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>They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss. When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost eno

>They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss. When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials, much less put it out of business.

roshin 2y ago
Bud light is a famous recent example. Of course, the company is large enough that it didn't make the company bankrupt, but it hurt them
- collingreen 2y ago
  It hurts my heart that all the examples above of companies hurting people or lying have very few consequences but bud light took a brand hit because they paid a trans person.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    Not because they paid a trans person, but because they made them part of the marketing. A product mostly marketed to the very demographic that is transphobic. It’s not at all surprising this backfired. Companies only started putting gay couples in commercials regularly years after gay marriage was legalized nationally.
    - didiop 2y ago
      Did you see Mulvaney's portrayal of "girlhood" though? Incredibly, ridiculously sexist. Let's not forget that the backlash against him has been for a variety of reasons, and one of them is his blatant misogyny.
    - collingreen 2y ago
      Yeah I didn't say "I can't believe this happened!?" I just said it makes me feel bad about things.
Singletoned 2y ago
Ratners is the famous example that springs to mind here in the UK.
noisy_boy 2y ago
> I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials It just have to affect enough to offset the cost of the lawsuit (which probably won't be much because they probably do have plenty of in-house lawyers) + the estimated cost of future lawsuits that might come their way if they appear to be "soft" and/or set precedence.
- Silhouette 2y ago
  They just made the front page of the BBC News website. I think we can safely assume that a lot of people are going to hear about this one. How many future lawsuits about allegedly killing someone by failing to properly take into account their medical conditions after repeated warnings are Disney going to face? If the answer is greater than zero then it seems they have bigger problems than whether they can move this particular legal action to arbitration.
Rinzler89 2y ago
>When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials, much less put it out of business. Exactly. VW shortened the lifespan of millions of Europeans with their Diesel gate and their finances are still solid. Ikea and Oil companies destroy the environment all the time and saw no financial hit from the PR issues. Nike, Apple and other major manufacturers are known to have used sweatshop labor and also saw no financial consequences. Consumers just don't seem to care enough about the PR of $COMPANY as long as their contempt with how the $PRODUCT they bought works and serves them well.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Nestle regularly uses slave and child labor. I don't pin this 100% on customers, because many people aren't informed and worse, it's often not just these single companies, it's all their major competitors doing exactly the same thing. The issue is a lack of regulation and enforcement. We can't trust major companies to be good actors because capitalism does not reward honest actors. This is one purposes of government, to make the cost of being a bad actor high enough that companies behave.
- alt227 2y ago
  > VW shortened the lifespan of millions of Europeans Thats a bit of an over the top way of saying it!
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
    We could stand to do a bit more raising of the profile of the externalities of such events. The emissions regulations that VW was cheating to get around exist for the purpose of improving air quality. The improved air quality leads to less air quality induced health problems. Which in turn leads to longer, higher quality lives for people in Europe. VW wasn't going around and directly pouring vials of poison into people's food like some kind of cartoon villain. But they absolutely were intentionally lying about the emissions of their vehicles, and those emissions absolutely have impacts to human health.
alt227 2y ago
Crowdstrike lost 50% of their business valuation in a week due to bad PR recently.
- hangsi 2y ago
  Arguably Crowdstrike's loss was due to a flaw in their product rather than PR. Disney's product (though not their core, I would argue) allegedly killed this poor woman - however it is the lawyers' behaviour, not the death itself, that is an additional PR liability for Disney; death from an allergy is tragic, but could have potentially happened at any restaurant in the country. Only Disney (and a select few other large corps) could pull this particular bad act in defence. As an aside, the entire line of argument from Disney is an absurd legal fiction. No reasonable person reads terms and conditions, and so they should not be bound by the terms. I hold a weak hope that this case is bad PR for the practice as a whole that raises the profile of this injustice.
  - alt227 2y ago
    Disneys product did not kill this woman. Disney own the mall, where a resturant chain rented a unit from them. The mall is free to enter and does not require buying a ticket from Disney. The 3rd party resturant hired the staff, made the menu, cooked the food and served the guests. Nothing to do with Disney at all. The only part disney has in it is they published the restuarants menu on the malls website, which reads 'Allergen Free'. This is the basis for the entire lawsuit.
    - benterix 2y ago
      > The only part disney has in it is they published the restuarants menu on the malls website, which reads 'Allergen Free'. And this should be their line of defense, not "but you clicked on a trial of a streaming service 5 years ago".
      - alt227 2y ago
        The general consensus is that to point out how absurd the claim is, you need to make an equally absurd counterclaim.
alt227 2y ago
Isnt Tesla taking a pretty big hit every time his lordship tweets something?
- gkbrk 2y ago
  No? You're confusing short-term stock price fluctuations vs brand value and future sales. Almost no one is picking a non-Tesla car because of the CEOs unrelated tweets.
  - datadrivenangel 2y ago
    The musk factor is starting to hurt them. I have friends who have told me they'd like a tesla but won't buy one because of Musk. I don't think they can name the CEO or senior leadership of another car brand.
    - eric_cc 2y ago
      That speaks volumes about your friends.
      - Larrikin 2y ago
        That he doesn't hold stock in Tesla or other Musk companies and doesn't want to be associated with Musk because of his opinions?
      - scblock 2y ago
        Yes it says they are probably good people.
        eric_cc 2y ago
        All we know is this: They virtue signal that they want a product but don’t buy it because they’ve been conditioned to dislike the company’s CEO. It’s likely that their tribe has all been conditioned in this way so the virtue signaling would be well received and elicit social approval. I don’t think that makes them good or bad people, per se. I’m not here to lay down a judgement. It is what it is.
7thaccount 2y ago
I think the Bud light controversy did impact their sales significantly for a good while.

