-obsessed holding company?

 

WPP is now divided into creative, media, production and commerce and most people expect its creative agencies to bear the brunt of tech-driven changes. When JWT, Y&R and Wunderman were lumped together with VML it was said to be the biggest creative agency in the world with about 30,000 people. WPP also has Ogilvy of course, which seems to be staying above the fray.

 

But the old GroupM media operation comprising EssenceMediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker was pretty substantial and numerous too and, although its fortunes have recovered to a degree, it has still to return to winning ways for the world’s really big media accounts, most of which are at Publicis with some others at Omnicom.

 

Is there a People job in adland that doesn’t really mean less people?

17535: DIY Multicultural Marketing From The Home Depot…?

ModernRetail at Digiday reported The Home Depot recognizes Latinos comprise a major revenue-generating opportunity, prompting World Cup promotional activities to reach the audience—because Latinos love soccer.

 

The Home Depot evicted BBDO as its White advertising agency earlier this year, moving marketing duties to in-house resources.

 

Plus, the retailer is among corporations that bowed to political pressures, quietly abandoning DEIBA+ dedication in 2025.

 

Is The Home Depot tapping internal or external experts to verify Latino-targeted messages are relevant, authentic, and culturally competent?

 

Are the multicultural initiatives receiving fair marketing budgets—or crumbs?

 

Are in-house resources such as Orange Apron Media and Studio Orange predominately White?

 

Don’t expect official statements—delivered in English or Spanish—anytime soon.

 

Hispanic shoppers and pro customers are key to The Home Depot’s World Cup retail media strategy

 

By Mitchell Parton

 

While The Home Depot is not a sports equipment or sports apparel retailer, its consumer base has given it ample reason to develop a comprehensive retail media strategy around the World Cup.

 

Customers often come to The Home Depot and other home improvement retailers to solve a problem or take on a project — especially working professionals like remodelers, painters, electricians, plumbers and other contractors.

Taryn Dominie, senior director and head of industry for Orange Apron Media — The Home Depot’s retail media network — said the diversity of the growing soccer fan base mirrors that of its customer base, especially among its pro customers. “A good majority of our pro customers are multicultural, and [The World Cup] just gives us a way to really connect in a deeper, more meaningful way with those pro customers,” she said.

 

Hispanics make up around 30% of the construction workforce in the U.S, and U.S. Hispanic consumers surveyed by Nielsen in 2024 or 2025 were 87% more likely to say they had watched a World Cup qualifier match in the past 12 months, according to a 2025 Nielsen report. Hispanic individuals are also 39% more likely than the total population to be avid Major League Soccer fans, Nielsen found.

 

Molly Battin, svp and CMO of The Home Depot, told the Hispanic Marketing Council last month that the company expects “multicultural” customers — led by Latinos — to make up more than 40% of the home improvement category by 2040. “We see the Hispanic market and the Latino community as a huge growth opportunity for The Home Depot,” she said.

 

For Orange Apron, sports marketing in general has also been an opportunity to drive deeper partnerships with supplier partners through big cultural moments. The company has done College Game Day partnerships over the years as well as deals with MLS, the U.S. men’s national soccer team, March Madness and NCAA, Dominie said. “We’re talking about partnerships that extend beyond our traditional media, whether it be digital or linear, to real, grassroots fan engagement opportunities.”

 

Orange Apron’s involvement in the World Cup has included in-person events and in-store activations, primarily featuring the paint brand Behr and the power tools manufacturer Makita. Centering its activations around just a couple of brands has allowed Orange Apron to co-create more interactive and tailored experiences, Dominie said.

 

The Home Depot has hosted interactive houses called “Beckham’s Backyard” at official FIFA Fan Festivals that featured Behr and Makita, allowing them to have a presence at official FIFA events in cities such as Atlanta without being official FIFA sponsors. The activations are named after former soccer player and club owner David Beckham, who also has appeared in national commercials and digital content for The Home Depot during the World Cup.

 

The activations included a Behr-sponsored digital target-practice game where fans kicked soccer balls, as well as a Makita-hosted station where guests could decorate paper fans, according to Sports Business Journal.

 

The retailer also collaborated with soccer media network Men In Blazers on a bus that doubles as a studio for Men In Blazers. It has been traveling to World Cup host cities, with signage featuring Behr and Makita. In stores, The Home Depot offered a custom FIFA scarf to customers who bought certain Makita power tools. Outside of the advertising business, on the enterprise level, The Home Depot was doing in-store integrations around the World Cup with sweepstakes components and ticket giveaway opportunities.

