212: Why The Term Cancel Culture Is Dangerous And How It Can Hurt Your Brand: Kanye West Explains

Breaking news. Adidas terminates partnership with Ye immediately. Dateline, October 25, 2022.

Bloomberg has learned that Adidas is to sever ties with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. Now Ye is facing growing fallout from a recent string of offensive remarks.

Welcome to the indestructible PR podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent and manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. Kanye west has always been a controversial figure, but these latest antics, well, we could hardly call them antics. It's just flat out racism and anti Semitism have finally caught up to him. Now the brands are starting to drop their endorsements, and it's about time. So in this episode, some thoughts on Kanye and some thoughts for you as it relates to the cancel culture. Kanye west has had so many controversies of late that it's really difficult to keep up with them all. As I had mentioned at the time of this recording, Adidas finally terminated their partnership with Kanye west, and it was stated immediately. Their statement is on their website. It's under their news archive, which, by the way, is exactly where news statements should be. So you can share that. And they also have the press release that you can download and you can share it to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. So for anyone who's wondering how to respond digitally in a crisis, just go to Adidas right now and you can check out that statement. I'll include a link in the show notes. Now, Adidas received a lot of blowback, rightfully so, for taking its time to sever its partnership. Now, in this case, when you have a big company like this and they stated after thorough review, you can believe it, that there probably was a thorough review there. This was a huge $250 million contract with. With Kanye West. So I would assume on the back end, there are lawyers, there's business analysts, there's. There's just people trying to deal with. With Kanye's team, there's a lot of things going on in the back end. But what happened in the silence is that became the. The strongest message. Adidas said nothing. And when you say nothing, the clock on the crisis keeps ticking. Even though you've stopped the clock on your end, the damage keeps moving forward. In a golden hour of a crisis, you do want to respond immediately. Doesn't mean that you need the whole statement. But when a crisis like this is starting to brew, I think it would not have been a horrible idea if Adidas came out and said something. You could do somewhat of a holding statement that you Release that mentions, as we are under thorough review right now, like reasonable people are going to understand that a huge brand like Adidas need some time. They can't just do it, turn on a dime and decide that we're going to terminate this partnership. But there was so much silence that that became the loudest message. So for anyone listening here, if you work for a company or a brand or you're the one who's responsible for it, take this as a lesson. You do not want silence. You do not want silence because the damage is profound. The night before this recording, I did a TikTok live and it was about Kanye and we were talking about Adidas and everyone universally, you know, was slamming this and so many people were saying they, you know, they weren't going to buy the brand anymore. Someone who that may not affect is my 18 year old son, my own Kanye. I call him Kanye because he's a, he's a Conner and he's still a huge fan and probably always will be. We are a Kanye west house. And that's why this, this crisis is a particularly tricky one for me. I've mentioned on social media one of my favorite running playlists is my, my Kanye West Spotify playlist. He knows how to drop a beat. I know my kids aren't listening, so they'd make fun of me for saying that, but it's true. And even last year's Turkey Trot, I told my son Connor, what am I doing on this playlist? And of course it was Kanye on repeat. So I had to run an entire Turkey Trot to Kanye West. But he's an artist and he's a tremendous artist. And if you saw the documentary Genius on Netflix, which by the way, Netflix last night, October 24, said they were not going to delete that movie again. I mean, should they? Sure. But they're a business. So it's reasonable to understand that Netflix is going to keep that on naturally, because everyone's going to watch it now. And I don't have a problem with them keeping it on because you know what, it gives background and insight into why Kanye is doing what he's doing. So I think it helps the cause because the narrative that documentary dispels, I don't know if completely, but enough is this framing around Kanye west having mental issues. You know, we always hear about his bipolar, I believe is what he says that he's diagnosed with and his ex wife, Kim Kardashian would address that. And so I believe that Kanye has been, has been hiding in plain sight. Around using mental health as a reason for his erratic behavior. But if you watch Genius, aptly titled, he has a genius. He's a musical genius, but he's also a very strategic genius. He's a marketing genius. So I think we are seeing the real Kanye west now in this episode. I want to. I'm gonna say I want to touch on Kanye West. I've already spent, you know, 10 minutes talking about him. But there really is a significant takeaway here because of the timing that I'm noticing in this narrative that I want you to come away with. But before that, I do want to lay out, I have to lay the frame for what I believe Kanye west is doing. I did a TikTok about this last week. By the time this recording comes out about Kanye west following a specific playbook, and this playbook is one that is used by the alt right, you can check out the TikTok that I posted last week. The link is in the show notes. But Kanye west was going on this crazy trajectory of ranting about Jewish Zionists and the Jewish media. And prior to that, it was anti black, you know, when he wore white Lives Matter apparel with Candace Owens. I mean, someone else who defies logic for black Americans. It's just. Well, it's not. And I'm gonna explain why it's not. But they're