It’s imperative to have people who can connect directly with their audience or customer base. When your executives don’t come from diverse racial backgrounds, it makes it supremely difficult for them – and the people who work under them – to understand the hurt and distress caused by words like “monkey” in the black community. A glance at their all-white board of directors tells you everything you need to know. But then perhaps they don’t want to explain, as that would involve questioning the diversity of their own organisation and admitting that black decision-makers are clearly lacking in their advertising team and on their board. They should have been allowed to explain why they decided to run the advert and why they decided to use a young black child alongside a monkey reference. Now they have lost potential fans by being tone-deaf. They could have liaised with diverse focus groups, who would have easily pointed out the racial connotations of the ad. Their intention was clearly not to cause offence it just obviously didn’t enter their minds to think seriously about their black customers. But just as technology and social media accelerate the damage, new digital listening solutions can also serve as a salutary and near real-time guide for companies seeking to more sensitively navigate their brands through the universe of fast-changing stakeholder concerns and perceptions online.The problem here doesn’t lie in the supposed racism of H&M, but instead in their misguidedness. In the last several months we’ve seen two major brands with ostensibly large marketing budgets and teams fall foul over perceived racist advertisements. Licence to operate and hard-earned brand values are at stake when customers abandon brands they no longer trust on important social issues. Even unintentional errors offend because they speak to an insensitivity and lack of diversity in the company’s fundamental decision-making mechanisms. ‘Answer is stealing’ most prominent emerging topic related to H&M this weekĬompanies suffer reputational damage when advertising messages are perceived as racist. The answer is stealing their clothes.” The tweet received over 29,000 retweets and 72,000 likes as of Thursday causing ‘answer is stealing’ to become the most prominent emerging topic in social media conversation about H&M this week. Indeed, while calls for boycotts are a typical response to consumer brands that cause offence, one Twitter user went a step further by tweeting “Boycotting H&M isn’t the answer. As a result, South Africa pioneered leading practices in corporate governance, such as the King Code, setting out the requirements of responsible and ethical business. The country is no stranger to boycotts, which was a common tactic against companies that did business there during 5 decades of apartheid, which ended in 1991. But it was the child wearing it that sent social. The wording alone isn’t the most appropriate for this day and age, coming across as tone-deaf. The image in question shows a child wearing a green hoody with the words, Coolest Monkey In The Jungle on the front. While the image was published on UK and US websites, South Africa saw the largest share of postings over the last seven days. Back in 2018, H&M released an image on its website which caused a backlash. Outrage is spreading in China over a video ad campaign for Italian. The geography of the conversation is also important. D&G, H&M, Pepsi & more: Racist ads show tone-deaf marketing knows no border. Volume of potentially negative postings related to H&M demonstrates acute impact of the slogan The last few days saw negative comment about H&M peak at around 77,000 posts compared to an average of 400 per day over the last six months. A racism scandal at H&M is the latest indication of management problems at the Swedish clothing giant. Social media data provides a stark view of the intensity of outrage and shape of online conversation about the incident. The ad has been decried as racially insensitive due to the historical use of the word ‘monkey’ as a racial pejorative and has prompted celebrities, musicians and athletes to cut promotional ties with the brand. H&M learned this lesson earlier this week after they came under fire for publishing a promotional image on their UK and US websites featuring a black boy wearing a hooded jumper with the words “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle” emblazoned across the front. While brands like Unilever don’t set out to be racist, more effective systems and vigilance are clearly needed to avoid causing inadvertent offence through ignorance. Social media, along with the 24-hr news cycle, provides an ecosystem where such outrage can grow exponentially in no time. Last year we wrote about an advertisement at Unilever that prompted widespread criticism of racist messaging in how the company marketed some of its beauty products. Brands have always been held to account for advertising or business activities that customers perceive as perpetuating racism.