 

“We really went into this knowing that we wanted an integrated, fully omnichannel experience that we were creating for our customers and in partnership with our brands,” Dominie said.

 

The Home Depot is also having a bus going around to different cities in the U.S. for watch parties where fans and pro customers can participate in events such as T-shirt giveaways and cornhole tournaments, also presented by Behr and Makita. “We want it to be more fun, because it’s a watch party, essentially, but still an opportunity for Behr to engage their top pros, engage the traditional DIY fan base, and talk about what makes Behr and Makita special and relevant — and do it in kind of a fun way, with giveaways and some engaging activities during those fan fests.”

 

Dominie said The Home Depot has not yet measured the success of the World Cup partnerships, as it is still ongoing, but plans to look at brand lift and purchase intent. She added, however, that the company has found co-branded sports sponsorship programs can increase purchase intent by as much as 40%.

 

“It’s truly a partnership where we align on common goals, and we co-create opportunities to create value for our customers and [clients’] customers, and create meaningful moments that are unique to what only we can do together,” Dominie said. “It goes beyond sponsorship, and it’s about partnership.”

 

Andrew Lipsman, a retail media industry analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce, said that because advertising has moved toward digital performance media, it can be easy to forget that good advertising works through cultural relevance and high-quality content reaching wide audiences — such as through experiential marketing and national TV advertising.

 

“When you can reach the right audiences … and show that there is that alignment around common events or common cultural moments, it creates brand affinity,” Lipsman said. “That brand affinity doesn’t have to translate into a sale at the store at that moment; it just makes you slightly more inclined to visit that store and slightly more inclined to purchase a brand over time.”

 

Ace Hardware has also found that a high share of its customers are interested in sports such as soccer and baseball, according to Tyler Lusebrink, head of brand partnerships at RedVest Media, Ace Hardware’s retail media division that launched last year.

 

“Our focus generally has been: How can we partner with our brand partners to really take advantage of capturing some of that engagement from customers during this big cultural moment?” Lusebrink said. Brands wanting to take advantage of the World Cup are executing full-funnel campaigns with “a heavy lean into off-site programmatic, broad awareness-type tactics that can engage with customers throughout their journey,” he added.

 

These aren’t necessarily campaigns with creative themed around the World Cup — Ace Hardware is not an official sponsor — but they may amplify national messaging that brands are already pushing to reach customers who may be watching the World Cup and related content. ACE Hardware has a media partnership with Epsilon to deploy assets across websites across the web.

 

“We see the World Cup in cultural moments like this as an opportunity for brands to engage with the customer directly in a high-intent mindset,” Lusebrink said. “They’re online, they’re doing research, they’re looking at game recaps and highlights, and brands know that they can get in front of consumers and engage with them to drive them into their brand.”

17532: On Exclusivity, The Omnicom Inclusion Breakfast, And Less.

 

Reflecting Adland, Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity displayed declining DEIBA+ dedication.

 

The Omnicom Inclusion Breakfast was an exclusive affair with registration-only admission. Social media posts feature performative propaganda starring equality advocates—a literal minority group—spouting clichéd cultural commentary.

 

The DEIBA+ conversation has not evolved at all, pushing political and professional platforms that have proven ineffective.

 

PRovoke Media Editorial Director Maja Pawinska Sims provided the following perspective:

 

The conversations that became quieter

Sometimes the biggest story at Cannes is what nobody is talking about. Only a few years ago, DEI and sustainability were impossible to avoid. This year, both were noticeably less prominent across the official programme and the wider festival.

That doesn’t mean those issues have disappeared, nor that organisations have stopped caring about them. But the centre of gravity has undoubtedly shifted, which made spaces such as Propeller’s Empower Lounge feel all the more valuable. Away from some of the louder conversations around AI and commercial transformation, it continued to provide a platform for thoughtful discussions about inclusion, leadership, wellbeing and the broader purpose of communications.

It was also encouraging to see The Female Quotient expand onto the beachfront for the first time, although many delegates lamented the disappearance of Inkwell Beach, and of course the immensely popular IPG Women’s Breakfast/Diversity Breakfast, is no more after the Omnicom acquisition. 

 

If DEIBA+ were an awards category, Cannes Lions could not legitimately identify a single winner, as any submitted work would constitute a scam entry.

17516: On Trials & Tribulations Troubling Black Publishers.

 

Adweek published content spotlighting Black publishers who stayed in the black when White brands pulled back performative DEIBA+ commitments.

