eBusiness Weekly
Goya Foods, a Hispanic owned food company faced backlash after its CEO said Mr Trump’s leadership was a blessing.
The company faced a backlash on social media for its support towards President Trump, the same man whose policies were against the Hispanic people. “Boycott Goya” tweets started trending on social media and Democrats all over America encouraged people to cancel the brand.
Cancel culture or call-out culture is the practice of engaging in mass-cancelling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.
It refers to the mass withdrawal of support from public figures or celebrities who have done things that are not socially accepted today.
It often occurs on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. “Cancel culture means rewriting history and stopping the acknowledgement of facts because they are offensive to a racial, religious, ethnic or economic group. It is the rewriting of history to make people comfortable by ignoring facts, good or bad,” Anonymous.
Companies and brands across the world have fallen victim to cancel culture and forced to take back products or rebrand.
A notable example in the United States is Mr Potato Head which was forced to rename to Potato Head to be more gender inclusive.
The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer Research found that 68 percent of respondents agreed that company CEOs should step in where government does not help to fix societal problems.
An equal number believe that consumers have the power to force corporations to change. 64 percent of respondents also said they may boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues.
Does cancel culture work?
There are so many instances where cancel culture has done a lot of good for the community.
An example is when the H&M clothing company was cancelled for calling a black child-model “coolest monkey.”
It faced allegations of racism and notable brand ambassadors such as The Weekend parted ways with the company in protest.
Another example is Harvey Weinstein and R Kelly who were both cancelled for multiple sex offences and manipulating under age girls.
Former Empire actor Jussie Smolet was cancelled for faking a hate crime. He paid two Nigerian guys to stage a hate crime against him.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of holes in his plot. How could two black guys be racist towards another black guy?
As with everything in this world, there is a good side and a bad side. For instance, if you dislike the CEO of a particular company because of their political position despite you liking the quality of product the company produces, does the boycott really hit the CEO’s pocket as much as it hits the pockets of the employees of the company who are living pay cheque to pay cheque?
Does it improve the product? If a company goes under it is the employees and innocent folks who pay for it. For example, in the 2008 world economic crisis, the CEOs of the major financial institutions who were responsible for the crash walked away with millions of dollars whilst the innocent ordinary folks lost their homes.
The Israeli founder of We Work, Adam Neuman walked away millions of dollars richer when his company wanted to file for bankruptcy.
Social media has given a voice to a lot of marginalised groups. It has also made it possible for large groups of people to have a response for something almost instantaneously. It’s also way easier to keep track of brands and public figures because they post so much of themselves online.
Can brands survive cancel culture?
Let’s look at Hotplate Grill House for example, the company notorious for giving out freebies as part of their marketing. It was founded by tourism and hospitality player Benson Muneri in 2019.
The restaurant opened an impressive 16 branches in 2 years in a massive expansion drive creating jobs for about 350 people.
Things went south for the company when the founder donated a branch valued at US$200 000 to the First Lady’s charity organisation called Angel of Hope.
The company received some heat on twitter from members of the opposition for being regime enablers. This coupled with some controversial tweets resulted in a huge backlash from the masses.
“Boycott hotplate” hashtags started trending on twitter and notable brand ambassadors fled the company. The backlash got so huge that the company was forced to craft apology letters for the public.
Is the company still in business?
Short answer yes.
Infact they have gotten even bigger. They’re serving customers as we speak. How did they survive cancelling when other brands are getting buried because of it? They never stopped.
Nomater how huge the public outcries got, they kept on building their brand. When other brand ambassadors left, they went in and recruited even more brand ambassadors. They dished out more free meals.
This in combination with a fantastic menu and outstanding customer service created the perfect conditions for them to survive cancelling.
Take any critic of the company for a meal at a Hotplate branch and they will leave the restaurant as a fan. The key lesson here is if you’re under the threat of being cancelled, double down on what you’re good at, focus on brand building and forget the noise.
Did Zimbabweans learn anything from the failed attempted cancelling of Hotplate? Apparently, some did.
Let’s look at this example. Axecure sneakers, a company owned by a Harare businesswoman Future Murombedzi was founded in 2010 as a table in the flea markets of Copacabana. In 2017 the table upgraded to become a shop and opened its first branch at corner Angwa and Nelson Mandela.
They subsequently moved to corner Samora Machel and First Street. The sneaker shop has had celebrities such as Madam Boss, Mai Titi, Misred, Holy Ten, Bazooka, Freeman, Poptain and Enzo Ishall don their sneakers.
They have a huge following on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Things went south for the company when one of the company owners and brand ambassadors was spotted at a political party rally. This infuriated members of the opposition parties and hash tags such as “cancel axecure” started trending online.
However, some folks who had learnt from the Hotplate boycott denounced these hashtags and how foolish they were. The online public was convinced and they stopped the boycott.
How to survive cancelling as a brand
There are many strategies one can use if they’re under the threat of being cancelled. There is no clearly defined strategy to use because many of these strategies work differently for different brands. Some brands may need to just offer a public apology to survive cancelling whilst some brands may need to do more.
Some may actually need to do the opposite and be unapologetic to survive. Take Goya Foods as an example. The CEO, Bob Unanue stood up to the culture telling the mob he wasn’t scared. He stood his ground. Fortunately, some people felt the same way and Goya Foods ‘buy-cotts” started trending online.
Some people set up Goya Foods go-fund-me pages to buy as many goya products as possible. This proves that sometimes to survive cancelling you may need to stand up for yourself and be unapologetic. You might find that you have a lot more friends than you thought you had.
This is the importance of having a core audience. These people are always going to be supporting you no matter what. You need to have more of these customers as a brand. Have a specifically targeted core audience when you start your business and supply that audience with the relevant messaging.
This is the reason why no one can cancel Kanye West or 50 Cent no matter how controversial they become. According to 50 Cent, he’s never lost any business because of his controversial antics. Any brand that wants to partner him already knows what he offers and his unapologetic views. You can’t cancel somebody when you know exactly who they are and where they have been.
Kanye West is another example of someone who is uncancelleable. He’s survived multiple rants, supporting Donald Trump, slavery comments, twitter rants and video rants.
The moment the public thinks they have cancelled him; he comes back with a stroke of genius. He never stops.
In a recent interview he mentioned that retreating from the public helps him recover from these moments when the media is against him.
After the Taylor Swift incident at the VMAs he admitted to hiding from the public in Japan for 6 months. When he came back almost everyone had forgotten about this incident plus that was the time he released one of his greatest albums to date which helped him earn the forgiveness of the masses.
Popular comedian Louis CK was accused of sexual misconduct in 2017 and subsequently cancelled by the public. He was dropped from Netflix, HBO and even his own agency.
He disappeared and came back after 10 months and started selling-out shows. He’s now doing as well as he did before the cancelling.
Brands need to make sure that they’re “indispensable” and so critical to a consumer that a boycott is simply out of the question.
Imagine trying to cancel Econet. The whole country would descend into chaos and that would be the equivalent of the consumers shooting themselves in the foot.