roshin 2y ago

Bud light is a famous recent example. Of course, the company is large enough that it didn't make the company bankrupt, but it hurt them

collingreen 2y ago
It hurts my heart that all the examples above of companies hurting people or lying have very few consequences but bud light took a brand hit because they paid a trans person.
- kortilla 2y ago
  Not because they paid a trans person, but because they made them part of the marketing. A product mostly marketed to the very demographic that is transphobic. It’s not at all surprising this backfired. Companies only started putting gay couples in commercials regularly years after gay marriage was legalized nationally.
  - didiop 2y ago
    Did you see Mulvaney's portrayal of "girlhood" though? Incredibly, ridiculously sexist. Let's not forget that the backlash against him has been for a variety of reasons, and one of them is his blatant misogyny.
  - collingreen 2y ago
    Yeah I didn't say "I can't believe this happened!?" I just said it makes me feel bad about things.

Singletoned 2y ago

Ratners is the famous example that springs to mind here in the UK.

noisy_boy 2y ago

> I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials It just have to affect enough to offset the cost of the lawsuit (which probably won't be much because they probably do have plenty of in-house lawyers) + the estimated cost of future lawsuits that might come their way if they appear to be "soft" and/or set precedence.

Silhouette 2y ago
They just made the front page of the BBC News website. I think we can safely assume that a lot of people are going to hear about this one. How many future lawsuits about allegedly killing someone by failing to properly take into account their medical conditions after repeated warnings are Disney going to face? If the answer is greater than zero then it seems they have bigger problems than whether they can move this particular legal action to arbitration.

Rinzler89 2y ago

>When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials, much less put it out of business. Exactly. VW shortened the lifespan of millions of Europeans with their Diesel gate and their finances are still solid. Ikea and Oil companies destroy the environment all the time and saw no financial hit from the PR issues. Nike, Apple and other major manufacturers are known to have used sweatshop labor and also saw no financial consequences. Consumers just don't seem to care enough about the PR of $COMPANY as long as their contempt with how the $PRODUCT they bought works and serves them well.

cogman10 2y ago
Nestle regularly uses slave and child labor. I don't pin this 100% on customers, because many people aren't informed and worse, it's often not just these single companies, it's all their major competitors doing exactly the same thing. The issue is a lack of regulation and enforcement. We can't trust major companies to be good actors because capitalism does not reward honest actors. This is one purposes of government, to make the cost of being a bad actor high enough that companies behave.
alt227 2y ago
> VW shortened the lifespan of millions of Europeans Thats a bit of an over the top way of saying it!
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
  We could stand to do a bit more raising of the profile of the externalities of such events. The emissions regulations that VW was cheating to get around exist for the purpose of improving air quality. The improved air quality leads to less air quality induced health problems. Which in turn leads to longer, higher quality lives for people in Europe. VW wasn't going around and directly pouring vials of poison into people's food like some kind of cartoon villain. But they absolutely were intentionally lying about the emissions of their vehicles, and those emissions absolutely have impacts to human health.

alt227 2y ago

Crowdstrike lost 50% of their business valuation in a week due to bad PR recently.

hangsi 2y ago
Arguably Crowdstrike's loss was due to a flaw in their product rather than PR. Disney's product (though not their core, I would argue) allegedly killed this poor woman - however it is the lawyers' behaviour, not the death itself, that is an additional PR liability for Disney; death from an allergy is tragic, but could have potentially happened at any restaurant in the country. Only Disney (and a select few other large corps) could pull this particular bad act in defence. As an aside, the entire line of argument from Disney is an absurd legal fiction. No reasonable person reads terms and conditions, and so they should not be bound by the terms. I hold a weak hope that this case is bad PR for the practice as a whole that raises the profile of this injustice.
- alt227 2y ago
  Disneys product did not kill this woman. Disney own the mall, where a resturant chain rented a unit from them. The mall is free to enter and does not require buying a ticket from Disney. The 3rd party resturant hired the staff, made the menu, cooked the food and served the guests. Nothing to do with Disney at all. The only part disney has in it is they published the restuarants menu on the malls website, which reads 'Allergen Free'. This is the basis for the entire lawsuit.
  - benterix 2y ago
    > The only part disney has in it is they published the restuarants menu on the malls website, which reads 'Allergen Free'. And this should be their line of defense, not "but you clicked on a trial of a streaming service 5 years ago".
    - alt227 2y ago
      The general consensus is that to point out how absurd the claim is, you need to make an equally absurd counterclaim.

alt227 2y ago

Isnt Tesla taking a pretty big hit every time his lordship tweets something?

gkbrk 2y ago
No? You're confusing short-term stock price fluctuations vs brand value and future sales. Almost no one is picking a non-Tesla car because of the CEOs unrelated tweets.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  The musk factor is starting to hurt them. I have friends who have told me they'd like a tesla but won't buy one because of Musk. I don't think they can name the CEO or senior leadership of another car brand.
  - eric_cc 2y ago
    That speaks volumes about your friends.
    - Larrikin 2y ago
      That he doesn't hold stock in Tesla or other Musk companies and doesn't want to be associated with Musk because of his opinions?
    - scblock 2y ago
      Yes it says they are probably good people.
      - eric_cc 2y ago
        All we know is this: They virtue signal that they want a product but don’t buy it because they’ve been conditioned to dislike the company’s CEO. It’s likely that their tribe has all been conditioned in this way so the virtue signaling would be well received and elicit social approval. I don’t think that makes them good or bad people, per se. I’m not here to lay down a judgement. It is what it is.

7thaccount 2y ago

I think the Bud light controversy did impact their sales significantly for a good while.