 

The authors even connected matters to Juneteenth, noting “how the Black-owned media community has continued to be conditioned by a long-standing lack of support from advertisers.”

 

Call it being conditioned for crumbs—and systemic racism.

 

Black Publishers Knew the Ad Commitments Wouldn’t Hold. So What?

 

The ones who stopped waiting on promised ad dollars and built revenue they could control are the ones still standing

 

By Rhonesha Byng & DéVon Johnson

 

Since brands began to pull back their commitment to diversity ads in 2023, publishers throughout the BOMESI network have not been surprised. Many have rebuilt their business models with the knowledge that these ad dollars allocated post-2020 were not going to be there.

 

The lessons we learned over the last six years while operating BOMESI, which launched around Juneteenth in 2020, are very real. 

 

The date commemorates when an enslaved population in Texas learned that they were free, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. 

 

This delayed revelation indicates how the Black-owned media community has continued to be conditioned by a long-standing lack of support from advertisers.

 

Today, BOMESI has connected more than 300 Black-owned publishers with over 2,500 diverse-owned publishers to create a larger network of publishers reaching over 90 million households on a monthly basis. Currently, Black-owned media receives less than 2% of the total U.S. advertising spend, according to Nielsen; yet Black Americans represent approximately 15% of the population and consume more than 81 hours of media per week, 31.8% more than the general population.

 

Publishers made an expensive choice: trade advertising as the backbone of the business for subscriptions, events, licensing, and branded work on their own terms. Audience trust became the asset that mattered. Some turned down ad revenue outright because the strings attached would have meant covering their communities differently than they wanted to.

 

Here’s how two Black-owned publishers successfully adjusted, when advertisers stopped their commitments.

 

Black Girl Nerds expanded its product portfolio and partnerships

 

Black Girl Nerds sits at the intersection of geek culture and Black feminism, built for an audience that wanted both taken seriously. Broadnax didn’t wait for ad budgets to come back. Founder and CEO Jamie Broadnax built a Substack newsletter, launched a subscription book club through Bindery, and joined the Yahoo Creators program. The shift cost time, nothing more. It grew her Substack readership, brought brands back into her inbox, and gave the business steadier income through Yahoo Creators.

 

Snackable Media made an acquisition to better monetize its audience

 

Snackable Media started as a multicultural ad network, helping smaller, minority-owned publishers compete for big RFPs through bigger players’ programmatic reach. In April 2025, it acquired adtech company AdGrid, picking up its own wrapper, an SSP, rich media tools, and a new unit, Content Zebra, that helps publishers grow traffic and monetize it at once. Founder Justin Barton’s bet: brand attention has faded since 2020, so revenue now has to come from the audience itself—one he calls culturally relevant, high-spending, and worth unlocking through partnership, not a single ad deal.

 

The case for building audiences with brands can be tracked. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study of 5,000 Black adults, 24% of respondents say they rely on Black-Owned media on a daily basis and 40% do so on a regular basis. Meanwhile, 63% of Black adults in this survey believe media coverage of Black people tends to be negative when compared to other minority groups. Additionally, 57% of respondents say they don’t get the full spectrum of news about Black communities.

 

Because brands are using the “general market” to reach their audience, they are essentially paying for something the audience has already decided is not relevant to them; therefore, brands are at a disadvantage when it comes to advertising to this group through general market channels. 

 

The DEI retreat makes the argument all even more clear. Since 2020, equitable advertising expenditures have served as a means of expressing values through inclusion as a separate line item for brands that include or exclude depending on optics. A Government Accountability Office report revealed that over the last 10 years, federal acquisitions of advertising accounted for $14.9 billion in total spent, but just 14% of that amount (which includes all businesses owned by minorities, women, and disadvantaged individuals) actually reached those businesses that the categorization was intended to serve.

 

Media owned by people of color was included in the 14% total, but not at the top. Publishers who were aware of that math before it was a “talking point” are the type of businesses to work with regardless of where the DEI falls on the public policy agenda.

17512: On Juneteenth In Adland 2026.

In Adland 2026, Juneteenth has been impacted by restructurings, redundancies, and RIFs—like White holding companies and White advertising agencies throughout the global industry.

 

The anti-DEIBA+ vibe in Adland means Juneteenth further loses its performative priority, plummeting far below organizational rejiggering, shareholder appeasing, and AI capabilities overhyping.

 

Juneteenth is seemingly deemed redundant to celebratory events such as Black History Month and MLK Day—both of which are also ignored and/or viewed with indifference.

