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As a professional communicator, I get paid to create strategy on how a company's brand, voice and tone are represented, internally and externally.
I worked for a global brand that came under fire after the NAACP advised Blacks not to patronize the company, due to their findings of unfair treatment to Black employees and Black customers. As a member of the corporate communications team, I was expected to continue working as if it were business as usual. No one had asked my Black colleagues or me how we felt about this. As a Black woman in a space where very few of us were represented, I was on edge.
For a global company, the communications department didn't have a proactive plan when it came to issues of race and diversity. They did not react until A-list celebrities got involved, and even that wasn't fast enough. Diddy (Sean Combs) and his team called our media lines plenty of times, looking for answers, and no one had returned his calls to address them. My white colleagues spent time researching the last time he had made an album and making jokes. I wasn't in a position of power to demand leadership address the situation and to do it right away. They did not do this until the NAACP got involved and made it a national issue.
My colleagues called their contacts at national media outlets like CNN, Bloomberg and others that didn't truly represent my demographic; the team had not "killed" the noise. They missed the mark completely. Eventually, I was placed on the crisis SWAT team and was able to have a voice in the matter after inserting myself to advise from the Black perspective.
The biggest mistakes made:
1. They didn't address Black media outlets immediately.
Black audiences were still using social media to post about it, Black radio outlets to talk about it, writing about it on Black travel blogs and even having open forums about it on Black television networks. This was because of the companies ;ack of partnership with multicultural media.
2. They waited too long to create a "perfect message" for Black folks.
The longer a brand waits, the more manufactured and disingenuous the message appears. This is a lack of urgency and empathy for relevant issues impacting people who look like their customers and colleagues.
3. Those in power, the decision-makers, didn't have connections to Black media outlets, only people of color.
This is attributed to a lack of diversity in leadership — inclusion and integration.
4. There were never proactive strategies and collaborative diversity and inclusion communications in place for PR nightmares when diversity, racism and colorism are at stake.
A lack of multicultural strategic communications training or partnerships with stakeholders of color is to blame for this.
Too often, companies wait too long to say something. While I observe public posts from major brands and companies expressing their solidarity, stance on social injustices and anti-racism promises, I can't help but count how many days, months and years have gone by when this should have been done and how manufactured the messaging is. Someone is in the background, scrambling to say something and going into D&I (Diversity and Inclusion) and corporate communications chat groups to get help on messaging. (I've experienced it. It's happening.)
Real diversity work means the brand aligning itself with communities of color, including those with economic disparities, and saying it will support these communities even when systematic racism isn't brought to light nationally. Doing work in communities of color should be done at a company's birth — this is considered company culture. Real diversity work doesn't mean having employee affinity groups, allowing the brand to pat itself on the back as if they're doing D&I work. Real diversity work isn't hiring a person of color to sit in the mid-level role while allowing micro-aggression, smoke and mirrors to play a part in that person's sacrifice for holding that position.
Lastly, corporations need to get away from the D&I space and into the I&I space — Inclusion and Integration. It's one thing to have us at your party; it's another to invite us on the floor to dance.
After playing a role in helping to kill this crisis by inserting myself in decisions being made, offering up a list of multicultural media contacts and putting together plans for integrating true diversity programs into the company's culture, I was promoted — "For being a rock star on the NAACP crisis!" That was what my manager proudly told me.
That was the day I decided to resign.
