Tag Archives: Lululemon

Crisis Management, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

According to Variety,  “As soon as the New York Times story about Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment settlements hit on April 1, Color of Change began to mobilize.

The nonprofit African-American civil rights group sent an email blast to its 1.2 million members, calling on them to help ramp up a campaign to pressure advertisers to pull money out of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”

The campaign was remarkably effective, hastening the withdrawals of more than 60 major advertisers from the top-rated hour in cable news.”

Clearly, social media is now the most powerful tool for activist groups to use on organizations whose behavior, they believe, merit boycotts.

In 2014 we experienced the power of hashtag activism: the response by activist group UltraViolet to the way the National Football League handled the Ray Rice domestic abuse scandal. In their criticism of the NFL’s actions, UltraViolet employed a telling combination of the online and off. During a recent game they hired an airplane to fly a banner over the stadium printed with the hashtag “#GoodellMustGo.”

With that banner, UltraViolet was able to very succinctly (and inexpensively) direct a tremendous number of viewers to an online community. They paired that effort with an online petition demanding that the NFL change its policies. Over 50,000 people signed it. And it worked.

As the Lululemon and other crises have shown, hashtag journalism can effect a change at the highest levels of corporate leadership.

How Corporate Leaders Can Navigate this Growing Movement

How can corporate leaders navigate this growing movement? Follow the conversations on social media as they continue to develop, including #hashtags on Twitter. Stay aware of the key issues concerning women. Those include employment opportunities, low minimum wages, the lack of women on boards and the glass ceiling so many face. If you’re a CEO, tuning in to these and related concerns will help you avoid becoming the focus of the next wave of hashtag protests (and nightly newscasts). It will also help ensure you avoid the type of online reputation crisis that can impact your brand as well as your company’s stock valuation.

 
 
Crisis Management, , , , , , , , , ,
Reputation Management in the Elon Musk Twitter Era

A few weeks ago I attended the S.H.E. Summit, one of a growing number of women’s empowerment conferences recently highlighted by the New York Times. A variety of factors have fueled this trend, but one major catalyst is the increasing influence of hashtag activism, especially in the corporate world.

A 2011 Guardian article about Occupy Wall Street was the first to use the term “hashtag activism,” but writer Eric Augenbraun’s wariness about “breathless claims about the birth of a new form of technology-based social movement” is still shared by many today.

Speaking at S.H.E., MSNBC host Krystal Ball challenged those reservations. She highlighted numerous examples of how social media activism has had a real impact on women’s issues, including a successful campaign to get an offensive plastic surgery simulation app removed from the iTunes store, a project that has crowdsourced sexual violence data in Syria, and the online outrage that forced Lululemon to replace its CEO. “Even when it’s just sparking a conversation through a hashtag, I think that’s important,” Ball said when talking about #YesAllWomen. And hashtags have certainly sparked quite a few conversations recently.

Hashtag Power

While introducing Ball, S.H.E.’s Margaret O’Brien White’s quoted a recent Forbes piece by Susan McPherson, “Empowering Women and Girls, One Hashtag at a Time,” which compiles a wide range of noteworthy campaigns. “This is truly the breakout year for driving awareness on women and girls’ issues through hashtag activism,” McPherson writes. Millennials and the LGBT community have already made waves in this arena, but women form a majority on social media, and the collective power they can wield is becoming increasingly clear.

As the Lululemon and other crises have shown, that power can effect a change at the highest levels of corporate leadership. “Leadership is about feeling that you are the owner of your own experience and future,” McKinsey & Company’s Joanna Barsh remarked in another S.H.E. Summit talk. As more and more women realize that fostering this sense of ownership on social media moves them toward similar empowerment in the real world, the momentum is only going to pick up.

How Corporate Leaders Can Navigate this Growing Movement

How can corporate leaders navigate this growing movement? Follow the conversations I’ve referenced here as they continue to develop, including #hashtags on Twitter. Stay aware of the key issues concerning women, especially those regarding employment opportunities, the lack of women on boards and the glass ceiling that continues to face many. If you’re a CEO, tuning in to these and related concerns will help you avoid becoming the focus of the next wave of hashtag protests (and nightly newscasts). It will also help ensure you avoid the type of online reputation crisis that can impact your brand as well as your company’s stock valuation.