It’s not often I have cause to quote this person but in this particular article in this particular context, something this person said (and in fact wrote a book with the same title) seems quite appropriate, at least depending on which side of the American Apparel Hurricane Sandy debate.
The quote is “There is no such thing as over exposure” and it was of course uttered by one Donald Trump.
Now if you’re in the Trump camp, so to speak, you won’t have any problem with what American Apparel did recently in trying to capitalize on the fervor and interest in Hurricane Sandy. And perhaps the word “capitalize” is the operative word for we do live in a capitalistic society, right?
In case you missed what exactly transpired, the folks at American Apparel decided what better event to tie a sale into then a hurricane? So their marketing department and/or agency put together the following email which was blasted out to their database.
Now I don’t know about you and your particular tastes and values and all that good stuff and I am not here to pass judgment on anyone, other than American Apparel that is.
But how in the name of common sense can you send an email like this out during such a tragic situation where oh by the way, people lost their lives? (guess you can tell by now what side of the aisle I fall on in the brilliant or boneheaded debate)
Seriously? Bored during the storm?
Apparently I was not alone in my complete disdain for this as the Twittersphere lit up in disgust. Here’s a sampling:
Hard to pick my favorite from the above Tweets but I would have to go with Brian Clark’s for this decision had to be made by someone of such inexperience, right?
Some even went so far as to include a screenshot of the actual email just to drive home their point even further:
Is It A Crisis If You Actually Initiate The Crisis?
Way back in January I wrote a piece Crisis Management: The Real Test Of A Brand In The Social Media Space?
Now the premise of that article was how a brand, business, company, whatever handles a crisis that is not of their doing OR if if were of their doing how they respond to the crisis and in particular how they respond in the social media world.
Last check of both their Facebook and Twitter accounts I saw no mention of the Hurricane Sandy sale and no remorse whatsoever.
Fine. It is totally their call to respond or not.
But something tells me that Mr. Trump is not right when he says there’s no such thing as over exposure or too much public relations or whatever. If your brand is cast in a negative light – and the aforementioned Tweets are just a sampling of the backlash, don’t you owe it to not only your loyal customers but to everyone to respond in some fashion?
Oh Wait, This Just In
Apparently someone at American Apparel had the foresight to respond.
Whew. Thank goodness.
Let’s see what an American Apparel spokesperson told Fashionista.
“Of course we’d never mean to offend anyone and when we put the email out yesterday it came from a good place.” The motivation, the retailer explained, “is that retail stores are the lifeline of a brand like ours so when they are closed, we need to come up with ways to make up for that lost revenue. People forget how expensive it is to run a Made in USA brand like American Apparel and if we made a mistake here it came from the good place of trying to keep the machine going–for the sake of our employees and stakeholders.”
‘Came from a good place?’
What place was that exactly and how in the world was it good?
Oh that’s right you did all of this (the Hurricane Sandy sale) to keep your doors open so you could sell more merchandise and keep your employees employed otherwise you would have to lay them off which means they couldn’t afford to buy their kids the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip for Christmas this year.
And the fact that they live by the “Made in USA” credo makes this even more galling as they took advantage of an American tragedy that killed Americans!
Ok, your turn.
Weigh in. Chime in. Jump in.
I don’t care. Just tell me what you think of all this.
Sources: Mashable, Fashionista
Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions.