Apparel November 2019 Apparel November 2019 issue | 页面 52

FEATURE
APPAREL BRANDS FACE
A MAJOR CHALLENGE IN
GATHERING THE RIGHT
INFORMATION.
REPUTATION MANAGEMENT IN ACTION
Let us take an example of a sportswear brand—
an athleisure and athletic-wear company that
sponsors numerous individuals across a variety
of sports. Now, let us assume that one of its
ambassadors gets caught in a national scandal,
attracting criticism from large groups of public.
Some might think the right thing for the brand
to do would be severing its association with this
scandalous player. After all, this is what a typical
brand-management strategy would suggest. But
they would be wrong.
The described scenario is precisely what
happened in the United States, when Nike-
sponsored American football athlete Colin
Kaepernick was mired in controversy for taking
a knee during the national anthem as a political
protest against police violence. This move
generated massive controversy as everyone from
the laymen to the President criticised the player
for his actions. Conventional thinking would
have had Nike immediately drop Kaepernick as
a brand ambassador. Instead, Nike chose to
support Kaepernick and retained his contract.
This decision was seen by many as foolish
and repugnant to American values. However, it
was actually highly sensitive to the thoughts of
the majority of regular citizens. Nike was able to
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November 2019
pick a definitive side in a highly divisive debate
and put its money where its mouth was, instead
of cowering to fear. The result: Within a year of
this incident, Nike had achieved a 31 per cent
increase in sales, claimed US$163 million in
earned media, and boosted its brand value by
US$6 billion. This was the result of sophisticated
reputation-management strategies that allowed
Nike to differentiate itself from others by
leveraging a negative situation.
IMPLEMENTING REPUTATION
MANAGEMENT
All of business is the use of the right information,
at the right time, and towards the right goals, and
reputation management is no different. In this
regard, apparel brands face a major challenge in
gathering the right information. For this purpose,
there is a number of tools at their disposal, such
as enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms,
account-based marketing systems, and product