A lack of diversity was a precursor to the crisis:
 Reiterating Doritos, Pepsi cola controversies

A central tenet of the PR-profession is dealing with an onset crisis. This for instance was a central theme of Kim’s article exploring the crisis response for Pepsi’s ad (left below). This was also the case in Esmee’s article, which explored crisis response to Dorito’s publicized marketing idea (right below). This article builds on this work of Kim and Esmee, in that it recognizes that it is relevant to study crisis. Though, the focus shifts in this article from crisis response to crisis prevention. As it is arguably also true for the PR-profession that prevention is better than cure. The perspective taken in this blog is that workplace diversity can serve as a preventive measure to crisis.

Left. This ad was released on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. It features protestors opposing police, and Kendall Jenner coming into the middle of both, and resolving all conflict because she introduces Pepsi cola.

Right. Dorito’s publicized that they planned to market new chips to reach women consumers specifically. Features of the chips would be: less noisy, less sticky to fingers. Image is third party satiric mock-up.

Diversity visible in PR expressions of cases
In order to solidify that diversity can serve as a preventive measure, it is maybe best to start explicate that diversity had something to do with these cases. For the Pepsi ad, I argue that the timing (day of anniversary MLK’s assassination) and theme (protestors standing eye in eye with authorities) implicated diversity. As the latter was something MLK was known for in his effort for justice.
For the Dorito marketing idea diversity was also at play. Here because personal characteristics were going to be used to appeal better to certain groups (i.e. women).

Diversity in theory

Now that it’s clear that diversity had something to do with these cases, the attention shifts to what diversity actually is. Diversity is a group characteristic (e.g. of workplaces or organizational audiences).It is based on the variation of identities of individuals by certain identity characteristics (e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status). Two, here relevant, perspectives on the function of diversity in a workplace, are: Integration & learning (I&L; diversity as a resource to rethink “business practices in ways that advance the mission”), Access and Legitimacy (A&L; “diversity as a way of gaining access to and legitimacy with those markets and constituent groups” (Ely & Thomas, 2001, pp.240,243).

My argument is...

My argument is that a sufficiently diverse workplace, also prominently featuring Black people in PR for instance, would have brought forward earlier that the Pepsi-ad was bad practice (i.e. I&L-perspective). Or at least, that this most likely was not going to resonate (i.e. A&L-perspective). Something similar can be said for the Dorito case. It maybe isn’t strange to market to certain audiences, but putting women in places of power in organizations, might have brought forward (i.e. I&L-perspective) that it can come off as patronizing and blind to women social equity movements (A&L-perspective). Though the argument for both cases is more theoretical than empirical, I find it a useful perspective for looking into crisis.

My message is this…

See it as your task as a PR-professional to have a diverse PR-department, as well as a diverse organization, in order to better serve your profession and organization

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This article was written by Jason. He feels a great need for organizations to be responsive to social demands, be they explicit or implicit. Jason writes blogs from various perspectives within the social and behavioral sciences.