Cancel Culture is a Serious PR Problem

Cancel cul­ture is fast becom­ing a ser­i­ous PR problem.

We cel­eb­rate diversity in the work­place but don’t encour­age diversity in thoughts, opin­ions, or sense of humour.

And we know as much from media train­ing — just because someone with an altern­ate agenda implies that you’re some­thing you’re not, you must nev­er accept the implication.

Red Bull recently got put to the test:

Red Bull and the Inappropriate Joke

At a recent mar­ket­ing meet­ing, a Red Bull employ­ee showed a world map car­toon mak­ing fun of the ste­reo­typ­ic­al US-cent­ric (and some­times ignor­ant about the import­ance of oth­er nations) worldview. 

In response, the joke was leaked to pun­ish the not-woke-enough cor­por­ate culture. 

This happened after an attempt to force the brand’s CSR strategy regard­ing the Black Lives Matter move­ment by cir­cu­lat­ing an online peti­tion amongst Red Bull employees.

As a res­ult, three high-level exec­ut­ives got fired — loudly accom­pan­ied by grand­stand­ing media insinu­ations of Red Bull being a racist brand. 

Whistleblowing — Or Bad Faith Acting

Make no mis­take about it: 

Spreading mis­rep­res­ent­a­tions and lob­by­ing against an employer’s busi­ness strategy are reas­on­able grounds for ter­min­a­tion — and should not be con­fused with whistleblowing. 

“A whis­tleblower (also writ­ten as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a per­son who exposes secret­ive inform­a­tion or activ­ity with­in a private or pub­lic organ­isa­tion that is deemed illeg­al, uneth­ic­al, or not cor­rect. The inform­a­tion of alleged wrong­do­ing can be clas­si­fied in many ways: viol­a­tion of com­pany policy/​rules, law, reg­u­la­tion, or threat to pub­lic interest/​national secur­ity, as well as fraud, and cor­rup­tion.”
Source: Wikipedia

Note that mis­rep­res­ent­ing the inten­tion of a joke or driv­ing a per­son­al act­iv­ist agenda doesn’t fall under this defin­i­tion. Red Bull should be clear about fir­ing exec­ut­ives as they acted in bad faith against the company.

So, what’s the problem?

Businesses Aren’t Evil by Default

There’s an entitled belief held by what seems to be a grow­ing num­ber of people in the com­mu­nic­a­tions industry that the PR func­tion should be serving as the organisation’s guilty conscience. 

This belief stems from a romantic idea that cap­it­al­ism is evil and that PR (maybe via CSR?) should bal­ance this inher­ent malice. 

This is an ideo­lo­gic­al per­spect­ive, for sure, not a pro­fes­sion­al one.

Social act­iv­ism can be a power­ful PR tool, but busi­ness must come first.

The PR func­tion has one single pur­pose: to serve a stra­tegic object­ive. In busi­ness, that object­ive is to gen­er­ate profit. Such com­merce gen­er­ates tax incomes for the state, jobs for its cit­izens, and soci­et­al pro­gress through innovation. 

And this is how PR gen­er­ates value in soci­ety, too.

CSR Must Be Strategic and Focused

Red Bull, for instance, has a long his­tory of sup­port­ing extreme sports, and many of these activ­it­ies have Red Bull to thank for devel­op­ing into pro­fes­sion­al elites in their own right — and even Olympic sports in some cases. 

Supporting the extreme sports com­munity has been a stra­tegic­ally valu­able and focused approach for the brand.

For CSR activ­it­ies to be serving busi­ness object­ives, any such activ­it­ies must be a) stra­tegic and b) focused.

Applying a clear and stra­tegic­ally lim­ited focus on com­mu­nic­a­tion isn’t “evil”. And it indeed doesn’t imply bigotry or aggres­sion in spe­cif­ic cases where the brand isn’t “being vocal enough.”

Integrity Instead of Grandstanding

Any PR adviser who demands that brands, in gen­er­al, are mor­ally respons­ible for sid­ing with loud online lynch mobs and brand­callers has ser­i­ously mis­un­der­stood the pur­pose of the PR func­tion — and busi­ness as well. 

The solu­tion is busi­ness integ­rity, not giv­ing in to those who want to con­trol your agenda.

As a cham­pi­on for focused and stra­tegic­ally lim­ited com­mu­nic­a­tion, the PR professional’s job is to assist the brand in stand­ing up for itself.

Not to side with online lynch mobs.

Because a brand with integ­rity isn’t ashamed of being in busi­ness, it isn’t ashamed of provid­ing out­stand­ing products and ser­vices at great prices. It isn’t ashamed to provide tax income for the state and pro­duce jobs for people. It isn’t ashamed of driv­ing soci­ety for­ward through innov­a­tion, fin­an­cial risk-tak­ing, and hard work. ¹Actually, I pro­mote a Stoic approach to pub­lic rela­tions. A busi­ness should strive for recog­ni­tion through dig­nity by endur­ing the path of the obstacle.

In the case of Red Bull, the brand is mak­ing stra­tegic and focused CSR con­tri­bu­tions to the extreme sports movement. 

Red Bull isn’t a cau­tion­ary tale; they’re a best-prac­tice case study.

Few things in busi­ness make me sick­er to the stom­ach than when com­mu­nic­at­ors are sham­ing innov­at­ors, entre­pren­eurs, and fin­an­cial risk-takers for not being woke enough.

Woke is Bad-Faith Capitalism

As PR pro­fes­sion­als, we know that the news media can some­times become an unreas­on­able machine set to des­troy busi­nesses and indi­vidu­als without a fair tri­al. Our job is to pre­pare and pro­tect our brands from online lynch mobs. 

Today, there is a whole new set of lynch mobs to account for: 

Online lynch mobs and brand­callers use secret social media groups to drive de-plat­form­ing activ­it­ies and impose can­cel cul­ture. They use delib­er­ate mis­in­ter­pret­a­tion, calls for boy­cotts, card-stack­ing, cherry-pick­ing, and guilt-by-silence to coerce brands into submission. 

The beha­viour amp­li­fies polar­isa­tion by cre­at­ing extremes of iden­tity polit­ics on both sides.

This devel­op­ment is rap­idly becom­ing more chal­len­ging to PR than the struggle of adapt­ing to a digit­al society. 

If com­mer­cial com­mu­nic­a­tions depart­ments accept the woke nar­rat­ive without ques­tion, our pro­fes­sion becomes a can­cer­ous and destruct­ive anti-cap­it­al­ist­ic force from within. 

Piggybacking on polit­ic­al move­ments can be a viable PR strategy — if such a strategy makes busi­ness sense. ²Unfocused cor­por­ate cul­tur­al appro­pri­ation is not a “safe” brand strategy, either. Several big-name brands have got­ten into ser­i­ous trouble by shame­lessly piggy­back­ing on the social justice … Continue read­ing

Consider this:

A truly diverse organ­isa­tion allows employ­ees of dif­fer­ent polit­ic­al per­sua­sions to work side-by-side towards a com­mon busi­ness goal. 

Providing stable employ­ment and salar­ies through innov­a­tion, col­lab­or­a­tion, and hard work will always be the best cata­lyst for civil soci­ety to engage in social causes in their spare time — how it ought to be.

And while some busi­nesses are out of touch with their com­munit­ies, Red Bull surely doesn’t fall under that category.