Don't do it?

Nike has received a lot of backlash following using Colin Kaepernick for their Just Do It campaign. Kaepernick is an athlete and activist against police brutality. He took the knee during a football match which resulted into widespread (online) criticism, which even featured a furious tweet from the American president. After using Kaepernick, Nike received besides a huge following, also a huge backlash, including a boycott (Vox.com). On social media, a lot of people started uploading videos or images of burning Nike products under the hashtag #BurnYourNikes. The hashtag, however, seemed to have been used mostly in tweets mocking the brand’s opponents. Nike has since stood by their campaign and seemed to even have gained a better reputation and market position. It is clear that Nike has used the mixed commotion resulting from taking a political stance to their advantage. It can be, however, considered risky of a consumer brand that initially is not politically affiliated or natured to take a strong political position in a heated topic such as racism. Perhaps surprisingly, the engagement of such brands in political activism through their marketing and PR campaigns seems to become more and more a trend. It worked out for Nike, but was this a case of pure luck? Is it worth the potential anti-brand activism amongst consumers that such a campaign can trigger?

Figure 1 Source: https://brokenglasspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Burning-nikes-2-1024x675.jpg

Burnt?

The reason why Nike’s campaign worked could be attributed to Nike’s good estimation of how much empathy in comparison to how much hate they would receive. The moral or political issue at hand (police brutality) may have brought a very divided discussion amongst the American population, but racism is lately generally in media treated as a structural problem in American society. Police brutality is an act of violence and a large group of people, especially younger generations, in the US regard it as a huge problem. Research (Romani et al., 2015; Dauvergne, 2017) has found that a lot of anti-brand activism actually results from empathic people disliking immoral practices of brands (i.e. using palm oil or using sweatshops). If the political issue at hand opposes immoral behavior (i.e. police brutality in Nike’s case) anti brand-activism is logically likely to be lower. Another research has shown that a lot of damage control following a brand crisis can be done by the general public themselves on social media (Sung & Hwang, 2014). This was also the case with Nike: lots of (young) people, clouded the hashtag to mock those who used it seriously. This shows that Nike’s ‘risky’ political campaign was perhaps not as risky after all. As the majority of those active on social media were in favor of their stance, they hardly had to step in with PR strategies to ‘save’ their reputation from the initial backlash. Being smart about what message you endorse and stance you take might help you as a company to not only use politics as a helpful tool to constitute what your brand stands for, but also to help you control potential damage you might suffer without a lot of resources or PR effort. Nike might have taken a knee, but clearly did not lose their face.

Tamara Raats is a Communication Science Research Master student at the University of Amsterdam, who is mainly interested in persuasive, digital and entertainment communication.

May’s Brexit strategy: Playing the Blame Game

By Nikki Gommers

To put it lightly, September 20^th 2018 was not a good day for Theresa May. The Salzburg Summit with the EU leaders resulted in an outright denial of her Chequers proposal, with no new proposal on the table. A defeat for May, according to the media. The next day May gave a televised statement (click here for the transcript). Her wisely chosen words were picked up by the media, and she managed to define the news about the failed summit. She employed a smart PR strategy.

As Vliegenthart & Van Zoonen show, because of their political power, government officials can often define the news. Therefore, the televised statement was May’s chance to alter the narrative about the failed summit.

May’s full speech the day after the Salzburg summit. Credits: Statisma News 

Furthermore, Nord & Olsson emphasise that successful framing in political crises depends on the selection of certain frames, which should match the logic of the media. May’s PR specialists clearly followed this advice.

Frame selection

In the speech, May used two frames, outlined by Nord & Olsson as successful crisis rhetoric. Firstly, she puts the blame of the failed summit on an exogenous actor, the EU, employing the responsibility frame. This allowed her to make authoritative statements towards the EU, such as “they are making a fundamental mistake” and that their proposals were “unacceptable”.

Furthermore, she puts the blame of the lack of progress on the EU. She emphasises that “the EU is still only offering us two options” and that as long as they don’t present their alternatives, “we cannot make progress”. 

May depicted as dissimilar to the EU leaders. Credits: Lisi Niesner/Reuters 

The second frame that May adopts is the morality frame, emphasising certain norms and values. She blames the EU for not following these norms, presenting them as the bad guys. For example regarding values of respect, she seizes the moral high ground by saying: “I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same”.

Reinforcing this superiority, she emphasised the moral value of “the integrity of the UK”, thereby framing the UK as a unified entity, despite divided opinions in Scotland and Northern-Ireland.

Frame matching

The frames employed should match the media’s logic, so the media are more likely to cover the preferred narrative.

Credits: Sky News

May’s ‘Unified UK’ frame, combined with the EU as an exogenous threat, gels well with the predominant narrative deployed by the media. Hawkins shows that the British media refer to the EU as a foreign power that threatens the British interest. Conversely, the UK is portrayed as a homogenous actor with a shared interest. In short, May matches her narrative with the media.

