- Corporations have been speaking out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
- But civil unrest is not an opportunity to promote your brand or try and push your products.
- Eric Dezenhall is the CEO of Dezenhall Resources.
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, corporations — bless their hearts — have decided to grace us with supercilious pronouncements about the heinous act and systemic racism in our country. I saw a corporate flack on TV saying something like “brands will lead us through” this crisis.
No. No, they won’t.
This may be a good time to confront the fact that not everything is a branding opportunity. Despite the reflexive instincts of corporate marketers, there is an intangible but important line that separates expressing empathy in the face of tragedy from grasping, tasteless, opportunism.
Knowing when to pump the breaks
In more than three decades in the crisis management business, I have found that the same corporate pandering that causes euphoria among its practitioners also ignites mixed reactions among the general public that range from applause to seething contempt.
Whenever someone in an executive conference room comes up with a virtue-signaling ploy, a stunning lack of skepticism immediately follows because no one wants to appear to be against something that seems so, well, nice. And anyway, if the idea makes them feel good, surely the public will react the same.
This logic led to a Pepsi ad a couple of years ago featuring Kendall Jenner handing a Pepsi to a cop while being cheered on by a chorus of multi-ethnic fans. Pepsi pulled its ad within a day because it trivialized the Black Lives Matter movement.
Dodge Ram caught flack for running an ad during the 2018 Super Bowl featuring the voice of Martin Luther King while depicting scenes of hardworking, diverse Americans interspersed with, of course, the Dodge Ram doing its four-wheel drive thing through rough terrain. People were outraged.
Let’s call it Civil Rights Kitsch, whereby industrial minions seek to be loved by invoking rhetoric that makes them feel better but has little to nothing to do with their policies and practices. Indeed, as I have told more than one client, whenever I hear somebody waxing loudly about transparency the next thing out of their mouth is bound to be a lie.
That’s how I feel about corporate posturing writ large. It’s not that companies are as bad as their critics think — they’re really not — it’s that executives tend to believe that virtuous rhetoric is a form of immunity; they can keep corporate critics off their back if only they make the right gestures. In reality, this inevitably leads to interest groups making demands for real actions, demands that are typically never satisfied.
Then there is the issue of taste. There is something instinctively crass about appropriating a historical struggle for psychic validation or commercial advancement especially if you haven’t endured the struggle in question. As a friend who is the leader of a BlackAmerican advocacy group once told me after seeing a corporate tweet, “There is something about a white multimillionaire being civil-rightsier-than-thou that just rubs me wrong.”
How to actually send a message
Shouldn’t advertising and PR executives know better? Maybe, but I have found time and again that consultants are biased toward executing tactics and the notion that pretty much everything requires a response – their response.
Truth be told, the public isn’t always honest about its opinions, especially on volatile subjects like race. You end up building campaigns based on misleading opinion research and selling to a public that is too cynical and exhausted from the brutality, the riots, COVID-19 and the last four years, to give corporations an audience right now.
There are times, of course, when weighing in on a controversy is necessary and there are two guideposts worth considering: fidelity and subtlety.
Fidelity: Nike has had a long history of taking edgy stands on issues, including race because it speaks to their beliefs and their market. They were in a unique position to run an ad admonishing consumers “Just Once, Don’t Do It.”
Subtlety: Disney released a statement that said, in part, “We stand with our fellow black employees, storytellers, creators and the entire black community.” No advertisements or white executive billionaires claiming to relate to what the family of George Floyd is experiencing. Just right.
There is a room for corporate voices in this troubling period but executives should be mindful of the difference between sincerity and unctuousness, commitment and preening. And for once they should recognize that not everything is about branding, especially tragedy.
Eric Dezenhall is the CEO of Dezenhall Resources Ltd., a crisis management firm, and the author of ten books including Glass Jaw: A Manifesto for Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal.
