The perspective of the company's development versus cancel culture

The so-called cancel culture has been one of the hottest concepts of the last year. On the one hand, it gives consumers and businesses power and allows them to express themselves. On the other hand, for this reason, today it is extremely easy to get into an image crisis that will undermine the company's development prospects. 

Working in business without a good plan is like walking in complete darkness - maybe you can get there, but you're not sure. To be successful on the market, you need to take conscious steps and act strategically. What is the company's development prospect? Does your company have a chance to develop to gain a competitive advantage on the market?

The perspective of the company's development over time - strategy is the basis

If you want to be successful in business, you need a solid plan. Development strategy it specifies goals, determines the resources needed to achieve these goals, and determines the stages and schedule of activities for the coming years. It is also worth including success measurability indicators in the strategy, which will allow you to check whether the implemented solutions are bringing the expected results.

The strategy shows a realistic prospect for the company's development in a given period of time. Thanks to it, you know what steps you have to take to constantly climb up the ranks of the market hierarchy.

Company development perspective - SWOT analysis

In order to prepare an effective development strategy and assess the real chances of success in business, it is necessary to comprehensively analyze the micro- and macro-environment of the enterprise. A SWOT analysis can help in this. SWOT analysis allows you to know:

• strengths of the company (S - strenghts) - elements that distinguish the company and increase its chances of success,
• weaknesses of the enterprise (W) - defects, obstacles that negatively affect the company's development prospects,
• opportunities arising from the environment (O - opportunities) - external factors that create favorable conditions for development,
• threats posed by the environment (T - threats) - threats that may hinder the development of the company (e.g. those resulting from the activities of the competition).

The SWOT analysis will determine the real perspective of the company's development. It will indicate the direction that must be taken to successfully operate on the market. It will serve as a base for creating a solid one competitive strategythat will guarantee the company's success. But what if your success streak is interrupted?

What is cancel culture?

Cancel culture stands for withdrawing support for a given company, organization or person for philosophical reasons. It may be related to the type of business or inconvenient facts about the production or sales process.

EXAMPLE: Resignation from cooperation with a clothing company that produces clothes in poor working and environmental conditions in Asia.

This concept is closely related to social media. Because it is often there that a rebellion and movement against a given company or person is born. Characteristically, apart from rational reasons for breaking cooperation (as in the example above), cancel culture can also destroy company's development prospects because of the impression, opinion or even lack of position on a specific issue.

EXAMPLE: A company's Twitter boycott following an ill-considered tweet from the son of a business owner.

In the Twitter example, you can see that the boundaries of cancel culture are widening. In theory, any activity of the employee or contractors may be a threat. But also partners or tenants, and finally: families of people placed high in the company structures. Sometimes the attitude of the owner of the company has not changed for years. However, social trends have changed and a formerly neutral statement today causes outrage. 

Public traces of past activities

If it were just a matter of refraining from irritating comments on an ongoing basis, cancel culture would not be such a big problem for business owners. However, it is also about words that have already been said - even if they were decades ago. Today, we often see the words spoken by stars or politicians in their youth being taken out of context. Unfortunately, online archives are eternal, and a video or post from years ago may come out at the most unfavorable moment and sabotage the company's development prospects.

How to deal with it?

First of all, it is worth doing a marketing audit of all traces on the Internet, such as:

• history of the company's owner's public posts on social media,
• all available videos about the company and its most important people,
• former blog entries, content on the website,
• entries in registers,
• content in the press transferred to the Internet and on portals,
• posts on forums, in groups.

Many such things can be deleted after many years. Others will remain, but they won't shock you if the business owner knows about them in advance.

Sometimes the risk of negative impacts can be completely eliminated on the company's development prospects through appropriate remedial actions. For example, consistently creating the image of a company owner as a colorful character may mean that when the original movie from years ago appears, it will not make such an impression on the recipients. You can also join a public conversation about how easy it is today to lose your good name through small and meaningless gestures from many years ago.

How to improve the company's development prospects and avert the crisis?

Owners and management generally try not to provoke the public into strong judgments. They still remain company employees. As long as their words from years ago do not flagrantly violate the law, it is a good tactic to establish that the company is not responsible for comments from employees when they were not yet employed. This significantly improves the company's development prospects, even in difficult situations. And it also cuts the way once and for all for those who would like to take advantage of the weaknesses of employees from the past. Unfortunately, cancel culture is more and more often used to discredit competition.

It is also worth making your employees aware of sharing opinions about their workplace on social media. Many people sign the clause when they start work NDA. Describing problems with the boss or internal procedures could break her. It's a good idea to control whether photos from corporate events and posts are shared as public or private.

The other side of cancel culture - discrediting competition

In many industries, the owners of key companies know each other very well, because everyone has been participating in the same events for years. There is no shortage of opportunities to discredit a business opponent in order to worsen the company's development prospects. How to defend against it? In important matters, it is worth speaking with one voice with representatives of other companies in the industry. This builds a coalition and makes it difficult to later damage the image of one company at the expense of others. 

An interesting example of this tactic is the collaboration of vaccine companies. Initially, the media reported negative descriptions of how the preparation works by one or another company. However, competition did not benefit from confusion, because legal or medical doubts only undermined public confidence in the vaccines themselves. As a result, today you can see a practically uniform front of representatives of all such companies, and the amount of dirty games from competitors has practically dropped to zero. An aspect of cancel culture that is rarely discussed is that everyone can lose out. It is very easy to find inconvenient facts in the activities of any company or entrepreneur. Therefore, starting a war with competition may backfire.

CC and the company's development perspective in social media

In the light of this information, it may seem that it is better not to use social media anymore than to accidentally write something that will then destroy the company's development prospects. In a way it is. Modern communication channels they enforce a certain lightness and freedom of expression, which is very easy to use against the company later. Therefore, it is actually better not to post "hot" inconsiderate and potentially controversial entries.

The calendar of entries should be subordinate communication strategy. It is worth creating posts in advance and employing professionals to do so, which minimizes the risk of problems. First of all, it's worth it with the help of an agency public relations keep your finger on the pulse when it comes to the company's presence in social media. Not everyone is aware of the fact that today on TikTok, teenagers often present documents, bills or photos that discredit companies. Their fans spread the content on other platforms and messages in no time, and even create their own where they add more arguments. Such videos spread like fire, but fortunately they fade out just as quickly with time, especially with appropriate countermeasures.

Contact us if you need ready-made advice on the company's development prospects in the era of cancel culture. Together with specialists, it is much easier to defend your good name on the Internet, and above all - to prevent crises.