I hope this will lead to brands that just shut up and sell stuff. And do not attempt to signal anything in anyway.
Conservatism, and right-reactionary thought, often exists as a critique or skepticism of the ideology and programs that progressives and leftists wish to enact. Sometimes the criticism is warranted, and this skepticism is an important part of civil discourse. Inevitably however, sometimes progressive causes will win and overcome their detractors. If you tied your brand to a critique of gay marriage, the Civil Rights Movement, or women's suffrage, your brand would face far more damage than being critical of rightist causes.
At one point both parties had conservative and progressive wings.
So now, by lumping everyone against progress into one party, they're firmly consolidated as the regressive lost-causers, and everyone who aligns with them ends up getting that label.
The Republican party has hitched themselves to the conservative stances from 30+ years ago. They aren't seeking preservation of the status quo, but rather the disruption of it. This is decidedly not conservative, and it's unfortunate that people continue to use 'Republican' and 'conservative' as synonyms when they are not.
It's a similar mistaken framework to the complaints that large companies have embraced "progressive causes". Rather, those causes were progressive decades ago, but have since become accepted by and part of mainstream society. Which is exactly why large profit-maximizing companies use them for their marketing.
Perhaps this past-shifted perspective ties in to the general contemporary homogenization of what used to be historical periods of pop culture.
I could see this break two ways:
1. Investors start handing companies their asses for throwing away potential customers.
2. There's just enough extra margin available in segmenting their customers that politically flaired brands end up being successful. Obviously that gets toxic fast if it works, but will it actually pan out? I can see brands trying to be "big fish in a small pond" by being the "anti-woke" (or "woke") choice, but will people really pay a premium for it? I could see choosing Lyft over Uber, or ordering a mainboard from B&H instead of Amazon, when the price is more or less the same, but I'm not sure I can justify paying 20% more.
Implicitly supporting the status quo is also a signal.