An actress of the talent, wealth and social status of Reese Witherspoon is, at this point, a figure-head rather than the hands-on president of her clothing company. Therefore, this post is not anti-Reese anything, rather aimed at those whose public relations ambitions can lead their figure-head into unintended ethical trouble.
Draper James
Draper James is not a person, per se, but the label of a clothing company she was advised to launch. This is nothing unusual. Over time, many celebrities have endorsed all kinds of products and claim to be active participants in their development.
Draper James is Reese Witherspoon’s clothing company. And why not? She has the mid-40s female demographic, the platform and she employs people to maintain that platform. In April 2020, Witherspoon’s publicity team struck upon the PR hook to “give away” dresses to beleaguered teachers who were caught up in the coronavirus pandemic. The teachers overwhelmingly loved the idea of a giveaway to honor them.
Here is where the publicists ran into trouble. The teachers, who were led to believe Ms. Witherspoon was actually going to give them dresses quickly realized that – at best – only a fraction of them would receive anything. Enraged, three of those teachers filed a class-action lawsuit.
Part of the issue is that in order to participate, the teachers who responded were required to give Ms. Witherspoon’s organization their personal information. What they didn’t note was that embedded in the free dress giveaway offer was the sentence, “while supplies last.”
What Supplies?
The New York Times reported that when the online application was posted on Instagram, “the giveaway was viewed 400,000 times and close to one million applications had been received.”
However, what Draper James did not disclose was that the company was only prepared to give out 250 dresses. The legal documents disclosed that the cost of those dresses would have amounted to only $12,500. It has certainly been mentioned that at a time when other A-List stars have given away millions, Ms. Witherspoon gave away peanuts in return for lots of feel-good publicity.
To that end, the company has been accused of exploiting about a million teachers for personal information and publicity purposes while the company put out virtually nothing in expenses. Naturally, when teachers across the country saw that their applications weren’t even acknowledged, the teachers (no strangers to the internet!) blasted the organization.
Trying to get out in front of the mess, we have Marissa Cooley, a senior vice president for the brand’s marketing and creative departments, prepared a statement for the press “We felt like we moved too quickly and didn’t anticipate the volume of the response. We were really overwhelmed. It was way more volume than the company had ever seen. We expected the single-digit thousands.”
An attorney for Draper James said, “This lawsuit is an unjust attempt to exploit Draper James’ good intentions to honor the teacher community by gifting hundreds of free dresses. The fact that supplies were limited, such that a free dress could not be provided to every teacher who responded, was disclosed and is no basis for a lawsuit.”
Now Witherspoon’s company must defend their actions.
Good Intentions?
My first question might be “What happened to all of the personal information?” Collecting a million or more email addresses, names, addresses and such, from a prime demographic, is pretty powerful stuff. The publicists saw an opportunity to collect it and by all measures, they were successful. For $12,500 they bought a treasure chest of data.
The teachers responding to the give-away are hardly stupid people. It is difficult to imagine that a million of them were so naïve as to not understand the wording of the giveaway. Fine print, after all, can sometimes be very fine. Anyone who has ever read a contract understands what can potentially be hidden in the back pages.
The publicists at Draper James saw an opportunity here to mobilize a fan base of a million or more teachers in return for almost nothing. Whether intentional or unintentional, their enthusiasm to “reward” the “little people,” imploded. At the very least, Reese Witherspoon or her handlers should do something; perhaps a half-price coupon for the advertised dress. Perhaps Witherspoon can donate a “measly” dollar for every teacher who responded to her give-away to an educational organization. That would be nice too. Perhaps both.
They are not obligated to apologize and admit to an ethical misstep. On the other hand, an adoring public is very fickle. Backlashes happen. It leads me, once again, to the farming of their personal information. Will those million or more teachers start receiving SPAM? Will there be phishing attempts for more data? Will advertisers try to network into their schools?
The lesson here is ethical. It speaks to a lack of oversite and poor controls. The true stupidity here is not on the shoulders of those who responded to the offer but to those who posted it.
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