It's been nine days since the inauguration, and my LinkedIn feed is already insufferable. Half the posts are breathless hot takes about which brands are "brave" for speaking up and which are "cowards" for staying quiet. The other half are consultants offering to help you "navigate the new political landscape" for a modest five-figure retainer.
Let me save you some money: the answer isn't about picking a side. It's about knowing who you are.
Let me save you some money: the answer isn't about picking a side.
We're entering what I'd call the Great Brand Polarization Panic of 2025. Every CMO is sitting in a conference room right now asking some version of: do we say something? Do we pull back? Do we lean in? And the answer that most agencies and consultants give, which is some version of "it depends on your brand values," is technically correct but practically useless.
Here's what I've learned from watching brands navigate politically charged moments across multiple administrations: the brands that get hurt aren't the ones who take a stand or stay silent. The brands that get hurt are the ones who are inconsistent.
Bud Light didn't get in trouble because they worked with Dylan Mulvaney. They got in trouble because they tried to be everything to everyone and then panicked when that proved impossible. The brand had no lane. It had a vibe, and vibes are not strategies.
Contrast that with Patagonia, which has been so consistently vocal about its values that nobody is surprised by anything they do. Or Chick-fil-A, which has been so consistently aligned with its base that their positioning, love it or hate it, is structurally sound.
The brands in danger right now are the ones in the mushy middle. The ones who posted black squares in 2020, put pronouns in their LinkedIn bios in 2022, and are now quietly scrubbing their DEI pages in 2025. That inconsistency doesn't read as pragmatism. It reads as cowardice. And consumers, regardless of their politics, can smell it.
My advice? Stop asking "what should we say about X?" and start asking "what have we always been about?" If your brand has genuine values, they'll guide you through any political moment without requiring a war room. If your brand doesn't have genuine values, no amount of crisis comms will save you when the spotlight hits.
Pick a lane. Drive in it. The lane doesn't have to be political. It can be joyful, or irreverent, or obsessively functional. But it has to be yours, and you have to stay in it when the road gets bumpy.
The brands that survive every administration change are the ones that were never performing in the first place.