As we hit the dog days of summer, and as Shakespeare warned us, tempers will flare.
But, unfortunately, it seems to me that it’s not just the dog days of summer that have led to this moment. As political fires burn at town hall meetings across the country, and as LGBT activists continue to struggle to understand why our issues always seem to fall to the wayside, more and more people appear to be taking the “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to questions.
The brand that started a weekend boil. (Image from change.org.)
The latest example is the firestorm that a misguided Tim Hortons franchisee started when his Rhode Island franchise apparently agreed to sponsor “Rhode Island’s First Ever FREE Celebrate Marriage & Family Day” (brochure). This, almost predictably led to an astoundingly widespread, loud denunciation of Tim Hortons, the Canadian-based doughnut and coffee chain.
As I noted Sunday on Twitter, I am somewhat concerned with this. Not at all with the end result or with folks noting that the Rhode Island franchisee was wrong and misguided, but with the way in which the nearly universal LGBT online response was to just take aim at anyone in their sights — from the National Organization for Marriage to the franchise to the entire “mega-giant” chain.
A franchisee went outside the authorized sponsorship guidelines. As I tweeted, I’d think a call from someone to the folks at Tim Hortons could have taken care of this. Instead, everyone everywhere maligned the company itself all weekend — with most posts not making very — or at all — clear that, so far as we knew, this was the action of one franchisee.
Now that it’s Monday and the management folks at Tim Hortons are back at work, there was an immediate notice that the Rhode Island franchisee’s actions to sponsor the event were outside the sponsorship guidelines and, accordingly, no such sponsorship would be happening.
Some are arguing that this is a show of the power of social media — and it very well may be a show of the loud, rapidly raised voice that we now can muster — but I don’t see any reason, in this situation, not to believe that one phone call to the PR folks at Tim Hortons would have had the same result.
After a lengthy, excellent phone conversation with a fellow blogger about these issues, it seems to me that this situation has lessons for everyone living in the “new media” world:
- Companies: PR is no longer a Monday through Friday 9-5 job. You are failing your company if you don’t have someone keeping up on mentions of your company in newspapers and on TV — but also on blogs and Twitter.
- Organizations and Elected Officials: Same for you. For example, there was a virtual blackout of news regarding the Tel Aviv LGBT center shootings because no U.S. organizations that I could find had out statements until Monday. You quickly can be viewed as a leader on an issue by providing measured, careful reactions that filter through the slow news stream of the weekend. New York City Council President Christine Quinn, in fact, was the only elected official or organization who — that I saw — issued a statement over the weekend.
- Bloggers: News doesn’t stop on the weekends. You can add much more to the dialogue — and become a more trusted resource — by having the capability to respond to breaking news over the weekend. But, your role as a trend-setter by providing weekend breaking-news coverage must be balanced with the limitations faced by the lack of an ability to get responses from companies, organizations or elected officials during the weekend. Rather than “shoot first, ask questions later,” perhaps a “prepare for the worst but hope for (and consider the possibility of) the best” policy would lead to more nuanced breaking-news coverage. Rather than imputing ill motives and assuming the worst, being careful with the facts can allow you to both motivate and inform your audience.
If nothing else, situations like this — just look at the Twitter feed for “Tim Hortons” today — show us that social media has created a new reality that empowers people way outside the traditional PR world to both begin and dramatically influence public opinion on an issue. No matter your vantage-point, things have changed. We all can benefit from thinking carefully about the rules and roles (or lack thereof) involved in these changes — and taking actions accordingly to benefit our long-term aims best, regardless of what they are.
This topic obviously has many implications — far outside the LGBT world — that folks are dealing with in every sector. Please, use the comments to add your thoughts.
[UPDATE: Apologies to Benjamin Dorsey, whose sensible comment -- "Tim Horton's needs to keep a tighter leash on its franchisees." -- I had meant to include in this post as example of a balanced, but strong, view on what was happening with Tim Hortons.]
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found
My inclination is to say that people deserve their weekends. Even bloggers. And if you play the game that the 24-hour news cycle has perpetuated, that first is always the best. That first is the way to force the dialogue in your direction then you end with the same inanity that makes CNN/Fox/MSNBC so unbearable. Just watching them fill air time in order to have SOMETHING there and keep you from changing the channel is really the worst manifestation of our always on culture.
And my second inclination? Um, there is none. I want people to have weekends. I want people to stop and think and not just react. I want space between events and reporting. Perhaps I’m old fashioned.
(This doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t be aware of what’s going on, btw. Just that the need to say something RIGHT. NOW. has ruined discourse.)
