The ongoing drama that is the Target Corporation took another twist last week when its controversial CEO — and author of some of the most unpopular marketing decisions in company history — stepped down after a rocky 12 years. Brian Cornell, who’s been on a steady diet of crow since declaring that trans merch is “great for our brand,” leaves behind an impressive legacy of what-not-to-do. But is the political activist actually gone — or is his vanishing act just a ploy to shake up business?
Cornell’s exit would be especially significant, since he blazed the company’s woke trail, making Target the corporate captain of the same-sex marriage cheerleading squad before other CEOs even had a toe in the culture wars. One of the first chains to throw open their bathroom and fitting room doors to both genders, Cornell’s big encore came in 2023 when he launched a line of packing underwear and chest binders for kids. The move, just a few weeks removed from Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney partnership, sent already angry conservatives into the stratosphere.
With Anheuser-Busch’s brand in flames, even the media started to wonder about the collateral damage of gambling so much on the LGBT movement. “What’s your take on some of the pushback now on so-called ‘woke’ capitalism?” Fortune’s Michal Lev-Ram asked Cornell on an episode “Leadership Next” after the CEO started lining shelves with things like “tuck-friendly” swimwear. “We’re seeing a lot of backlash, not just on the social justice side,” Lev-Ram pointed out, “but ‘woke’ capitalism in general. What is your take on it?”
The CEO scoffed at the concerns. “I think those are just good business decisions,” he insisted of the company’s controversial trans-alignment. “It’s adding value. It’s helping us drive sales, it’s building greater engagement with both our teams and our guests, and those are just the right things for our business today.”
Less than two years later, with angry shareholders and billions of dollars of lost revenue dogging the company, Cornell was forced to retreat. American consumers, in their second most powerful show of force next to Bud Light, brought Target to the breaking point. In a bombshell announcement this past January, Robby Starbuck brought the story full circle, declaring that the once-unrepentant extremist had agreed to finally surrendered its woke agenda.
Suddenly, Target was abandoning the Human Rights Campaign corporate equality survey, walking away from its most egregious DEI policies, refusing to sponsor the local Minneapolis Pride parade, and largely ending its LGBT line for children.
But was it too little too late?
The company’s stocks never seemed to rebound, despite shoppers’ relief at the brand’s belated turn to common sense. According to the latest numbers, Target is still among the worst-performing companies in the S&P 500 this year. Ironically, it seems the retailer was too woke for most Americans — and not woke enough for the Left, who decided to launch their own boycott when Cornell tried to walk back up the plank from radical politics.
Stefan Padfield, who, like most conservatives, has watched the messaging whiplash from Target from his seat at the Free Enterprise Project, believes the company is “paying the price for a bad — and potentially duty-breaching — decision to go all in on DEI a few years ago.” This, he told The Washington Stand, “has seemingly led to four distinct backlash moments that have each negatively impacted the bottom line: Two from people opposed to the neo-racism and neo-Marxism that is DEI, and two from the people Target improperly enlisted with promises to advance a radical leftist agenda that was quite predictably doomed to fail.”
Now, stuck in no-man’s land, the board of directors has finally decided to pull the plug on Cornell and try a reboot with Michael Fiddelke, a finance-intern-turned-CEO who’s been with the company since 2003. “I’ve been fortunate to serve in a broad range of roles and functions over my 20 years here,” he said during the company’s quarterly earnings call last Wednesday. “I’ve learned from every one of these experiences, with each giving me a deeper appreciation for the specific ways that Target is special and strategically distinct in a crowded retail landscape.”
Most are optimistic that Fiddelke, whose political affiliations are mercifully unknown, has also learned from the company’s past mistakes. When he assumes the role on February 1, he insists his focus is on “profitable growth,” which, one would assume, includes a return to neutrality on hot-button issues that alienated investors and consumers.
However, there’s still a red flag in some people’s minds, which is this: Cornell isn’t going anywhere. When he leaves his role early next year, the former CEO will be stepping into another influential post as executive chairman of Target’s board. So just how sincere is the transition? As The New York Times was quick to sniff out, this succession plan will give the former chief a significant foothold in policies moving forward. “As executive chair, a person still has important responsibilities,” NYT’s Jordan Holman points out, “which could include maintaining relationships with key suppliers, lobbying the government or suggesting mergers and acquisitions.”
“What the data say is when the former C.E.O. sticks around as chair,” Professor of Business Ryan Krause cautions, “what you get is less change,” he said. “You’re going to get less performance change than you would if it was a clean break and the former C.E.O. just went away.”
To some, like Neil Saunders, managing director at the consulting firm GlobalData, “This seems like a reward for failure. It also runs the risk of having the person who has not guided Target well having some influence over future policy.”
But consumers should be careful about blaming Cornell for the entirety of Target’s downfall, expert Stephen Soukup insists. The author of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital and vice president at The Political Forum, reminded TWS, “Target is facing several strong headwinds, first and foremost is the economy. When you spend four decades building your brand as the ‘upscale’ discount store, you have to have a backup plan when economic factors make upscale less attractive to shoppers than ‘affordable,’” he underscored. “Target didn’t have a backup plan, and the combination of endemic above-target inflation and broader economic worry has exposed that lack of foresight.”
But, Soukup agreed, “Target is being punished by consumers for its willingness to get involved in the culture wars. To be fair, that isn’t outgoing CEO Brian Cornell’s fault necessarily. The Dayton family has been politically active for decades and has long used the store to promote its politics.” Nevertheless, he continued, “Cornell played the game particularly poorly. He allowed his company to become an explicit advocate for left-leaning cultural politics and then, when called on it by customers, ham-handedly reversed direction, alienating his former allies on the cultural Left.” To make matters worse, he said, “Cornell tried to fix his problems and patch things up with the Left by meeting with Al Sharpton, who represents no one but Al Sharpton, and who is abhorred by 90% of Americans in the political mainstream.” Frankly, Soukup shook his head, “The Daytons made Target political, but Cornell made it politically clumsy.”
In his opinion, Cornell’s replacement, “a native Iowan, longtime Target employee, and current Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke, represents the company’s desire to retreat from the culture wars and rebuild its brand on business merits alone.”
For the sake of Americans fighting for a return to normal, let’s hope so.
Originally published at The Washington Stand.
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer for The Washington Stand. In her role, she drafts commentary on topics such as life, consumer activism, media and entertainment, sexuality, education, religious freedom, and other issues that affect the institutions of marriage and family. Over the past 20 years at FRC, her op-eds have been featured in publications ranging from the Washington Times to The Christian Post. Suzanne is a graduate of Taylor University in Upland, Ind., with majors in both English Writing and Political Science.
