You can't always be on the right side of an issue, but you can be ready. Impact on shareholders F Normally Wall Street loves publicity, but when Sears cancelled its contract, the Street got nervous and began pointing out flaws in Benetton's overall strategy. Make sure you integrate your investor relations team into the overall marketing discussion. Clearly they play a huge role in any crisis. It's never easy to hear your company being berated on the news, but this was a battle of philosophies, and chances are if you really hated issue-oriented advertising, you wouldn't work for Benetton in the first place.
Any crisis is a huge test of employee loyalty.
Keep them informed, communicate early and often and the loyal ones will stay. The ones that leave during the tough times you may not have wanted to stay anyway. Overall score B Lots of risk can lead to lots of exposure, but you have to be prepared to suffer the consequences. Global brands have different needs than local ones, so it's okay for them to break a bunch of local rules. But you can't expect everyone to like it.