using this hate slogan used by white supremacist groups, and they wore this apparel at a fashion show, a Paris fashion show. So it increases kind of outcry against Kanye. But that is the point. I believe the reason why Kanye west keeps pushing this boundary of decency and good taste is because he wants to touch that third rail, because there's a strategic reason behind that. Now, I pulled my information from a textbook that I use in the classroom. I'm an adjective professor this semester in media theory. Next semester, I'm going to be doing public relations. Side note, I'm taking a break from doing workshops on the road. I'm still speaking on the road, doing quicker trips, but I've just committed to staying home with the kids this year and just focusing heavily on my client work, which I've enjoyed immensely because I have uninterrupted time to really dive into my client work right now and pair that with following along these kind of celebrity breaking news, industry crises that are happening and breaking them down for TikTok and the podcast. I mean, I'll just say it. I have entered a whole new territory. PR response of how I view it and how I view it in light of Social media and social media's digital response. I change every day and I don't change my mind. I change to the evolving nature of the media environment and the media ecosystem and also the public. Kanye West, I believe, is finding that out. I think he always got away with this behavior, but he, but he isn't now. It's catching up to him. So the textbook that I had mentioned in the TikTok post, it's called Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. You can download it online. It's great material. It's by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis and they lay out a framework used by the alt right, a playbook, if you will. And so when demonstrators displayed banners over the weekend, so this is two weekends ago at the time of this recording, it was the alt right movement showing itself and using Kanye west as its poster boy. And who knows if that was just a consequence of Kanye west. Like I don't see him speaking directly with them, but they were using this news story to further their cause. Now another reason why I think this is all tied into the alt right now. The alt right, they are, it's a movement. It's born out of youthful, predominantly male, subversive activity in the underground of the Internet. So think 4chan, think 8chan. And if you remember from a few years ago when, when celebrity icloud accounts were leaked, they were leaked on forums like this and those forums became hubs for alt right activity. So for years, members of these forums, both political and non political, were, were using these kind of shock pranks, if you will, these almost juvenile pranks for attention grabbing means so long before, you know, the alt right 4chan, 8chan crowd started trolling the national media. They were doing a lot of this in house, okay? There was a lot of that discussion and discourse was happening online. One of the examples I use in the classroom or was Oprah Winfrey. Her producers got duped into doing this story about a pedophile. It was, it's a disgusting story and it's really difficult to find the video. I found one of Oprah Winfrey doing this. But they got duped hard. And that is from this alt right group. So now when you think about their playbook, this is what they do. There's the use of deliberately offensive, offensive speech. Okay? They have complete antipathy and hate towards the mainstream media media and they hate sensationalism unless it's their own. Their desire is to create an emotional impact in their targets. They want to hit it where it hurts. Okay? So like that grief tourism concept where they're going to turn national tragedy like, like a shooting, like Sandy Hook, for instance, like Alex Jones, the Alex Jones verdict from being sued by the Sandy Hook parents. So much of that started with this alt right type of strategy where Alex Jones said it was a hoax that falls into the same narrative as alt right also. It's the preservation of ambiguity. They love ambiguity. And that ties into a phrase called pose law. And that's an Internet adage that means without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism, because a tactic used by the alt right and people in the milieu of the alt right, like, you know, like an Alex Jones is Breitbart. Like that same type of media where they want to just like, really just like stick it to the mainstream media and get people talking is they want to get people reacting. That's how they get their, that's how they get their, their rush off of it. And an excuse that they can always fall back on. Oh, well, it's. It's a parody. Oh, I didn't really mean it. And if you follow those steps, Kanye west is doing the exact same thing. The exact same thing. He has always used this ambiguity around his mental health and the flip flopping. Like, for instance, he did an interview with Piers Morgan where he had stated that he was. And this is in relation to the anti Semitic remarks and the anti black remarks. He said that he was sorry for the people that he hurt, but that he didn't regret making the remark. You see, that's that ambiguity that has allowed Kanye west to be able to walk this tightrope, right? And to keep going because he does have so many fans who love him regardless. And one of those fans is an 18 year old in my house, which, by the way, we're going to have to talk about this tonight. I'm going to have a conversation. My son doesn't know this yet, but when he comes home from soccer and I make his fish, we're having fish tonight. We're going to have this conversation about listening to Kanye. But he has his ardent fans. But when it comes to the other arm of it, which is the marketing arm, the branding arm, the money, the money arm, he's lost a lot of footing. So this leads up to the point really of this podcast and in the title, I say why the term cancel culture is dangerous and how it can hurt your brand. Kanye west is using this cancel culture rhetoric now he purchased or he was rumored to purchase the social media app Parlor that was the extreme right wing social media app for, you know, for conservatives to use, but also just, just regular conservatives, just