Dove Gets Shunned and Boycotted After Hiring Controversial BLM Activist

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One would think that all American companies that saw the decline of Bud Light, the top-selling beer brand in the United States after the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, would have informed their marketing departments that being woken up is not a winning strategy and wouldn’t be approved. Going woke is the newest marketing fad. Dove Soap is the latest brand to try insanity, expecting a different result. Dove’s entry into the woke world is not only provoking a boycott but also bringing with it some serious baggage.

Dove Soap launched a campaign called “Fat Liberation” last month. This was presumably a move to get customers to feel better about themselves, regardless of how they looked. Great idea, sounds good so far. Zyanha Bryant is the spokeswoman Dove partnered with to launch this campaign. Bryant’s past could pose a serious problem for Dove Soap. Bryant was an activist student at the University of Virginia, and most importantly, a Black Lives Matter activist.

BLM protesters gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia during the summer of 2020. Morgan Bettinger was also a UVA Student who began driving down the street. She then noticed that it had been blocked by a dump truck. Bettinger parked her car and began to walk along the street in order to find out what was going on. She had a short conversation with the driver of the truck as she passed the truck and said, “It is a good thing you are here, otherwise these people would be speed bumps.” The comment was meant to thank the truck for its presence so that any oncoming traffic would not hurt the protesters.

In a bizarre game of telephone, Bettinger’s comments were passed through the crowd. Bettinger then called the protesters speedbumps and said she would run them over. BLM protester Bryant took it upon herself to write a report of the incident and post it on X (formerly Twitter). Bryant didn’t stop there. She demanded that the school administrators immediately expel Bettinger. Bryant filed a complaint at the University Judiciary Committee. She claimed that Bettinger “threatened the health and safety of students.”

Bryant was backed by the committee. Bryant was not done. She filed a formal complaint with the UVA Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights. Bryant then got creative, saying that Bettinger repeated the alleged statement about the speed bump five times and that she had discriminated against her racially. Thankfully, the EOCR Office used some common sense to determine that Bryant had not heard the comments repeated because no one was able to corroborate this claim. Bettinger graduated from UVA in spite of this but still feels that the incident and the committee’s verdict have greatly harmed her chances of getting into law school. Bryant later admitted that she may have misheard Bettinger’s remarks. It was nice of her to make such a statement after she had almost destroyed someone’s life.

Dove Soap was wrong to think that they could hide Zyanha’s past. Customers have taken to X to express their anger at Bryant’s partnership. One customer posted pictures of Dove bars in trashcans and said, “I guess I bought my last Dove bar.” One customer said, “I stopped buying their product.” Never again! Another said: “This woman made another UVA student go through hell and it was a woke Lie.” Many are using the hashtag #BoycottDove. Elon Musk, CEO of X, called the partnership between Dove and Bryant “messed up.”

Dove Soap should take some time to talk to the people at Target and Bud Light. Harry Schumacher, a beer industry expert who I reported on, says that Bud Light’s sales have consistently been down by about 30% since May or June this year. He continued, “That tells [me] that this is a quasi-permanent situation, meaning these consumers are lost forever.” Target reported last month a sales drop of 5.4 percent for the first six-year period.

Target and Bud Light could have at least partially recovered if they admitted they made a mistake and apologized. Both brands were afraid of the backlash and could not muster up the courage to apologize. Dove Soap had a brilliant idea to encourage women, in particular, to be confident about their bodies and themselves, regardless of size. They may have to learn the hard way, as Bud Light and Target discovered, that when you partner up with woke warriors, going woke can be a real problem.

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