Cecilia Badano
“Where there
is Barilla, there is home” … but not everyone is welcome
 |
Barilla’s advertisement with its most famous slogan:
“Where there is Barilla, there is home” ©Barilla
|
In 2013, the Italian food company Barilla found itself in the middle of a lively global debate and, sadly for them, that time, it was not about pasta being the best thing in the world.
On September 25th, Guido Barilla, the chairperson of the brand, made some spontaneous comments against same-sex families during an interview on an Italian radio program. Not only he made clear to be personally against LGBTQ+ adoptions but also declared that Barilla, as a historical brand, has an idea of “traditional family” that does not include the LGBTQ+ ones and, as a consequence, it would never create advertising contents portraying them. Even worse, he stated that in case homosexual people did not like the brand’s communication they would be free to eat pasta from other brands.
 |
| The translated transcript of Guido Barilla’s comments.©Stefano Pace, Bernardo Balboni & Giacomo Gistri |
Besides those statements, the
first communication response from the company ignited the public dissent, threatening
the corporate’s reputation. The LGBTQ+ community and a wider segment of the
public were outraged, employees felt embarrassed and partners’ trust and
confidence in the brand decreased.
In this debacle, social media played a central role:
the hashtag #boycottbarilla
was created and competitors started sharing teasing posts
supporting the LGBT+ community.
 |
Buitoni’s Facebook post: “In our home there is room for everyone”.
Screenshot taken from Facebook
|
 |
Garofalo’s Facebook
post:
“The only families that are not Garofalo’s are the ones that don’t love good
pasta”.
Screenshot taken from Facebook |
Never a
failure (?), always a lesson… 3 in this case
Lesson n°1: respond quickly
Analysing the timeline of Barilla’s first response
strategy, the principal thing we should learn is: be proactive.
As stated by Mats Eriksson (2018), timing on social
media is a crucial element that PR practitioners should keep in mind because it
significantly impacts the level of credibility among the public and help avoiding
the spread of rumours. Barilla clearly failed in this since it reacted only the
day after the interview was realised, when most news media were already covering
the remarks and the debate on social media was already a firestorm.
The company shared an apology statement from Guido
Barilla, first as a press release (you can have a look at the company’s 2013 archive here) and
after few hours on its social media (Facebook and Twitter). The day after, a
second press release was shared, in which the company apologized and
made clear to be open to diversity and to support all human rights. Finally (three days after the interview!) a video apology of Guido Barilla was released on the
brand’s YouTube channels. It is so bad to deserve a lesson on its own.
Make sure to
watch it though!
Lesson n° 2: if you apologise, mean it
The best thing that the company did as part of its
communication plan was apologizing. Since it was not an accident and no
products or facilities were involved there was not much left to explain; for
this reason, the best practice was the one adopted: apologizing and asking for
forgiveness.
But you remember the video, right? |
©Laura Beck
|
Research shows that PR practitioners
shouldn’t focus only on “what to say” but also on “how to say it”. As you could
see, Guido Barilla was clearly reading from a text from autocue that was written
for him by a communication expert, which made the whole message sound flat and
strategic. According to Yao and Lai (2018), when releasing a video apology, especially
in case of a preventable crisis, it is very important that the public perceives
the consistency between the actual content of the message and the emotional
response (the emotions revealed by the facial expressions of
the person apologizing).
This divergence and the fact that the video was posted
three days later are surely the reasons why the apology was not welcomed
among the public and perceived as insincere.
Can we blame the audience this time?
Lesson n° 3: Learn how to handle the pros and the cons
of Social Media
We already discussed how the brand made use of several
social media platforms to share its communications. What we still didn’t mention
is the fact that the PR department decided to mute the comment section on the
company’s social media platforms in order to avoid the flood of negative
messages. This communication strategy turned out to be a big mistake since the
public perceived it as a lack of transparency and willingness to confront over the
issue.
As shown by Macnamara’s study (2014), some PR
practitioners seem to understand the fact that social media are “double-edge sword”,
which surely help delivering the corporate messages but also increase the level
of transparency and dialogue expected by the public.
Apparently, Barilla’s communication experts were not among those.
To wrap up
When planning a crisis communication strategy, remember
to:
- Be fast
- Be sincere
- Be transparent
And whether possible, train your managers to count to ten before talking.
 |
©Libero Quotidiano Online
|
About the
author
Cecilia Badano is an Italian student, currently approaching the end of the MSc
in Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. After her bachelor in
Milan, she decided to leave “la bella Italia” to start her new life in The
Netherlands. Her interest in Media Relations and PR in general led her to undertake courses from both the
Corporate Communication and Political Communication tracks in order to have a
wider perspective on these topics.
No comments:
Post a Comment