JC Penney felt the hard bite of social media last week when it released a back-to-school T-shirt for young girls with the message: "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me."
To its credit, JC Penney reacted quickly before the story blew out of control.
There's so much wrong with this shirt's message that it's hard to know where to begin. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought so. The reaction on Twitter was swift and harsh. Mommy bloggers in particular quickly began a Twitter campaign and online petition against the T-shirt.
CBS News reported that the power of social media was on full display as JC Penney pulled the T-shirt from its Website within hours of the social networking assault. In fact, JC Penney didn't know what hit it.
And good for the people who held forth on social sites. Is this the message we want to send our daughters –- that getting by on looks and cheating is OK? I really hope not.
But the real message here is the power of social media to spread a negative message about your company startlingly fast, and companies everywhere should be paying attention to that point. Every one of your screw-ups is going to be magnified in the days of Twitter, Facebook, and, increasingly, Google+. This should be a wake-up call to every organization out there that you must be monitoring social media for company mentions, and when the tide turns negative, you have to react quickly, or you will get swept away in a tidal wave of bad publicity.
In his latest book, Real-Time Marketing and PR, the author and speaker David Meerman Scott writes about the need for companies to engage with their customers in real-time. Scott warns that companies have to abandon old-fashioned notions of planning public relations and marketing months in advance. "It's a real-time world now, and if you're not engaged, you're on your way to marketplace irrelevance."
To JC Penney's credit, it appeared to be watching, because it reacted quickly. That may be because this wasn't the first time it felt the burn of social media. Back in 2008, the company released an ad aimed at teens that brought a similar kind of attention its way. As I described it at the time on DaniWeb:
It depicted two teens getting ready for a date by timing how fast they could get dressed. At the end of the ad, the boy comes over to the girl’s house, and they let the stern looking Mom know they are going to “hang out” in the basement.
The implication was that the teens were going to have sex, and JC Penney was condoning it with the ad. There was a strong backlash on social media and elsewhere. At the time, I saw this as an opportunity for JC Penney to get some much-needed viral marketing publicity, but it tried to distance itself from the ad instead of embracing it.
The "I'm too pretty" T-shirt was clearly a different story (at least in my view). This was a case of seeing a bad idea and making the intelligent corporate decision to cut losses and kill the story's momentum.
As Scott points out in his book, when companies fail to react or try to defend bad moves through traditional media channels, it just keeps the negative story alive in social media channels, and that's the last thing you want.
The bottom line is that companies need to be monitoring online networks, and there are myriad tools out there to help you do that. Ignoring social media is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand and hoping it will go away.
JC Penney has learned that if you stop the bleeding, the story will fade. And that's a big PR lesson for everyone.
— Ron Miller is a freelance technology journalist, blogger, FierceContentManagement editor, and contributing editor at EContent magazine.
More controversy over sexist Tshirts here: Topman have responded: "Whilst we would like to stress that these T-shirts were meant to be light-hearted and carried no serious meaning we have made the decision to remove these from the store and online as soon as possible."
Or, it's a humorous way to call attention to it and show it's not ok. The one's who would do what the shirt says would be the last ones willing to put it on.
Well said, John. Tweens do get irony.
I conducted a survey of a random sample of 10/11 year old girls on this topic. Not the t-shirt, but the popular Disney TV character (Alex Russo).
I asked them about her attitude to homework. They all agreed that she didn't do it because it was uncool. I asked if there were bad consequences. They said there sometimes were, but also that her friend (distinctly an "unpretty" but smart friend) usually did it for her.
Did they take any message from this? No, it's a comedy show.
And the Barbie was even more reprehensible because it was a doll played with by girls as young as 2, and you can't tell me two year olds are sophisticated enough to interpret that message.
By the way, nobody was suggesting that this hurt JCP's image or that anyone was boycotting them (nor did that ever come up as far as I know). My point was that the people spoke through social media channels, JCP listened and it reacted quickly and it put and end to the discussion.
I don't assume girls are vapid, and if this T-shirt existed in a vacuum, I might agree with you, but it's part of a huge machine of messages that girls as young as 5 and 6 are getting that all that matters is their looks. It may seem innocent or funny out of context, but we live in a world where our children our bombarded with media messages on a daily basis.
But as I've said regardless of what you may think about it, the story here isn't the t-shirt anyway. It's that social media gave a message to a large corporation and it listened.
It's amazing that the same flyer that contained the young ladies' shirt also had a young man wearing a theme shirt that showed sports and lunch as his favorite subjects crossing out academic subjects but no one gave a concern about the message being forced on boys.
Reminds me of the campaign "Bring your daughter to work day" (leave your worthless son at home)
"It's about giving a message to young girls that it's Ok to get by on your looks, act stupid for attention and cheat by having somebody do you work."
Or, it's a humorous way to call attention to it and show it's not ok. The one's who would do what the shirt says would be the last ones willing to put it on. Unless you assume all the young girls to be that vapid.
I honestly believe a bunch of people need a funny bone transplant. It's a joke. It's not meant seriously, and shouldn't be taken seriously.
It is among many thousands of shirts/patches/bumper stickers/can coozies/etc... available with equally fecetious/sarcastic/humorous messages sold all over the globe, everywhere from retail giants to swap meet tables and eBay.
How did so many of our species become so oversensitive to humor and trivialities?
Have we decided that the big problems are too big to tackle, so we should go on a witch hunt to find something simple to take massive offense over?
Does anyone honestly believe an honors student is going to see this shirt and think, "Oh! Now there's an idea!"?
This story reminds me of the Barbie "Math is Hard" doll... which stirred up a lot of controversy as well, but ultimately, I don't think it really hurt the Barbie brand. And I'm sure there's some marketing case studies on how to use negative media attention to bolster short term sales....
I seriously doubt most shoppers are going boycott JCP in a significant way over some dumb Tshirts. JCP just got some free advertising via the "news" over something that is pretty trivial. It's not like these shirts say anything really THAT offensive.
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