How Businesses Can Navigate the Minefield of Social Unrest

One of the more popular sentiments expressed on Twitter over the weekend was that the astronauts who left Earth on Saturday made a good choice. After months of suffering from a global pandemic that has caused mass unemployment, school shutdowns and over 100,000 deaths, Americans are now reeling from a wave of nationwide protests following the death of a black man at the hands of Minneapolis police. What should companies say and do amid events so fraught that many people would prefer not to be on the planet?

“It’s always risky for brands to weigh in on deep social unrest,” says reputation-management guru Helio Fred Garcia, president of Logos Consulting Group. Companies have learned this the hard way before — such as when Starbucks Corp. hatched an ill-advised effort to encourage people to talk about racism with their baristas in 2015 and when PepsiCo. Inc. launched a widely excoriated commercial about social activism featuring Kendall Jenner in 2017. Companies were reminded of that risk again on Saturday after National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell received fierce backlash for expressing support for the protesters. His statement was viewed as insincere by many after the experience of Colin Kaepernick, a player who has not been signed by a team since 2017 after protesting racism and police brutality.