Political Correctness — The Only Surviving Way For A Brand During Ukraine War
Background
History changed on 2022.02.24 when Russian president Vladimir Putin officially announced a military invasion of Ukraine. Till now, the war has already lasted for nearly a month, and it is still hard for us to forecast the grand final of it. Leaders of the whole world are still trying to figure out the best-reacting strategy facing the unpredictable and unwanted world situation. However, there is a clear way for corporations to resolve this dilemma — following political correctness, which means supporting Ukraine and making sanctions on Russia.
Reactions
There are three different levels of acting in a political correctness way for a corporation: withdrawing all business, suspending operations, and reducing activities.
Withdrawing All Business
Withdrawing all business, representing a high level of engagement in the USA’s sanction to Russia. Oil companies with significant investment and assets in Russia are the representatives. BP, Equinor, Shell, and Exxon responded to the emergent situation within the first week of the war, announcing that they would pull out the key project from Russia and stop buying Russian oil and natural gas, which is considered the major sanction from the western. Even though the world is complaining about the climbing oil price, these top fossil fuel companies still earned lots of commendation from it. The interesting point is that consumers are paying for the withdrawal, while at the same time, the corporation is winning a free marketing bonus.
Suspending Operations
Most automobile and tech companies choose to suspend their operation. Airplane makers Boeing and Airbus stopped supplying parts and service support for Russian carriers; carmakers Ferrari, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and other major manufacturers suspended all their exports and imports to Russia; consumer goods companies like Adidas, Nike, Estee Lauder, H&M, Ikea, Richemont are temporally paused all sales, including online and offline, in Russia. It is hard to calculate how much it will cost the companies, but their attitude is admirable. Moreover, most of them are still paying their local workers in Russia. The companies still maintain their humanity standard and keep good relations with the Russian citizenry.
Reducing Activities
Uniqlo, the previous outlier among major corporations with footprints in Russia that halted business operations, is a typical example of reducing activities. Uniqlo’s CEO Tadashi Yanai justified its continuing business decision by saying, “clothing is a necessity of life, and people of Russia have the same right to live as we do.” However, the rest of the world didn’t agree with him. Millions of comments and discussions were calling for a boycott of Uniqlo. Even now, Uniqlo has officially announced that it will temporarily suspend its operations and donate 100,000 Uniqol garments to refugees; it seems to be a little bit too late as it has already lost parts of its original loyal customers and hurt its own reputation on the global market.
Conclusions
It used to be a question of whether a company should choose to risk its potential reputational harm staying in Russia or the immediate financial impact of pulling out. Nowadays, with the blowing social media, people worldwide can faster spread information, comments, and, more importantly, their anger. Donations probably will not become a virus post, but a lousy story will likely be trending. According to a study, “Negative news spreads farther through the current Twitter network than positive news.” it is not surprising that on the scale of self-destruction of reputation and economic loss, the former is gaining more weight because of the attributes of social media.
Do we really live in a world where people or companies can freely choose their political standpoint? The answer is probably not. It seems like we can stand with Putin’s action of bringing Ukraine back home, but at the same time, we know that none of us can afford the price of tons of negative comments on social media, whether it’s an attack on an individual or a collective boycott of a company. So here it is, the only surviving way for a brand is to follow political correctness.
An extra point, it is always good the be the first, at least, the faster, the better.
This is Yang’s blog. Thanks for your reading. And see you next week :)
