How big companies can learn from the recent racial events in sports
This week has been all about racism and fast response. It started in the US with Clippers owner Donald Sterling ranting racist comments about black people and how he didn’t want his girlfriend to bring any black people to the Clippers games. Then, two days later in Spain, during a game between Villarreal and Barcelona, a Villarreal supporter throws a banana towards Barcelona’s right wing defender Dani Alves as he is taking a corner kick.
What I personally find interesting about both situations is:
A. USA vs Europe, fast decisions vs slow decisions
I can’t help to compare. The major reason for this is that we at The Pop Up Agency work with clients from all over the world. Many of the briefs we get, are created from a problem. Often a big one. And more than often, we even find problems and challenges the client is facing outside of the brief. And let me tell you, there’s a drastically big difference in how fast these problems are handled if you compare our American and Asian clients to our European. Why?
B. How big companies can learn from both these situations
The choice between speed vs quality is a big factor for many companies when making decisions. We are however living in a world, where companies need to be able to choose both. Fast has not always equaled quality but I’m sorry to say that we are living in a time, where we actually, more often than necessary, do over-think things. We need to be fast and make wise decisions at the same time — which has been the case in both these situations. I wonder where we would have been today if both Adam Silver(explain who it is) and Dani Alves had not acted swiftly and strongly?
I actually didn’t want this to be a long post. So I’ll end even though there’s probably a lot more to say. At the end of the day, what companies can learn from these episodes is that you need to make big decisions fast if you are a big company. In fact, the bigger the company, the faster you need to make the decisions. Both incidents could have been scandals had they not been dealt with promptly. But because they were, both companies get out of it looking like heroes. And that must ultimately be what you are striving for as a consumer brand.
If you want to read more about both these incidents here are two good articles, Donald Sterling and Dani Alves.
Until next time,
