Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Some of the worst PR stories for fashion retailers happened in recent weeks. But will it cause any major upset of the business’ financial performance.

It’s been a dreadful couple of weeks for garment workers and fashion retailers. There was a glimmer of joy this week when Bangladesh rescuers found a survivor 17 days after a garment factory collapsed and killed more than 1,000 workers.

Then last week, teen idol retailer Abercrombie & Fitch stirred up a social media controversy when CEO Mike Jeffries confessed A & F would never make sizes XL for women because the brand is targeted toward “the cool kids”....

“To touch and improve lives” is the stated purpose of Procter & Gamble. One has to ask: Doesn’t every company want to improve the lives of its customers, employees, and other stakeholders? Would a company deliberately not want to improve lives?

...In an October interview with Fortune, P&G CEO and Chairman Bob McDonald discussed the financial pressures facing the company and outlined some of his initiatives to address these.

However, this interview raised more issues for me than it did answer or address them. There’s the problem of the multiple messages that employees hear each day. There’s the 40-20-10 plan asking employees to focus on 40 biggest categories/countries, 20 biggest innovations, and 10 emerging markets. Then there’s a message to focus on “discontinuous innovation,” in other words, radical or revolutionary innovation. So does that mean only discontinuous innovations will be accepted and funded in the next few years? What about other less radical innovations? Where do they fit? Should employees bother recommending anything less than discontinuous innovation?...

[Is your corporate message, mission or tag line muddled? ~ Jeff]

The Arthur W. Page Society today introduced “Building Belief: A New Model for Activating Corporate Character and Authentic Advocacy,” a corporate comms model that builds upon the organization’s 2007 “Authentic Enterprise” report. Back then, the group described the new comms landscape. This new model offers a framework for managing it....