 

In recent years, White holding companies and White advertising agencies have quietly diminished ERGs, downsized DEIBA+ teams, and dismissed Chief Diversity Officers. So, delegating diversity duties for Juneteenth is disregarded.

 

Will Adland ever experience freedom from systemic racism?

17500: On Black-Owned Brands At Target.

 

Digiday published a lengthy report on Black-owned brands feeling alienated—and abandoned—by Target.

 

The retailer’s decision to pull back inclusive initiatives triggered a DEIBA+ domino effect with collateral damage to cultures, communities, and cash registers.

 

Target has alienated Black-owned brands, founders say, as some startups vanish from its shelves

 

By Mitchell Parton

 

This story was first published on Digiday sibling Modern Retail.

 

In 2022, April Showers finally got her big retail break as her brand, Afro Unicorn, entered Target and Walmart.

 

Afro Unicorn is a licensed-character brand designed for women of color that sells hair-care products, books, apparel and more. For Showers, as a Black entrepreneur aiming to normalize Black beauty, getting into mainstream retail was a critical milestone.

 

“It wasn’t to help normalize it for us,” Showers said. “It was there to normalize it for everyone else, so that when a little white girl walks into the room and sees a Black girl, she doesn’t look at her any differently.”

 

Nearly four years later, however, Showers’ products are no longer found on Target’s shelves after the company pulled back from some diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Showers told Modern Retail that, as a result of Target’s decision, she decided to stop advertising Afro Unicorn’s presence at the retailer, adding that the brand’s sales at Target fell below the company’s standards and that its products were cleared from its shelves by the end of 2025.

 

Some Afro Unicorn plushes and a book are still available on Target’s website, but not in stores — speaking to how long it can take for a brand’s inventory to be cleared from warehouses. The brand is still available at Walmart and CVS Pharmacy.

 

This isn’t the way Showers wanted things to go. She said she initially pushed her community to do a “buyout” — as in buying all the Black brands at Target until they sold out — but they were resistant to it. She said her followers, Black or not, did not want to shop at Target as they felt like the company didn’t acknowledge it had made a mistake in how it pulled back from DEI programs.

 

“I never want to feel like I’m hurting my community or anyone around, so if you tell me we’re boycotting [Target], then we’re boycotting it; one band, one sound,” Showers said. “I did not like how Target never came out with a statement and really put it on the backs of the founders to figure this all out.”

 

Afro Unicorn isn’t the only Black-owned brand that has disappeared from Target’s shelves over the past few years. While Target’s DEI pullback hurt its reputation within the Black community, other Black founders Modern Retail spoke with said they found Target to be a frustrating wholesale partner, even before 2025.

 

A couple of founders said they struggled to get key information from their respective buyers, which hampered their sales. One described promotions they had to pay to participate in that they thought would be free. And, in the case of another founder, they only got an answer about their brand’s fate with Target — after months of unanswered emails — after going to a Target diversity executive, even though the brand wasn’t part of any supplier diversity program at Target.

 

Target representatives declined to share details on specific conversations or interactions with vendors, but said that it makes changes to its assortment based on how products are performing and what shoppers are looking for.

 

“Style, design and value are at the heart of our differentiated assortment, and emerging brands play an important role alongside national brands and owned brands,” a Target spokesperson said in a statement. “We’re proud of our long-term record of helping small businesses grow and reach new customers at Target, and will continue to create opportunities for new brands.”

 

Other Black-owned brands once featured at Target have been removed from the retailer’s assortment without explanation. These include Alikay Naturals and Oyin Handmade, which are still sold outside of Target. Some, like hair-care brand Curls Dynasty, have gone out of business entirely.

 

Entrepreneur and author Tina Wells said her luggage and accessories brand, WNDR LN, was built exclusively for Target but was canceled and removed from stores by late 2024. While some of her products are still listed on Target’s website, she said she hasn’t fulfilled an order to Target since August 2023 and that anything still available is back stock.

 

A representative for Black-owned skin-care brand GlowRx, in an email, said the brand “no longer being in Target was not our voluntary decision.” 

 

Some brands may have been removed from Target due to their sales performance.

 

“I’ve seen them kick out eight brands — not because they were Black, not because they were woman-owned and not because they were Latina-owned, but because they didn’t perform,” Melissa Butler, founder of vegan lipstick brand The Lip Bar, said in an Instagram video last year. She was warning her shoppers that the same fate could come to Black brands if customers were to stop shopping for them at Target as part of a boycott.