Additionally, May’s speech meets the important news value of conflict. She clearly creates two opposing sides: the UK versus the EU, caught up in a difficult divorce. This fight is likely to receive media attention in the sensational British press.

And indeed, the newspapers did pick up her narrative: almost all headlines refer to her demand for respect, (e.g. The Guardian, Bloomberg, and The Independent). With that, she managed to defy the frame of a humiliated prime-minster, and construct herself as a powerful leader.

Nikki Gommers is a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Leiden University and has worked for several campaigns of the PvdA (Dutch Labour Party), as well as she is a keen advocate for a less-divided society. 

Shooting yourself in the foot, the Dassault way

A hundred supersonic fighter jets, two brothers jousting over a multi billion-Dollar business empire, a Prime Minister with 44.1 million Twitter followers, a former President who alleges unilateral force dictating a deal, and a political minefield. Now that’s quite a cast for a rather racy Hollywood thriller. In fact, they are just the players in a controversy that has engulfed India, is threatening to spread to France, while putting a massive corporate organization into a nose-dive.

Source - Amul

First things first, France’s Dassault Aviation is one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of fighter and commercial aircraft. The Company first agreed to sell 126 'Rafale' fighter aircraft  to India in 2012 in a deal worth an astronomical 10.2 billion US Dollars. Fast forward to 2015 and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, he of the gargantuan Twitter following, renegotiated the deal to include only 36 aircraft. Quite the cut, surprising considering the fact that India would still need to pay 8.7 billion USD for the 36 fighters. According to Indian law, Dassault (the corporate organization) would require an Indian partner. This partner amusingly was one that had no previous experience in defence manufacturing, let alone complex fighter aircraft. Currently, the Indian parliament is ablaze with allegations of corruption, kick-backs, and crony-capitalism. Muck is flying thick and fast about Dassault  being allegedly complicit in under-hand dealings. 

Source - The Indian Express

The reputation of the organization has taken a severe beating, but apart from a few squeaks, it doesn’t seem to be doing too much to repair it.

Timothy Coombs (2007) in his oft-cited Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) posits that organizations need to be quick to adopt a frame for their crisis. Either the organization could apologize, deny, or find a scapegoat. It is imperative for the organization to adopt a narrative, but more importantly stick to it. Dassault’s handling of the Rafale crisis seems to be anything but ‘holding firm to a narrative’. The Organization was content to let the Indian and French governments take centre-stage, allowed their Indian partners to spin a story where they absolved themselves of culpability, and showed a reluctance to put their side of the story forward.

 Source - NDTV

A ‘para-crisis’ is another concept propounded by Coombs (2012). A ‘para-crisis’ is not really a crisis but looks like one. It has the potential to snowball into a crisis if effective action is not taken. Dassault’s Rafale fiasco is a shining example of a ‘para-crisis’ which was almost ‘wilfully’ allowed to mitigate into a devastating inferno, which threatens to consume the Organization’s credibility itself.

In an age of new-media, Dassault could have blitzed their social media channels with strong denials, scapegoated the Indian government, or built a narrative of being forced to partner with a dubious entity positioning themselves as the 'victim'. As van der Meer (2016) states, the Organization’s narrative on social media is an important contributor in the stakeholders and public’s adoption of a frame. Dassault so far has failed to even attempt to construct a frame. The only press release that Dassault released fails to include even their CEO’s comment on the whole controversy and there is no effort towards framing Dassault as the innocent party.

Source - www.dassault-aviation.com

Yes, defence deals in developed nations are tricky with serious allegations (whatever their merit never far). However, communication practitioners in organizations like Dassault have to understand that leading the narrative is the key. A clear and strong narrative allows the organization a shield against allegations, counter-claims, and allows for more avenues of attack (in a strictly communicational sense). Unfortunately, funnily for someone who produces cutting edge weaponry, Dassault's communication strategy does not even fire blanks! 

Academic References; 

van der Meer, T. (2016). Public Frame Building: The Role of Source Usage in Times of Crisis. Communication Research, 45(6), 956-981. doi: 10.1177/0093650216644027

Coombs, W. (2007). Protecting Organization Reputations During a Crisis: The Development and Application of Situational Crisis Communication Theory. Corporate Reputation Review, 10(3), 163-176. doi: 10.1057/palgrave.crr.1550049

Coombs, W., & Holladay, J. (2012). The paracrisis: The challenges created by publicly managing crisis prevention. Public Relations Review, 38(3), 408-415. doi: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.04.004

About the author - Chinmay is a Masters student at the University of Amsterdam. Having served as a journalist with one of India's leading English dailies, he has also driven communications for two of India's leading conglomerates' sports divisions. He is passionate about sports, cinema, and communication.