Republicans were using it as well. But it was the app which was shut down, by the way, and is now resurrecting itself where Kanye felt he would be un cancelable and he was baiting Adidas by saying, they can't cancel me for these anti Semitic remarks. Well, they did. The reason why you don't want to use the cancel culture, whether you are a spokesperson for your organization, the head of an organization, or you work for an organization, you're comms, you have some say in it, and it doesn't even matter what level you are someone. And Adidas, I think the head of brand marketing, I hate not having my research, but I saw it last night, spoke out against her own company, saying that the values that you espouse are not being seen in your decision to allow Kanye west to still have a brand partnership with us. Cancel culture can no longer be used as a reason why you're defending your right in a PR crisis or what your response is. Because the cancel culture is this. Think about Kanye west using it. He has created yet another definition of the cancel culture. Politicians have used it, conservatives have used it, you know, around, you know, the woke media. And that's framing. And it was successful framing. Right. People now associate the cancel culture with woke people, woke public, woke press, just trying to cancel anybody who they think deserves to be shut down. Okay. And I would argue they did it rather effectively. Now Kanye west is doing it. But I'm going to argue as someone who, who works in the cancel culture space, this is what I do. Clients hire me because someone's trying to cancel them with the cancel culture really means when you scrape away all the residue of how people are using it for blame shifting, what it really is is a signal to say that someone in your audience is feeling victimized by you, you've done something wrong to someone, and they want to let everyone know. The end game isn't necessarily to just shut you down and put you out of business. I mean, that would be nice. They would like that. But they want people to know that there was an injustice. That's what's happening. That's truly what the cancel culture is. It's letting people know that someone has been hurt, that there's a victimization that has happened. And in the end game, when it is truly egregious behavior, when you are charged with, you think back to the MeToo movement. You know, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, even Louis CK. You know, those were Woody Allen, Bill Cosby. I mean, those were sexual assaults. Okay? That was abuse and inappropriate abuse. So that was the Me Too movement was a cancellation. Like, you do not deserve to work anymore in this industry because of the abuse that too many people have suffered. That was the Me Too movement. But right now, what it really means is you have hurt someone and they want it to be addressed, okay? So in your brain you can think, okay, this is cancel culture. But don't say it out loud because you're only going to brand yourself as an extreme thinker who is not going to critically think about what the real problem is. You're already just setting the framework for a blame shift. So in every episode of the podcast, I add an indestructible PR tip. This is this one easy to remember, Leave behind back pocket tip for you to remember and help build an indestructible reputation. Cancel culture mentality must be eradicated. Don't allow your staff to talk about it. Don't talk about it with other people. And if you own a business or even if you are under attack, like truly under attack, and even if the attack is unjustified, it's wrong. Do not use the term cancel culture ever again. You are only harming yourself and hurting your reputation. And people are now going to look to you to see what you are trying to cover and what you're trying to hide because you are no longer indestructible. You are self destructive. If you want more help understanding this concept, you can check out my book Indestructible. It's now on Audible. And also feel free to leave reviews of this podcast that helps other people learn about this podcast and hear about this podcast. I've done a really bad job in PR, ironically, about letting people know about this podcast on TikTok all the time. People say you have a podcast and they mentioned it on TikTok Live. And I thought, wow, I got to start doing some better PR around this podcast. But I always want to leave tips. And lately, if you've noticed, there's been like a slight shift in the kind of the format of the podcast. I haven't done a lot of interviews of late because I'm really, really honing in on this idea of what can we pull away from these kind of current ripped from the headlines events. And yeah, in some cases, you know, they are about, you know, celebrities or pop culture because that's what so many people are following. However, my objective of every podcast is not just to sit and talk, shop and gossip about something that happened in pop culture, though I definitely will do that on my TikTok lives. But you can always pull away a real life lesson for pr. So in every single one of these podcasts that's what I'm going to do is we want to take a real life event that's happening now and pull out the real lesson that you can learn. I'm also going back to my guest list. I get guest requests all the time for this podcast and of late I haven't done it just because I'm getting ready to launch something on November 1st. I mentioned it on TikTok Live, but it will be coming soon. I want to. I'm creating another portal for people so that I can engage with people. And as I was saying last night on my TikTok Live, at the heart of it, I'm a teacher. I am. I'm just a teacher. I do have client work and I love doing my client work. But the podcast TikTok, my indestructible PR online and now this new offering that's going to be coming out on November 1st is I want to help people feel more confident in their communications, feel more confident in their PR response and give them from strategies, give them some strategies for how to respond in a digital age, particularly when the crisis is on social media. Because whether it starts there or not, it will end up there. Because every PR crisis is a social media crisis. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.