“We can’t refuse Unilever the right to make an Axe campaign without giving someone the right to refuse Unilever the right to make the Dove campaign. If we can say “no” to a sexist campaign, someone can say “no” to a feminist one.”

The discussion above is excellent (as it always is on the “Intersection of Anthropology and Economics” blog). The basic question is this: can one corporation (Unilever in this case) stand credibly behind a “feminist” campaign (Dove) and a “sexist” campaign (Axe). My comments are as follows:
Some observations:

• It’s true that big corporations are (probably) more often than not nothing close to authentic. And since it’s mostly public companies that are funding national and global branding campaigns, this is almost always the case. But I believe there are some corporations that are smaller, privately held, or still run by their founders, that are adhering to some authentic corporate DNA in their brand. I also believe that the market has room for a lot more brands than exist today. (Just as there are more than enough music consumers to patronize musicians that aren’t in the top 40.)
• Unilever has made a choice – their corporate brand is meaningless. So this dichotomy is not a problem for them. Their seemingly contradictory positions wrt Dove and Axe aren’t a problem unless they decided to accrue credit for those brands to the parent company. It’s possible they could have taken that path and told a story about Unilever that rationalizes the two campaigns (Unilever == pluralism??) but that’s not the path they took.
• While I chafe at some of the cynicism of the campaigns (and at corporations that aren’t transparent about what drives them beyond money) at least they are going for it. What would be worse than this inconsistency is muddying both messages in the name of some faux corporate consistency. I’ve been in that world and all it produces is pablum that no customer identifies with.