As I read through the piles of angry retweets on Monday about the Tim Hortons issue, I remembered the #amazonfail hashtag, which was another mob-mentality episode in PR failure. If you weren’t on Twitter at the time, an Amazon employee accidentally miscategorized a dozen or so whole categories of books as “adult” and caused those books to disappear from search results. People immediately started floating all kinds of conspiracy theories, and Amazon themselves were relatively slow to comment or acknowledge the issue. People got absolutely incensed at LGBT-interest books disappearing from search results, and didn’t notice that cookbooks and home how-to books were also suddenly gone.
Yes, it was a major error, and Amazon did poorly by failing to comment or provide a meaningful statement like “No, actually, this is NOT our new policy, everybody calm down” but I’m still very displeased with the peer pressure to instantly demonize companies that make PR gaffes. As a queer blogger on Twitter, I felt it was very ‘uncool’ to say anything that gave Amazon the benefit of the doubt, and I would be seen as a corporate apologist, so I avoided tweeting about it rather than join the fray. I’m closer to the LGBT community than any other, so I’m not sure if other types of issues gather anywhere near the bad press. It was especially obnoxious to see the same message retweeted hundreds of times after it had already been superseded by an actual response from the company.
You’re right. We’re not a bunch of barbarian slobs like the town hall protesters. So, we should not think, and behave like them either!
Ahh, but here you’re asking people to be REASONABLE, which they don’t want to be if they are the slightest bit angry. Yes, a few phone calls to corporate headquarters would have gotten a good response. But people wouldn’t have been able to scratch that itch they had to scream at someone.
Okay, I’m a grumpy old curmudgeon when it comes to this, but I am unable to imagine how anyone can carry on an intelligent, nuanced discussion of anything on Twitter, where you are limited to 144 characters at a time. All you can use it for is to shout slogans, not to think. (It may have its uses in certain crisis situations like Iran, or simply to give quick ‘newsflashes’ but that’s where it stops, and I seriously worry — when we see the crazies on the right shouting lies and myths — if we can do anything but try and ‘out-shout’ them. But, to someone who doesn’t have the facts, how will they tell our tweets from theirs?
Hi, I’m reading this 15 months late, but wanted to add some clarification.
I wrote the ‘WTF’ piece for Providence Daily Dose that was, I understand, an early factor in defining and directing the vector of responce to a Rhode Island Tim Hortons’ franchise sponsoring NOM-RI’s ‘Marriage and Family Day,’ an essentially anti-gay event primarily driven and sponsored by conservative Catholics here.
At the time I wrote it, PDD was little read outside the city, and most of what readership we had consisted of people who like to party on weekends. I’d been a longtime gay advocate, which obviously made me an opponent of NOM in all its forms, but I was also a fan of Tim Hortons. So when I got the tip from activist Paul Auger, I — there’s no other good word for it — reacted. I’ve been a writer and editor for years, and it was all too easy for me to sit down and vent my spleen over it.
While it might not be obvious, my main impetus was my great disappointment in Tim’s. I knew it had to be some kind of mistake, and in context of Tim’s history in Rhode Island did not have to do with the parent company. Tim’s got its foothold here when Wendy’s took over 36 units of a failed regional coffee and donut chain, Bess Eaton. I can’t know for certain, but I think it’s likely that a lot of people from Bess Eaton transferred over, carrying with them the native ignorance and casual bigotry that’s characteristic of the state’s mainstream culture. NOM-RI is headquartered at a building in downtown Providence that until last week was also home to a Tim’s franchise. While the company remains mum, we think it’s most likely that these guys knew each other, possibly as far back as the Bess Eaton conversion: NOM-RI Advisory Board member Scott Spear, a partner in Providence law firm Blish & Cavanagh, also a sponsor of NOM-RI’s event, was formerly agent for the charitable Bess Eaton Foundation. NOM-RI’s Executive Director, Christopher Plante, said the event was Spear’s “brainchild”.
What I want to make clear at this point is that at the time I wrote the piece, Tim’s was already having problems in Rhode Island that I attributed to a combination of naive ignorance and casual arrogance about doing business in this market. The NOM-RI event sponsorship was the final straw, and a mighty big one. But also at the time, most of my readers were people I already knew, or who at least knew who I was around town, and I did not expect this to go beyond the city’s limits, or even for anyone to read it before Sunday morning.
What changed that is that shortly after posting the piece, I sent a courtesy link to Paul. Paul knew where to send it from there, and did. I had no idea it was already halfway around the world by the time I was 100 miles away, until someone from PDD contacted me in Connecticut early Monday morning telling me that Canadian media wanted to talk to me. I spent that morning on the phone, piecing it together from what they were telling me, and trying not to freak out about it. It turned out to be the most-read piece ever for our site, and the volume of responce nearly crashed it.
It was not my intention to embarrass the company generally, only to motivate a handful of Rhode Islanders to contact the company. I figured that once HQ was alerted, something would be done, and it was, in very short order.
