North Face discovers that its converged marketing department doesn’t know anything about their own products or what goes into them.
It started with a nice gesture. Adam Anderson, the CEO of Innovex Downhole Solutions, wanted to buy his employees a Christmas gift. So he ordered 400 North Face jackets and asked that their corporate logo be included.
Then came the bad news. The North Face company would sell Innovex the jackets but wouldn’t include the energy company’s logo. The reason? Innovex was an oil and gas company, and it would be a bad thing for North Face’s public image to associate itself with the industry.
Not happy with that answer, Anderson struck back with some public relations of his own. It turns out the vast majority of North Face’s apparel—its hoodies, snow pants, coats and many other items in its product line, like backpacks and tents—are made with polyester, polyurethane and nylon, all of which come from petroleum. Even its fancy fleece jackets are made of polyester.
“The irony in this statement is that your jackets are made from oil and gas products the hardworking men and women of our industry produce,” Anderson noted in a letter he sent to Steve Rendle, CEO of VF Corp. (which includes the North Face brand), on LinkedIn. “I think this stance by your company is counter-productive virtue signaling, and I would appreciate you re-considering this stance.”
It would be even more Good, Beautiful, and True if the suppliers of the oil and gas products to North Face refused to ship them any products until Mr. Rendle backs down and sends Innovex the jackets with the logos on them. In fairness, though, I very much doubt that the denizens of North Face’s marketing department know where meat comes from.
Speaking of rhetoric, now that the rainbow freaks aren’t using it anymore, it would be useful to adopt the LGBT acronym for our own.
L = The Light of the World
G = The Good
B = The Beautiful
T = The True