The primary purpose of public relations is to establish, improve and maintain public perception. I advise PR and publicity clients to prepare for overwhelming benefits from public exposure as well as blowback that may result of something they say, write or do.
When you’re forward-facing, the company you keep becomes part of your publicity. So do causes, comments and people you support. That said, should you proselytize personal political beliefs to your business’s marketing list?
I encourage publicity partners to be themselves. Be authentic. But it wasn’t long ago when asked, I advised a group of young sports broadcasters to maintain a distance from politics and religion unless their shows were known for them. After a tumultuous half-decade-plus, you can toss those words in a heap with corded phones.
The kicker
This week the seemingly quirky, creative merchandise vendor, Sticker Mule, showed itself to be anything but funky and fun. To be sure, there were signs, but I wrote it off as a niche-company-testing-the-waters sort of thing.
We don’t know the political beliefs of most businesses we patronize and that’s just fine. When they use their professional platform to solicit or preach dangerous ideology, however, we get the gist. That’s what Sticker Mule, the producer of stickers, mailers and more did with a “marketing” email that left a bundle of customers incensed and publicists asking, whaaaat? 
From others’ comments, I learned this isn’t new. People in charge at the Mule reportedly left a trail of disrespectful customer communications and foul social media posts those grew this week. That made a sexist, creepy commercial more on-brand than I knew. (I’d previously contacted the company about the ad, which had a guy leering at a woman in a bar, as a PR goodwill gesture.)
What if that’s what a company stands for?
Maybe ideology is what the company wants to be known for. Will some customers support its message? We’ve seen all ilks. But it certainly lost a good chunk of its base, too.
I personally don’t condone the way it used its marketing email list or the message it sent. It promoted peace in the beginning, which is lovely, but it lost its luster when it glorified and asked customers to support someone who represents the opposite. Was there any thought to public reaction and perception — or didn’t company management care?
I understand some who read this may stand with Sticker Mule, which is your choice. Here, I want friends and a proudly diverse client base to know where I stand. If you’ve used Sticker Mule because of my recommendation, you likely got the same email I did. I apologize. It’s off my vendor list for a lot of reasons. Do what’s right for you.
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©Gail Sideman, gpublicity 2024