 

Target, for its part, is trying to position 2026 as a comeback year. This month, Target reported its first quarter of sales growth in more than a year as CEO Michael Fiddelke and his team have worked to refine its assortment and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll and store technology to improve the guest experience.

 

And, Target continues to expand the number of Black-owned brands it carries in stores. It has hundreds of Black-owned brands in its stores, double the amount compared to 2020, the company said in an email. Last fall, it added KBB by Kahlana to its stores, which a press release described as “one of Target’s most in-demand women’s apparel and accessories brands.” It continues to spotlight Black-owned brands on its website, such as through a Black History Month collection featuring Black designers.

 

But even as Target adds new Black-owned brands to its assortment, it has burned bridges with others.

 

“I personally don’t feel like we saw any benefit,” from being at Target, one Black founder who spoke on the condition of anonymity said. The founder said their brand was dropped in the fall of 2024 after several years with the retailer. “We invested a lot of money and a lot of time, and we spent much more money than we ever made at Target. We were doing so much better before we were in store at Target, and if I could redo it, I probably would have just not done the partnership at all.”

 

The lingering DEI problem

 

One of the big driving factors that led many Black entrepreneurs, like Showers, to pull back on their support for Target was the company’s decision last year to walk back some of its DEI goals, programs and initiatives. That decision — and Target’s murky communications around what led to the pullback — led to some shoppers boycotting the chain. 

 

Last year, Target concluded its three-year diversity, equity and inclusion goals, concluded its Racial Equity Action and Change initiatives, stopped all externally diversity-focused surveys such as the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index and renamed its “supplier diversity” team to “supplier engagement.” Still, the company said that this year, it fulfilled its 2021 commitment to invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses.

 

Showers said fellow founders would tell her they were waiting for Target executives to admit they made a mistake on DEI, but that she was never optimistic. Target’s pullback itself came off as performative, Showers said, given that it previously had embraced the Black and LGBTQ+ communities, such as by making public statements on racial equity and investing in scholarships, business consulting and sponsorships aimed to support marginalized groups.

 

“It was like a slap in the face to the community that basically felt that they helped build Target’s name in the urban sector,” Showers said. “The community was hurt. It was an emotional attachment that they had with Target, because they felt like Target was there for us.”

 

Target did eventually address the frustration last May, but in an internal email that communications professionals found vague and underwhelming and didn’t specifically address what the company did.

 

Target’s Fiddelke told the Associated Press in March that boycotts were among the things that impacted its sales last year. The company’s net sales decreased 1.7% to $104.8 billion from 2024 to 2025. “We’ve got trust to win back with guests, and we’ll be focused on doing it,” he told the outlet. “There’s no easy button to win back trust, but we’ll do the work.”

 

Shortly after Fiddelke’s comments that Target’s goal was to win back guest trust, Atlanta pastor Jamal Bryant in March said he was ending his boycott of the company after “productive” conversations with Fiddelke and others at the company, according to USA Today. Target, however, did not offer any concessions or reverse any changes it made to its policies, the newspaper reported.

 

However, organizers of another boycott — civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, Jaylani Hussein of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Monique Cullars-Doty of Black Lives Matter Minnesota — held a press conference, also in March, to say their boycott remains ongoing.

 

But the DEI pullback has continued to harm the company’s brand reputation, argues SOC Investment Group, Mercy Investment Services and Trillium Asset Management. The activist investors launched a campaign this month encouraging shareholders to vote against the re-elections of former Target CEO and executive chair Brian Cornell, as well as lead independent director Christine Leahy.

 

“Target’s brand has eroded, and it’s not from taking a stance, but from appearing disingenuous on social issues,” said Emma Bayes, deputy director of SOC Investment Group, in an interview. Her firm works with labor unions and their pension funds to promote good governance. 

 

“Retreating from DEI commitments that once defined it as a leader, Target undermined its credibility, made the brand feel inauthentic at a time when consumers are actively seeking companies that stand firmly and consistently by their values,” Bayes said.

 

Showers said she’s not completely against working with Target again, but would need to see a statement made addressing its previous decision on DEI, among other things.

 

“I don’t see myself going back until Target actually does what they did [before] 2024 and truly embraces women, Black businesses and all other marginalized businesses, like they did previously, publicly,” Showers said. “I know that would never happen.”

 

Showers took a six-figure hit just within her hair-care line after leaving Target, she said. Her company lost a total of $600,000 in revenue from 2024 to 2025, according to her. She attributes those lost sales to retailer boycotts in response to DEI decisions in response to the Trump administration.

