Whether you're a major corporation or a part-time blogger, one of the most important rules of the road is to make sure that you don't abandon your core group of followers.
It's hard enough to make a name for yourself and develop a brand identity in the extremely crowded marketplace that exists today, and the last thing you need to do is to make decisions or take a stand that completely alienates the constituency that has allowed you to succeed in the first place.
Perhaps that's the biggest lesson to be learned from the recent Susan G. Komen fiasco. The non-profit organization was a huge player in the field of women's health issues. It focused primarily on raising both awareness and money in the fight against breast cancer. However, it angered a lot of women across the country last week when it decided that it would no longer donate to Planned Parenthood.
The reason for the outrage was the fact that the money donated by Susan G. Komen to Planned Parenthood was earmarked for breast-cancer screenings for women who would not otherwise be able to afford them. However, due to political pressure from anti-abortion groups and a loose interpretation of the non-profit's donation guidelines, one woman took it upon herself to pull the plug on all that grant money.
Now, Karen Handel, who had been the Vice President of Public Policy, has resigned, though she declined to accept responsibility for the decision to end the funding. The public relations hit that Susan G. Komen endured may not be fixed so quickly.
In today's world of Twitter and Facebook, news of the controversy spread like wildfire and in a heartbeat, all those years of building up brand recognition of the Komen name went out the window. Today, all people think of when they hear Susan G. Komen is not the millions of dollars they've raised and all the lives they may have saved, but rather it is the decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood that comes to mind.
Karen Handel fired off a quick resignation letter and removed herself from the situation, but the mess that she leaves behind is going to take quite a bit longer to heal itself. Few people are going to be wearing ribbons to raise awareness of that sad fact.
Comments