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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/813780
68 BCBUSINESS MAY 2017 It's worth trying to unpack the underlying narrative... (Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2017) Back in the 15th century, unpakken, from which unpack is derived, meant to display the con- tents of a bundle by unrolling or untying it, as well as to remove goods from a bundle. Although unpack still refers to removing the contents of something, it now also means to analyze by examining in detail–a usage that arose in the field of philosophy early last century, according to Merriam Webster. More recently, the tech industry adopted it to describe converting computer data from a compressed to a usable uncompressed format. • un•pack JARGON WATCH [from Late Middle English unpakken, to unpack] charities, like the LGBTQ resource centre Qmunity and the Immigrant Services Society of BC, because it made people feel he wasn't just profiting off a disaster, he notes. "We had a tiny handful of angry Trump supporters get mad and threaten to boycott the place," Kapalka says. "I think one wrote us a bad Yelp review complaining we 'pandered to minorities worse than Trudope.'" Standard retail gospel recommends avoiding politics. Why alienate custom- ers? Nordstrom Inc. insisted that its recent decision to drop Ivanka Trump's clothing line was purely a business decision driven by slow sales. But it still reflects the reality that political affilia- tion made the Trump name anathema to many Nordstrom shoppers. A Starbucks Corp. policy to hire 10,000 immigrants inspired an online boycott drive. But Carreen Winters of PR firm MWWPR suggested that sup- porters probably weren't no-fat-latte drinkers anyway. "People talking about a boycott and an actual boycott that attacks your business are two different things," Winters told MarketWatch. Still, it's a tricky environment when a Budweiser ad that tells the story of its immigrant founder can inspire a "Boycott Budweiser" hashtag. Appar- ently some Trump supporters were surprised to discover that none of the Pilgrims were named Budweiser. Do they know where pizza came from? Uber Technologies Inc. boss Travis Kalanick reversed a decision to join Trump's team of economic advisers when #DeleteUber gained online trac- tion. "As the kerfuffle with Nordstrom shows, it's pretty tough to avoid get- ting sucked in one way or the other," Kapalka says. As a rule, connecting a brand to politics is risky, says David Ian Gray, founder of Dig360 Consulting Ltd., a Vancouver-based retail market research firm. "That said, if a retailer or brand really knows their customer base is predominantly political with an aligned point of view, then perhaps it is actually on-brand to make a statement." Kapalka understands his clientele. "I know some bar owners in places like Florida," he says. "They said they would have been crucified for pulling something like this. We felt pretty sure that Vancouver was not a strongly pro- Trump demographic." Gray believes many of these con- troversies have to do with the nature of Trump himself—a brand turned president. "Trump is forcing business to reconcile opposing issues in a way they have never previously experienced" he says. "Nordstrom was pulled into the fray because the Trumps were market- ing themselves through the store, both before and after the election....[T]he emotional energy of consumers is being pulled one way or another by Trump." As for Storm Crow, it may not be done messing with the menu. "Depending how crazy things get, I'd like to introduce a Steve Bannon cocktail, consisting of mayonnaise, whiskey and broken blood vessels," Kapalka muses. "But we're still work- ing on the recipe." •