This is why you need to look at advertising with an eye for crisis management
Dove has been quite successful as a brand in recent years, in part thanks to its campaigns focused on women with a wide range of body types. Its latest campaign never went to print, however, thanks to an early reveal from the New York Times that got stakeholders fired up.
Have a look at the proposed design, which would have gone up on billboards in New Jersey this summer:
That’s right, the ad, which, considering it came out of a multimillion dollar organization, had to have passed through several committees and was signed off on by company leadership, seriously addresses New Jersey as “The Armpit of America”.
For our readers not in the States, this is not a term used endearingly, but rather the go-to insult for anyone looking to take a dig at Jersey. Making the choice even more baffling, Dove parent company Unilever is actually headquarted in New Jersey!
As far as we’re concerned, this is a complete crisis management failure. An ad like this, that is so clearly offensive to a large group of your stakeholders, should never make it to the public eye. Heck, if we were Dove artists and drew this up as a joke amongst ourselves we’d be putting it through the shredder twice before we clocked out.
Predictably, Dove’s Facebook and Twitter pages bubbled over with comments from angry and offended New Jersey residents defending their home state and blasting the billboard, waking the brand up enough to let everyone know their feedback had been heard and the ad would be pulled.
It feels like we’re dishing this advice out nearly every week, but here goes again – when you finish drafting up that edgy new ad campaign, how about taking a little survey?
Ask your family, friends, colleagues…heck, maybe, if you’re one of the largest manufacturers of personal care products in the world, you might even have the budget to bring in a focus group of those in your target area to ask what they think.
Just sayin’.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]
Jonathan L. Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of crisis management – crisis response, vulnerability assessment, planning, training and simulations.
Erik Bernstein is vice president of Bernstein Crisis Management. Erik started with BCM in 2009 as a writer and subsequently became social media manager for the consultancy itself as well as for a number of BCM clients before moving to the VP position.