Yes, I could have called them myself. So could Paul. But given the fantastic stupidity of this move — a proudly and famously gay-friendly brand lets its name be used in an event by one of the country’s most vigourously anti-gay groups (NOM was the main force behind California’s Prop
— a stronger message had to be delivered. I just didn’t ever imagine that it could possibly get out of hand the way it did. (If I had, I would have used more grown-up language.)
I agree with your general ethical arguments, but there’s more to this than what you lay out. My visible thesis in the piece is that if Tim Hortons takes their gay-friendly policy seriously, if they really want to be a true friend to gay people, then they need to maintain tighter control over their franchisees. Most of my expected readers already understood this in larger context: Rhode Islanders had already seen what Tim Hortons thought of us. Stores were run inconsistenty, often sloppily. Service was spotty, sometimes rude, often dismissive. They were slow, disorganised, and sometimes snotty. Their prices weren’t competitive. They did not carry iced coffee, a Rhode Island staple — for three years. (The year before, immediately after crossing the border into Canada, I was arrogantly rebuked for ordering one: “We don’t DO that here!” — As if I was some kind of shithead for asking. Mind you, this was literally within sight of a Dunkin Donuts on the other side.) I’d already written and called the Moncton office (since it was obvious the Rhode Island office wasn’t doing their job), and never got a responce, or saw any changes. Seeing their name on that brochure, though I knew it was a mistake, was just the latest and by far biggest blunder. To say I was ready to go off on them is putting it mildly.
And yet, my piece is really that of a ex-girlfriend. Tim’s didn’t piss me off so much as break my heart. By Monday morning, I found that many others felt the same.
From the very beginning, I’ve considered a darker alternative theory about what happened: NOM-RI is a local ‘chapter’ (really just a registered lobby, not an NPO) of the national group. Executive Director Christopher Plante is a lawyer and paid lobbyist. It’s his job to promote NOM’s goals in this state. Canada is famously gay friendly. Tim Hortons is famously gay friendly. Tim’s is, right or wrong, a source of price for many Canadians, who, right or wrong (I would say mistakenly) considered their sudden entry into Southeastern New England (36 stores practically overnight) as a projection of Canadian culture and values. NOM-RI had to be aware of this; they couldn’t possibly be that ignorant. But they probably knew that most local Tim’s were owned and run by traditional Rhode Islanders, not Canadians, that it’s a long way from Moncton and even longer from Toronto, and it was obvious to everyone that HQ had little clue how their stores were being run here.
More: NOM is closely associated with many conservative American groups who quietly despise (and often publicly rebuke) Canadian ways. Many of us believe that U.S. border rules enacted during the Bush II administration were done partly to punish Canada for its liberalism. (At the time, most recently on its plan to relax marijuana laws. The fact that these ’security’ rules about petty drugs went into effect LONG after other rules supposedly enacted for security shortly after 9/11 seems suspect.)
When you add it up, NOM-RI had the motive, means, and opportunity to take Tim’s for a ride, embarrass them publicly, and get some free publicity for themselves — and all on OUR dime, off the sweat of OUR efforts.
I think there’s some evidence for this, especially in how Plante handled the fallout. Not once did he excuse or vindicate Tim’s, not once did he explain what actually happened (and it’s impossible that he doesn’t know), and not once did he or NOM-RI accept any blame whatsoever. They let Tim’s twist in the wind, blamed it all on us, and took every opportunity to make as much hay of it as possible. Perhaps the strongest evidence of all is that to this day, the image of the event brochure with Tim Hortons’ name on it is still online, almost as if to taunt them (and us).
I think this is likely what actually happened. If so, then we played right into their hands. Mr. Plante leveraged our reactionary anger, my talents, and Paul’s contacts, to his clients’ gain. Brilliantly played.
In that scendario, yes, I do feel like a jerk, and I’m sorry. Not sorry for Tim’s: They really did mess up, and legitimately deserved what they got, as far as I’m concerned. I appreciate their quick action and apology, but I’ve worked for companies like that (as most of us have), and it’s easy for me to see how lax they had to be for this to happen. They learned an important lesson, and so did a lot of loyal gay customers of every business purporting to be gay friendly. But I’m sorry that I fed the monster, that I gave NOM-RI free publicity, LOTS of it.
Tim Hortons is gone from Rhode Island now, but NOM-RI remains and we still do not have marriage equality. What has changed is that hopefully, we’re all a little wiser now. NOM-RI won’t be able to play that card again, which I like to think might cramp their style. Prospective sponsors will more carefully vet sponsorship requests, perhaps try using Google next time. (Or read their corporate operations manuals. I did read Tim’s, and the franchisee has no excuse.) I learned that though most of what I do online is mouse farts, an occasional elephant fart escapes, and it can embarrass more than just me.