Nonexistent crisis management from the pen maker
Are you a woman? Are those manly black, white, red and blue pens keeping you from writing? Well look no further, because Bic’s “for Her” line is here!
Yes, we’re being sarcastic, but no, we aren’t making up the “for Her” line. Industry leader Bic caught a load of heat late last month when it introduced a new line of pens with multicolored shells targeted specifically at women. Problem is, the entire idea is about 60 years behind its time. Gender roles have evolved quite a bit since the 50’s, and nowadays, targeting a product at delicate womanly sensibilities is far more likely to incite throngs of angry females than send them off into a shopping frenzy.
Supplying a selection of some of the finest tongue-in-cheek writing we’ve ever seen, consumers seemed to relish laying into Bic on its Amazon product page, leaving pages of gems like this one, from user “kitchenwench”:
I was recently given a box of these as a gift from my husband, but I have no idea what to do with them! They’re too thin to make a good rolling pin. I can’t ladle out my soups with them. And the tiny point doesn’t even make a dent when I try to use one to chop veggies! I don’t get it. If I can’t use it in the kitchen, what the hell am I supposed to do with one???
In addition to the sarcastic Amazon posts, there have also been quite a few genuinely angry ones, both there and directly on the Bic Facebook. What has Bic done to stem the tide of negative talk online? Unless burying its head in the sand counts as doing something, Bic has done…nothing. In an interview with Ragan.com’s Matt Wilson, BCM President Jonathan Bernstein voiced his surprise at the sheer lack of online reputation management from Bic:
Jonathan Bernstein of Bernstein Crisis Management says it’s ridiculous Bic doesn’t have a Twitter account through which to address this.
“Other brands must learn that they need to have an active presence and rapid response mechanism online, via social media and other Internet-centered forms of communication,” he says.
Not only does Bic not have a Twitter, but the company didn’t reserve the www.bicforher.com URL, nor did it register @BicForHer on Twitter, which has since been set up as a spoof account and used to further bash the brand.
Now, we know that this misstep isn’t going to shut Bic down. The company is old, extremely established, and leading its markets by a mile, but the fact that it was so unprepared to deal with even relatively minor crisis management does not speak well for the impact that a crisis of larger magnitude could have.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/