Around 2003 Cadbury faced a public relations crisis where it was reported that there were dead insects inside the packaging of some customers candy bars. According to Cadbury’s side of the story it was a shopkeeper in Mumbai who reported publicly that he found dead insects inside the packaging of a Cadbury chocolate bar. The company claimed that the customer had issues with Cadbury before reporting the insect issue. Regardless of the cause of the reporting, the FDA got involved and began testing. Their tests found that there were, in fact dead and live insects inside the packaging. Cadbury blamed the storage facility on the shopkeepers end and claimed that their manufacturing facilities were up to standard and would not have allowed for insects to get inside the packaging. Despite this, sales plummeted for Cadbury.

According to businessworld.com, Cadbury responded in three key ways. They put a key focus on consumer education. This including allowing people to come view their factories and see the manufacturing process in person. From this media and the public were able to see for themselves the top notch equipment and process and from there determine that Cadbury was, in fact a company that they could trust. They also invested in new packaging that was more protective to prevent from any sort of tampering. Lastly they took to the media and invested more money in advertising. They kept a constant stream of information to the media about the situation and also about the changes that they were making and the precautions they were taking.

Cadbury effectively handled a public relations crisis. They were honest and overly cautious in how they handled everything and that definitely played to their advantage. Their transparent approach allowed the general public to see for themselves that their manufacturing was sound and safe. They were also very vocal about what they were doing and did not hide anything. In the end, consumers quickly forgave the company and the brand is still widely popular.

Underwater Icon set by Elisabetta Calabritto found on Behance

Consistency/Repetition

One of the things Prof. Kerr asked Kyle Adams in the podcast was about how to he goes about determining the “set of rules” he uses for a given set of icons. While I am unable to discuss this with the designer of these icons, it is clear that each icon follows a set rules. Kyle Adams said that the way he establishes continuity throughout an icon set is by designing 3 icons to start out and then using those three icons as a style guide for the rest of the set. These three icons can be three different sizes or dimensions that represent the boundaries that the rest of the set can follow. This set shows kind of the same thing. There are about three different icon sizes that are repeated with various designs.

Color

The designer’s use of color adds to the continuity of these icons. She uses a navy stroke that is the same width throughout the set. She also sticks to the same 7 colors for each of the different icons. So, while each icon is different in what it is, it matches well because of the continuous color palette. The colors that she chose are also notable. She sticks to mostly muted colors except for a few places where she uses a more vibrant orange. This helps to balance out her mostly neutral palette and acts as a sort of accent color providing the overall design another level of depth and contrast.

Purpose

This may sound like a strange title but something that was discussed in the podcast quite a bit was designing for a client and establishing the purpose of what you are designing. In the example that was given for these icons they are used for sea food packaging. They clearly represent the types of sea food that are labeled on these bags. I think this concept is really important as a designer. It is easy to get off track in the actual design portion and lose track of what is actually expected. This designer does a good job of representing different objects in a simple way that clearly conveys what the pictures represent.

December 30th, 2020 was a very bad day for a careless, drunk, distracted or just plain unlucky member of Walmart’s social media team. In response to the election results, Senator Josh Hawley Tweeted, “Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard. I will object on January 6 on their behalf.” In response to this, the Walmart employee responded by saying, “Go ahead, get your 2 hour debate. #SoreLoser,” through Walmart’s official Twitter account and to an audience of about 1.2 million followers.

Walmart responded quickly by saying that the tweet, “Was mistakenly posted by a member of our social media team who intended to publish this comment to their personal account. We have removed the post and have no intention of commenting on the subject of certifying the electoral college. We apologize to Senator Hawley for this error and any confusion about our position.”

Walmart responded to this mistake succinctly without giving too much information and drawing too much attention to themselves or the employee in question. They quickly deleted the tweet and moved on.

Politics are definitely tricky especially during this time with a polarizing election, pandemic and social movements to name a few. The last thing a company would want, especially a big company like Walmart, is to affiliate with an idea, person or political stance that might ostracize groups of their consumers.

Mistakes are bound to happen, and Walmart handled this one with authority, dignity and timeliness. From this example, Public Relations following a mistake is best handled the same way that mistakes should be handled in an average person’s life, with honesty, humility, and a long term perspective. Walmart did just that and the issue quickly became water under the bridge.

Chip Wilson is the founder of Lululemon and was given some backlash after a number of yoga pants sold by the company were reported to be overly sheer and revealing. In response he made comments to the media such as, “Some women’s bodies just actually don’t work.” These comments implied that the issue with the pants was not due to the quality of the pants, rather the women who were wearing the pants and their size. The incorrectness of Wilson’s comment is further supported by the fact that the company had had problems in the past with other legging designs that were made poorly and had removed those from production

He then faced further backlash due to his body shaming comments that went along with some other practices of the company. Ultimately this affected sales of the company and Wilson posted a public apology video. This video was not received well either due to the fact that it only addressed his employees and the people of Lululemon and did not mention anything about the offensive remarks he had so openly said previously.

This whole situation was handled very poorly from the start. The first thing Wilson did wrong is he failed to recognize and own up to the fact that Lululemon was selling a low quality product for way more than it was worth. He then addressed the problem selfishly and without any mind to who his audience was and the customers he was driving away because of this. Not to mention the message that he was sending out on behalf of his company. After this response received so much backlash he had to do something, he failed again by giving a half done apology and failing to address the things he actually should have apologized for. This lack of proper PR practices and understanding of the audience he was addressing ultimately hurt Lululemon.

Bumble Bee

Flower Bee

Cacti

Maddie’s Eye

Lemons

Red Flowers

Violin

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton