My friend Julie Hein shared an article with me yesterday afternoon. Her email subject line?
“The Anti-Dove”
In seminars and workshops, I put Dove on a pedestal for their Campaign For Real Beauty as a prime example of values guiding a company’s marketing plan.
For example, I often share the video “Evolution” in my seminars.
Click me if you can’t see the embedded video full of awesome.
It appears you can say the same is true for another company. In “Abercrombie & Fitch Refuses To Make Clothes For Large Women,” the Business Insider article Julie sent me, Ashley Lutz writes:
Teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch doesn’t stock XL or XXL sizes in women’s clothing because they don’t want overweight women wearing their brand.
They want the “cool kids,” and they don’t consider plus-sized women as being a part of that group.
You may not like it. You may think Abercrombie and its customers are shallow, vapid, empty, faux-tanned shells of human beings who just pronounced the “x” in faux.
Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries doesn’t care. Lutz quotes Jeffries from a 2006 interview with Salon:
“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
The thing is… while you might not like it, it doesn’t mean this fraction-of-a-man’s strategy is bad. In fact, it’s very smart.
As my mentor and business partner Roy Williams wrote a couple years ago, we define ourselves more by what we exclude.
Hobby Lobby would sell more craft supplies if they were open on Sundays, but they exclude a full 1/7 of possible working days for God. Chick-fil-A would sell more food. It’s the same thing. Sort of.
And I don’t think we should write letters to the President demanding Abercrombie change their policy. Frankly, I think public protests outside their stores would make CEO Jeffries squeal with glee. He welcomes this publicity as a siren song to his shallow end of the pool.
You’re welcome, Creepy Creeperson.
Williams has also said that “we buy what we buy because our choices remind us – and tell the world around us – who we are.”
Abercrombie has a right to sell clothes to whomever they wish, and I have a right to think they suck.
See? The system works.
What, who, where, or when does your company exclude? Why? Tell us those things, and we can help you with your strategic plan. Unless we don’t share your values, then we’d both be happier if you worked with someone else.
See? Again, the system works.
Abercrombie is loving you, right now. Their brand wasn’t even on my radar and now I have to go their website to see what the “cool kids” wear.
And you have awesome companies like H&M who use a plus size model for their swimsuits and are grateful and proud of the fact (http://style.time.com/2013/05/08/hm-praised-for-using-size-12-model-in-swimwear-campaign/). I had a very positive interaction with them recently via email about this as well.
Tim is 100 percent right. A&F seems to have the spotlight every few years whether it’s with their hiring practices (or firing practices), the outlandish and teen-coveted, sexulaized magazine or a $50 T-shirt with an explicit message (see the entire product criticism on the A&F wikipedia page).
The main point is that the general public and media are talking about A&F and all those conversations just make the cool kids want to buy the clothes and others to see what they’re missing.
Exclusion is nothing new for A&F and it isn’t hurting the business bottom line. It may not be ethical, kind or bettering the world in anyway, but is selling clothes, albeit skimpy, overly-expensive clothes.
Vote with consumer dollars, if you don’t like their business practices, you don’t have to shop there. Just be wary of forbidding your teenagers from shopping at A&F, it will probably lead to them buying the clothes and telling you they’re borrowing it from their bestie. (Not that I ever did that myself…)
You can read my full post on this here: http://wp.me/pOLQ5-G8
Love it! I feel the same way… we EXCLUDE a bunch of people. We started a radio station 4 years ago… and decided we didn’t WANT to appeal to everyone! But we DID want to appeal to SOMEONE! We picked our niche… we took our little 99 watt translator (and AM daytimer) and put 80’s music on it…. ONLY 80’s music!
Now four short years later… we’ve gained a pretty impressive following… we have some of the COOLEST fans in the world… and we watch as more and more 80’s memories are being dragged back into the spotlight.
We were told “80’s will never work… you need to do 80’s AND 90’s to succeed” but we said…. NOPE! Not for now… we will exclude that for a while. We now have 130 DEVOTED FANS with our station logo as a permanent tattoo (no joke… see pix here – http://mysunnyradio.com/tattoos.htm )
EXCLUDE AWAY…. because that means that you KNOW WHO YOU ARE TRYING TO REACH!! (I think a target is a good thing)
John Small
Sunny Radio… where it’s ALWAYS in the 80s!