 

“We were collateral damage because of this administration’s policies,” she said. “It was this administration, with their fear that they did to these retailers for DEI, that caused the hurt.”

 

A costly bet on Target

 

For other Black founders, their issues with Target stem from their belief that the retailer was not a good partner in giving their brands visibility and accessibility nationwide.

 

When Trey Brown and his brother Donovan appeared on “Shark Tank” with their Ride FRSH line of air fresheners in 2023, the two co-founders said their goal was to expand the business at retail. Later that year, that dream became reality. They landed a deal with Target to get their products into stores, which was supposed to begin their launch into mass retail, in addition to an agreement with AutoZone.

 

Instead, Target has been a nightmare for the Black-owned brand, as Brown described to Modern Retail. Shortly. After the launch, he said, customers would complain that they couldn’t find the products in the stores. He discovered the stores would have the items but not put them on the floor, and instead hold them in the back room.

 

Brown said Ride FRSH only ever got an answer about what happened to his brand this year from a Target diversity executive, even though the brand was accepted at Target as any other supplier, not as part of any diversity program.

 

“Why do I have to talk to the diversity initiatives guy to get an answer when I’m not even in a DEI program, and never was?” Brown said. “I should be able to reach the owner of the specific section, the buyer of the section. But somehow, nobody’s following up, and nobody gave a shit. So it just was like, ‘OK, so I have to go talk to the Black guy to get a response?’”

 

He said the executive apologized and said that’s not the way Target handles it, but that their solution was to get in touch with Target Plus — a third-party marketplace program that only deals with products sold online, not in stores. Brown said he was told by the diversity executive that it was “not likely” that he would get his products back on the floor.

 

Ride FRSH no longer appears on Target’s website; Brown said he’s not exactly sure when Target stopped listing the product or selling it in stores. He said Target has sent invoices to the brand that buyers would tell the brothers to ignore.

 

“Even when they [Target] had an opportunity to tell us that we were no longer with them, they just didn’t tell us that,” he said. In recent months, he has struggled to get an answer from Target’s buyers on whether the retailer has discontinued the relationship, and if so, why they have done so. He also said he hasn’t gotten any information on how the brand performed at Target.

 

“We’re stuck with a whole bunch of inventory, trying to figure out what’s going on,” Brown said.

 

The founder whose brand was dropped by Target in 2024 went through a similar ordeal. 

 

“We were told there was a change in product lineup, so they were just not going to move forward,” they said, adding that there was no other reason given as to why they were removed. “That was the whole conversation.” This founder, like Brown, said they had sent several emails to Target buyers without a response when trying to get information on a promotion they were supposed to be part of.

 

The founder said they paid for and warehoused at least $100,000 in product to be prepared for the next season with Target. Target had encouraged them to have the product stored in the U.S. rather than overseas, they said, so the brand would be able to get it to the retailer if the company needed a last-minute shipment instead of paying up to $30,000 to ship it from overseas.

 

“We’ve been, like, selling through it, slowly but surely, but we’re paying ridiculous amounts of money, like warehouse fees,” they said.

 

The founder said being at Target was costly overall, due to shipping costs, giving Target 50% of the proceeds and having to pay to change their packaging at the request of Target buyers. Additionally, the entrepreneur said they would have to pay if they wanted to be featured in certain promotions through Target’s Roundel retail media network, including Black History Month promotions. “If I wanted to pay $25,000 for marketing, I wouldn’t go in Target, I would just make an ad and go direct-to-consumer myself,” they said.

 

Finally, the founder said they had to pay for a certification in order to be featured on Target’s website as a Black-owned vendor. They said they had thought Target would give the brand free marketing opportunities during Black History Month or other events.

 

Brown, for his part, said he had no numbers on how Ride FRSH sold at Target, making it impossible to tell other retailers how they performed there. That could jeopardize future attempts at retail expansion. “If another retailer wants to come to us and ask us for numbers, we don’t have any,” he said.

 

He estimates he has lost $200,000 due to what happened with Target. What’s particularly frustrating, he said, is that it also compromises his direct-to-consumer business, because the brand stopped focusing as much on it to fulfill orders for retailers and because the capital it would use to invest in it is tied up with the retailers. 

 

“You just want a chance to have an even playing field somewhere in this country,” Brown said. From his perspective, “there were never any issues with our products, and we did everything we were supposed to do. But if you don’t put the products out on the floor, then how are we supposed to compete?”