out of context quote, it doesn't make it correct or even not bad, but the context in which he says it, is important.
I don't know why he didn't just hop on CNN & state his intentions once it went viral, because out of context, the video
does sound absolutely awful. Out of context, it really does sound like a "racist tirade". Which, again, should strike anybody as
very odd for a public figure worth millions who has a 34-year comic career to just magically "expose" himself publicly as a racist & tank his business after all this time.
For the sake of his business & IP, I feel like he should have done some media soundbites, where he could have fostered a far better discussion than that's going on now, but instead it seems like he just kind of fed into it. The Twitter post below is 1,000% NOT how he came across in the video being touted across the news & social media. Analyzing it from a marketing POV:
1. Out of context, the video is pretty bad. Damaging to people's feelings & damaging to his work. He should have gone into PR damage control mode
immediately. Not only that, but even within context, the way he spoke about things could be misconstrued a thousand different ways. Racism is a
very sensitive topic, and having moved from comics to persuasion professionally, this should have been a huge red flag in his own mind when presenting the video.
2. He knows how the media operates & has written about it in several books, so he should have known
exactly how it would be distributed.
3. He didn't make much of an effort to get out there & clear things up. It's
really hard to change public perception once you've been branded a certain way!
4. He didn't offer any kind of apology for the whole situation (intention vs. impact).
5. He went with the whole "being white is OK" for another comic he later posted on Twitter. I
highly doubt that he's unaware of the historical nature of that particular phrase. So rather than making an effort to clear his name, it seems like he just sort of doubled-down & went to stir the pot.
6. He's made some pretty off-colored comments in the past, which are all getting dredged up now. I 100% agree with the accountability aspect of the public reaction here.
Impact:
1. He claims to have lost 80% of his income. Public estimates put him at a net worth of $50 to $75 million, so I'm sure he's not hurting too much, but still, why would you tank your empire like that & not act
immediately to do damage control? It's like Kanye & Adidas all over again!
2. His comic was dropped by a ton of newspapers. He stated that Dilbert will only be available on his subscription service on the Locals platform.
3. He said “My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist". I don't know if the backlist includes other products, but "To date, more than 40 “Dilbert” reprint books have been published, with “The Dilbert Principle” becoming a New York Times best-seller. Total “Dilbert” book and calendar sales have topped 20 million units, according to Andrews McMeel." Also, "On Monday, Adams' distributor, Andrews McMeel Universal, said they are severing ties with the cartoonist because the company does not support "any commentary rooted in discrimination or hate."
4. His book agent dropped him.
Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn, in a letter to readers, said “
It’s a staggering string of statements, all but certain to result in the loss of his livelihood." From what I can tell, he doesn't have a public-facing middleman to act as a buffer between what he wants to say & how he says it. According to his statements, the tweet below was his intention, but yeah...what a
staggering string of mistakes to make:
1. The video was bad
2. The concept of the video was poorly done
3. The poll it was based on was garbage
4. The whole "it's OK to be white" phrase has double meaning
5. His post-viral response was not good in how he decided to respond to everything
The whole thing just boggles my mind. He has enough media connections to instantly hop on & clear things up, and even promote a good discussion about things in order to change the narrative direction on the news. He did the Hotep interview & made a few statements like the one below, but like...when you're on
CNN headline news as being accused of being racist, and if you don't want to be seen that way, why on
earth wouldn't you go into overdrive mode to protect your brand & your personal reputation?
We used to study media & marketing failures like this back in college, both on how the media takes a selective portion of a statement, crafts a narrative, and runs with it, which changes the minds & hearts of people as they cater to their selected audience demographics, as well as how having a single person be the face of a brand can adversely affect the business line when people's behaviors go off the rails. Especially when this has multiple facets: is racism bad? Yes. Is how he did the video & everything after that bad? Yes. Is how the media portrayed it, out of context, bad? Yes.
There are, of course, no repercussions for the media's take on it, because it's just another story sold to generate advertising revenue. But he also had a pretty big media damage control failure on a personal level by not
instantly addressing, clarifying, and correcting the issue, as well as simply issuing an apology for how it might be construed. Just kind of blows my mind. Doesn't take much to clarify. Doesn't take much to be kind. The video, especially as he presented it, should have never existed in the first place, but his response to the fallout has been...uncanny. For those of us who are Dilbert fans...bummer.
