“We want to promote diversity and inclusiveness along the whole value chain and the communities we are present in. We want to use our position to lead by example and break new grounds” (H&M, n.d). This statement has been part of H&M’s Corporate Social Responsibility agreement for many years. However, reality proofs that it might not always be straightforward for firms to stick to their principles. This finds evidence in one of the most recent scandals of the fashion retailer H&M. In 2017, the Swedish fashion house Hennes and Mauritz released a new kid’s collection, including two hoodies with two different slogans on it. One bears the words “Coolest monkey in the jungle” and was advertised by a black child wearing the sweater, the other hoodie contained the words “Mangrove jungle, official survival expert.” and was worn by a white child (Stack, 2018) (Appendix, picture 1).
1.1. Reactions of the Public
H&M’s ad campaign featuring the two boys sparked backfire on social media and the news with people calling the ad racist, offending, disgusting and inappropriate (The Guardian, n.d.). Users were pointing out the ridiculousness of the campaign in thousands of social media posts that spread all over the web, calling out the need for better production teams (Meyer, 2018). Also, celebrities all around the world were expressing their disappointment with the fashion brand, reaching out to millions of followers with their posts, creating a tremendous wave of attention to the scandal (Thomas, 2018). In South Africa, the police even had to interfere protests held by the Economic Freedom Fighters, a radical group of the youth wing who were demonstrating in and in front of H&M stores in Johannesburg and Cape Town, tearing down shop displays and kicking and pulling down clothing racks with the aim of H&M closing their stores in South Africa (BBC, n.d). Just a day after the message about the campaign got viral, alternative designs and drawings by artists like P Diddy and the general public began to surface replacing the original text by slogans like “coolest king in the world” or “black is beautiful” (Nembhard, 2018) (Appendix, picture 2, 3 & 4).
1.2 Reaction of H&M
In reaction to the negative word of mouth H&M received, the company took immediate crisis management actions and apologized to the public on their website and social media channels, admitting they were wrong and deeply sorry for what had happened. Additionally, the company claims to not have intended to cause offence and recognized that they have a responsibility to be aware of racial and cultural sensitivities. The company removed the advertisement from all their channels, as well as the hoodies from their collection (H&M, n.d.). In January 2018, shortly after the scandal, H&M decided to underpin their commitment by appointing a diversity and inclusiveness manager for the H&M group whose mission is to drive forward the work in this field (Smith, 2018).
2. Ethical Debate
2.1. Ethical Infringements at Play
As visible from the description above, the underlying ethical issue in the case of H&M is racism. Referring to black people as monkeys or apes has been a known offense for hundreds of years. Used as a justification for lynching and slavery of black people, as well as the racial segregation laws implemented in the US, the dehumanization of black people has persisted in many minds to this date (New York Times, 2018a). Many sports players have spoken publicly about being subject to verbal abuse by being referred to as apes or being chanted at with monkey sounds (Welt, 2018; The Guardian, 2015). And even black politicians get faced with racial slurs as seen in this years’ governor elections for Florida, where Republican Ron DeSantis told the public not to ‘monkey this up’ by voting for the potentially first black governor of the state, Andrew Gillum (New York Times, 2018b).
One of the biggest issues arising from this racism is that it fosters the perception of black people as being ‘different’ and animal-like. Goff, Eberhardt, Williams & Jackson (2008) found evidence in a US sample that implicitly, the association between black people and apes has continued in people's’ minds. Since this categorization into animals results to moral exclusion, the research further showed that this perception leads to increased violence against black people and the stricter conviction when in juridical trials. A phenomenon that has been heavily discussed and that causes great uprisings and protests time and time again.
Intentionally or not, by reinforcing the association Black-Ape through choosing a black model to present the sweater, H&M caused salience of this association in people’s minds that black people are fighting hard against and that causes disadvantages and prejudice. This matter is even more delicate since the sweater was designed for children. Children are in the early stages of forming their associative network and introducing associations like these leads to a prolongation of this negative association into future generations and the continued discrimination of black people.
2.2. Harm Caused
The harm created through H&M’s ethically inappropriate behavior, generally affected two parties, H&M itself and the people of color. Firstly, H&Ms ill-conceived ad campaign hurt themselves, both financially and reputationally. This was reflected by a decrease in profits by 62%, its stock collapsing to the lowest since 2005 and the company having troubles selling off its stock. In South Africa, in reaction to the above-mentioned protests and the vandalism of the Economic Freedom Fighters, H&M even decided to temporarily close stores, causing a tremendous loss in sales these days (Hamlin, 2018).
However, the direct financial consequences are far less than the reputational consequences of the campaign. H&M suffered a big loss of reputation and brand equity the last year. The racism scandal went viral quickly and was spread on social media as well as in newspapers all around the world, thereby showing the power of negative word of mouth in social media. Not only H&M’s customers expressed their disgust over the advertisement, also major influencers, partners and collaborators of the brand voiced their disliking of the racist campaign. Singer and songwriter, The Weeknd, publicly announced the end of his collaboration with the fashion chain, tweeting that he was deeply offended, embarrassed and shocked by this campaign (Meyer, 2018). The masses reached and influenced by the negative word of mouth of celebrities like the Weeknd have severe consequences for the brand. The association between H&M and Racism turns into a very salient brand association which positions them as untrustworthy and their brand as representing dissociative groups. It will lastly, decrease the likelihood of celebrities wanting to engage in collaborations with them.
Aside from the self-inflicted harm to the company, it is important to discuss the harm on the innocent group in this picture: The people of color. H&M’s campaign is a setback for all black people fighting a battle against racism and discrimination and basically a public statement of the company saying: We are oblivious to the discrimination many of our consumers are facing. Violence and disadvantages towards black people are an issue in many countries. Furthermore, as indicated earlier, H&Ms cultural insensitivity causes the continued association in the minds of people about black people being less than human, thereby working against the change in the cultural associative network that many people are fighting for.
3. Measures to Prevent the Scandal
First, H&M could have avoided this scandal if it had placed higher emphasis on cross-cultural teams and diversity within the company. As picture 5 (Appendix) shows, the board of directors at the time is lacking ethnic diversity. The obliviousness and missing comprehension of this ethical issue is one of the causes of the promotion image being made public. For instance, while most South Africans felt offended and attacked, the majority of Scandinavia had a hard time comprehending the criticism from South Africa (Kristiansen, 2018). As a company which is operating across borders in 69 countries (H&M, 2017), cultural sensitivity and respect for people of other countries is fundamental for success. Therefore, diversity at various hierarchical levels and across teams of this Swedish-heavy company could have constituted a safeguarding mechanism against potentially racist or ethically questionable sweaters being designed and promoted.
Shortly after the public outrage, the retailer appointed Annie Wu, former Global Manager for Employee Relations, to her new role as the Global Leader for Diversity and Inclusiveness, along with a team of diversity managers across functions (Friese, 2018). The job of Wu and her team will be responsible of increasing cultural IQ, and defend race, age, gender, sexual orientation, and disability biases. It is crucial for H&M to win back trust and credibility from all consumer bases.
Second, as a fast fashion retailer, H&M is under the constant pressure to speed up the production and supply chain process in order to deliver the newest styles as fast as possible to the consumers. This fast fashion production cycle prioritizes speed, thus, has fewer checks which is according to a A.T. Kearney retail consultant another reason for this issue (Hanbury, 2018). If H&M had implemented an algorithm with the ability to scan designs with a potentially offensive nature, or integrated multiple internal checkpoints for its designs, the ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ slogan would have been red-flagged and pulled out of the process at a much earlier stage.