The article in the url link below demonstrates the dangers for firms that rely on controversy as a marketing tool (Issues: Advertising, p151). Abercrombie & Fitch has long utilized risqué advertising, of dubious social value, to appeal to its teenage target market (Issues: Sex, p268). In seeking the legitimacy gained through a $10 million donation to a new ER of a children’s hospital (for which the hospital granted the firm naming rights), however, A&F is discovering the limits to its strategy. A coalition of children’s advocate groups is resisting the hospital’s decision:
“It is troubling that a children's hospital would name its emergency room after a company that routinely relies on highly sexualized marketing to target teens and preteens,'' the members of the coalition wrote in a letter [sent to the hospital] … ''A company with a long history of undermining children's well-being is now linked with healing.”
Even though there is some truth to the saying that ‘any publicity is good publicity,’ I do not think it can be good for any firm to provoke some of the reactions that A&F is able to generate as:
“… among the worst corporate predators'' for ''sexualizing and objectifying children.”
Sex still sells, but I am not so sure it maximizes long term social value:
“The sex-drenched images of toothsome young men and women that Abercrombie & Fitch has used for years to sell its own-brand apparel in ads, posters and catalogs have made the company and its chief executive, Michael S. Jeffries, billions of dollars -- and countless enemies.”
Have a good weekend.
Dave
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther
When a Corporate Donation Raises Protests
By STUART ELLIOTT
1149 words
12 March 2008
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
5
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/business/media/12adco.html
