Kleenex is out — pass the hanky

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/09/2023 (942 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IN the late summer of our discontent, as the next wave of COVID-19 threatens to overwhelm our health-care system; as fires and floods swamp our emergency response structures; as war escalates in Ukraine and elsewhere; and political idiocies drown out common sense everywhere, my main concern has been how to blow my nose — without Kleenex.

U.S. paper giant Kimberly-Clark’s sudden announcement they would stop the production and sale of Kleenex in Canada at the end of August caught most Canadian noses by surprise. The reasoning was the usual corporate crypto-babble, pointing to a “highly constrained supply environment” in which the company was “faced with some unique complexities.”

In short, there are more tears shed and more snot to be wiped in America than in Canada, and so more money to be made. Canadians were told, however, they could continue buying other Kimberly-Clark products.

Yet, however much sinus trouble I might have, I just can’t see myself blowing my nose in Huggies.

The corporate history of Kimberly-Clark is a fascinating mix. Marketing genius turned “Kleenex” and “Kotex” into household terms in the 1920s and 1930s, but these successes were the unforeseen results of initially making things for other markets. Repeatedly, the public understood the significance of Kimberly-Clark products better than the company’s management did at the time.

As the company bumbled into the 1970s, it was rescued by its move into diapers, for both babies and adults. Many North Americans are likely to both begin and end their lives in Kimberly-Clark products they did not choose. While there is no move, as yet, to end sales of its menstrual products in Canada, too, its latest blunder shows the problem of depending (pun intended) upon a company more concerned about its warped corporate identity than its customers.

It is another example of the blind arrogance that seems to pervade corporate offices these days. It is not a new spectacle, but it is one whose increasing prevalence is disturbing.

Too big to fail, too big to fall — these are tropes of the last few years. Google and Meta (Facebook) can refuse to pay for the news that others create, because they think they control the market. Twitter can rebrand itself as X, and everyone will continue to tweet Muskily ever after. There is a long list of similar corporate decisions made with impunity because statistical analysis shows the individual consumer’s personal opinion doesn’t matter to the bottom line.

Large banks fund the fossil fuel industry that accelerates global warming, with political support from the same governments to which they also lend money and which then set the lending rates for the banks to follow — what could possibly be wrong (or unsustainable) in that circular business model?

It’s not a new problem. Among his many accomplishments, George Bernard Shaw was an astute political philosopher, who offered bitingly insightful commentary on the trajectory of western culture. Just ahead of the great stock-market crash of 1929 that preceded the Great Depression, he released his play The Applecart, a satire about democracy and industry.

The plot revolves around futile efforts by the king and government to control “Breakages, Ltd.,” the company that owns and runs everything. Break something in protest against their monopoly, and the company will make more money off the repairs, and ensure you are sent to jail.

The Applecart is one of Shaw’s more pessimistic efforts, but that doesn’t make it less prescient. It captures the arrogance of white male privilege, expressed in corporate contexts that are undoubtedly more diverse today, but still reflect the same basic attitude.

Yet customers are not commodities, however much they are regarded as such. Nor are consumers mindless and powerless, however much corporations assume them to be.

The more self-aware people become, the less easily they are manipulated by advertising and social expectations.

Kimberly-Clark has (once again) done a poor job of reading the marketing room. The Canadian consumers who will decide on future contracts for those other commercial paper products will reach into their pockets or purses for something other than Kleenex, and will remember what loyalty — and corporate social responsibility — should look like.

So, we should remove “Kleenex” from our language, as it has been removed from our stores. Treat it like a swear word that costs you 25 cents every time you use it, and donate that money to your local food bank.

If Kimberly-Clark cries bitter tears at such treatment, I will offer them a “tissue” in which they can blow their noses.

Peter Denton is an activist and scholar who writes from rural Manitoba.