Lululemon Fails to Make Lemonade      

From the Editor  

We discussed not one, but two separate crises for yoga outfitter Lululemon on our blogs this past week, giving the company the dubious honor of becoming one of the few organizations which have had completely separate crises close enough together to be featured in the same newsletter.

 

The most damaging was, of course, CEO Chip Wilson's disastrous Bloomberg interview, which outraged women pretty much everywhere and has led to major fallout across Lululemon's social media presence.

 

Obviously an apology was in order, but when we saw the one below, posted to YouTube last Friday, we knew right away the company was headed for more of the same.

A message from Chip Wilson.

First off, Wilson completely lost me 12 seconds in when he practically rolled his eyes while telling everyone how very, very sad he is. 

So, he's sad, sad that his company faced repercussions from his actions and sad that the people at Lululemon had to take the brunt of the anger from stakeholders. He takes responsibility for the impact...but only on employees, and he makes certain to tell everyone at Lululemon they're above participating in the discussion thousands of their stakeholders are having right now.

Uhm...where was the apology exactly? 

Wilson completely and totally ignored the audience he angered with his comments during the Bloomberg interview, failing to address them once or show a single drop of compassion for anyone but himself and his company.

Lululemon had the perfect opportunity to make lemons out of lemonade here, and utterly failed to do so. 

Inviting women of various shapes and sizes to focus group and assist the company in bettering their product, a campaign aimed at encouraging everyone, regardless of body type, to get out there and exercise, these are just a couple ideas off the top of my head. I'm certain a good PR team could have dreamt up an amazing list of ways for the Lululemon brand to show just how much it cares about keeping everyone fit and helping them to enjoy yoga together

Instead, they did none of this, making it pretty clear Wilson, and the shot callers at Lululemon, simply don't care as long as they're still raking in the dough. 

Thank you, and read on.

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Jonathan Bernstein is both publisher of Crisis Manager and president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., a national crisis management public relations agency providing 24/7 access to crisis response professionals. The agency engages in the full spectrum of crisis management services: crisis prevention, response, planning & training. He has been in the public relations field since 1982, following five-year stints in both military intelligence and investigative reporting.

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Erik Bernstein is editor of Crisis Manager and is also Social Media Manager for Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.

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