The C-suite at Target muddled business with pleasure by advocating for transgenderism, costing the company’s shareholders $9 billion.
Carlos Saavedra, Target’s vice president of brand marketing, is the face of the company’s risky strategy. At night, he serves on the board of a nonprofit that promotes transgender and LGBT rights in elementary and secondary schools. The teachers who established the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network in 1990 gave themselves the abbreviation GLSEN for their organization.
According to Target’s official website, Saavedra “leads Target brand stewardship and campaign development for initiatives including Holiday, Back-to-School/College, Target Run, Discovery, Inclusive Marketing, and Digital and Social Engagement.”
A retail version of Alissa Heinerscheid, who ruined Bud Light by attempting to rebrand its Bug Light beer around transgender campaigner Dylan Mulvaney, is how this characterization of Saavedra reads.
But Target’s upper management brought it on themselves when they hired subordinates and displayed transgender and gay rights advocacy merchandise at the store’s entrances.
Target’s primary demographic of middle-class married women has responded by logically organizing to boycott the store.
People are organizing because transgender activism in the mainstream media and entertainment sector, as well as in the halls of power, is disturbing them more and more. However, the widespread availability of social media platforms that transform anti-elite boycotts into a well-liked, financially rewarding, validating, and hilarious middle-class purpose facilitates the public’s ability to organize.
Saavedra may keep his advocacy work at GLSEN apart from his day job at Target, so the company doesn’t reveal much about him.
After almost 18 years at PepsiCo, where he oversaw initiatives to increase sales among Hispanics and other cultural subgroups, Saavedra started working for Target in July 2019. According to a 2005 article on SeaCoastOnline.com, Saavedra may also be an ally for members of underrepresented sexual orientations.
Chi-town — After watching several openly gay and lesbian employees succeed at Quaker Foods in Chicago, Carlos Saavedra felt comfortable coming out to a coworker shortly after he started working there four years ago.
Assistant marketing manager, age 25: “You can bring your whole self to work rather than seeming isolated and distant because you can’t talk about what you do outside work.”
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The former chair of the company’s affinity group, EQUAL-Quaker, was the first person he told about it. He is now the leader of both EQUAL-PepsiCo and its subgroup.
At Target, he assists Jennifer Breeden Okun, the company’s senior vice president of design and packaging. On LinkedIn, she presents herself as a transgender “She/Her” who supports the cause, complete with a Target rainbow flag and a rainbow pride rainbow flag.
However, there is also support for transgender people at the very top of the organization.