A Word Can Tear Your World Apart

Who are we gossiping about?

Source: MARCOCCHI GIULIO/SIPA/Newscom

Papa John’s is an international pizza franchise chain with more than five thousand locations all over the world. The company was founded by John Schnatter, an American guy that started the company buying used pizza equipment and reached to be the biggest pizza delivery restaurant in the United States. John has always been the face of the brand, also the CEO and for many years the chairman of the board. In 2018 he was deposed as CEO and later on resigned the board as well because of a big scandal. Even though, he is still the biggest shareholder of the company. 

Spilling the Tea

In 2018, during a conference call between brand’s executives and the marketing agency, John used the n-word. The call was initially arranged as a role-playing exercise for Schnatter in an effort to prevent future public relations scandals. This word is considered a really bad slur, especially in the U.S. and many times in history we saw harsh outcomes because of its use. I interviewed Carles Séto Pinto, a Catalan, 26 years old man that lived for a while in Texas to understand better how problematic this is. He said that “in the U.S., this word has an especially bad connotation because it was used by white people to downsize and oppress black people at a very difficult time in their history”.

What happened after was that because of the high repercussion of this incident, John is no longer the face of the brand, neither the CEO or the chairman of the board. The company decided to take these actions to save the image of the brand in order to please the consumer’s that were extremely unhappy with the founder's behavior. 
The controversy in this story is that when this word was used, John intended to actually redeem himself from another statement, which clearly didn't end up well. His first backlash happened after he commented on the NFL’s leadership, criticizing it because of player protests and blaming them for a sales slump. Independent on his best intents, what the public sees are the facts, which did not look good for the brand. 

The PR strategy used in this case

As said by Øyvind Ihlen and Piet Verhoeven on their article published in 2012, any public relations case has to be studied as a social activity that has a specific context. It is impossible to analyze what happened with John and the outcomes of his speech without looking at the American context. In this case, I would say that the board of the franchising acted well from a PR perspective. John was the face of the company and the brand had to be disconnected to his image as fast as possible to be able to maintain its integrity.

Another interesting fact is how the media portrayed the occurrence. Many news sources framed John Schnatter as the responsible for the crisis and the slur usage ( Responsibility Frame discussed on the Nijkrake, Gosselt and Guttering article), which explains, even more, the decision to succeed the ex CEO of the company. 

Plot-twist in the story

Memes on the internet about John going after his own company.

What happened after Schnatter was resigned from his position was what the company should fear the most: John started acting against the board and by this, showing the consumers the instability and the disconnection between him (the biggest shareholder and the founder of the brand) and the company itself (represented by the board). The Papa John created a website called “Save Papa Johns” in which he clearly states his un-satisfaction with what is happening, stating that he is “getting the truth out there”, and apologizes to the customers, employees, and franchisees. 




The biggest problem here is that now there is a dissonance between what the company says and what the founder is transmitting to the public. The Cognitive Dissonance Theory by Leon Festinger has a big application in the PR field because it explains that the company’s actions and believes have to be aligned, if not you create a non-comfortable state for the consumer of confusion. This way the brand has to change a belief, or an action or a perception to re-gain this consumers’ trust. What John is doing is simply creating the dissonance and giving to the board a hot potato to hold.


I always heard from my mom that “words have power” and I always thought that it was just a good metaphor. Now I can see that it is a fact and that a single word can tear a whole life and company apart. 

About the Author: 

My name is Nicole Rosset and I'm a Brazilian 25 years old girl facing the challenge of living in The Netherlands and doing a Master in Communication Science. What drives me into doing this program is combining two loves that I have: marketing and psychology. Studying human behavior interests me and this is what I want to do for my life.