The Editor's Post: Legal battle drags Patagonia into social media pile on
Few companies have gone as far as Patagonia to bake in purpose in their DNA, but a trade mark dispute against an influencer drag queen – and the social media storm that ensued – could harm its hard-earned reputation. This week's view from the Pioneers Post newroom.
Has Patagonia broken its brand?
Outdoor clothing company Patagonia is one of the heroes of the business for good movement. Its tagline “We’re in business to save our home planet” encapsulates its founder Yvon Chouinard’s commitment to using the wealth that the company creates to protect the planet, rather than generating profits for investors.
In 2022, Chouinard and his family baked this commitment into the structure of the company by transferring their ownership to a trust and a non-profit organisation. (You can learn more about that in our article from that time.) They rejected other options, including selling it or taking the company public, seeing them as offering inadequate protection to the company’s values in the face of pressures to create short-term financial profits.
This approach is exactly what our expert contributors, Sarah MacCallum-Orr and Alex Willford of Clarasys, advocate in their article for us this week. They point out that too many businesses fail to deliver on their positive purpose promises because their ownership and governance structures push them in the wrong direction. “When those who own and govern organisations prioritise short-term financial extraction, purpose will eventually be sacrificed – no matter how good the original intentions,” they say. They highlight Patagonia, alongside others such as Tony’s Chocolonely and Danone, as businesses that have successfully structured their governance and ownership to prioritise people and planet.
But now, because of a trademark infringement lawsuit that it filed against a drag queen climate activist going by the name of Pattie Gonia, Patagonia is causing a stir for all the wrong reasons.
Patagonia argues that it must protect its brand because its name “carries trust, purpose, and decades of work connected to environmental activism, product, storytelling and community impact”. But Pattie Gonia is framing the row as a multi-billion dollar corporation bullying and “trying to erase an activist”.
That the dispute has exploded now, during Pride Month (despite the lawsuit being filed in January), adds even more fuel to the fire. While Patagonia is publishing serious, black and white typed statements on its Instagram, Pattie Gonia is posting emotional videos and has fired up thousands of supporters to call on the clothing brand to drop the lawsuit.
What lessons can other purpose-led businesses learn from the mess? My colleague David Lyons dives into the details in his analysis this week.
Thanks for reading!
This week's top stories:
How business can be a force for good in a world where short-term profit maximisation is king
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Top image: Vik Approved on Flickr.
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