H&M Crisis

H&M is a popular fast fashion brand. Over the years, they've expanded their store to include women's, men's, and children's fashion. In the past H&M has remained fairly non-controversial, however, in 2018 they had a social media crisis that went viral.

H&M went viral in the worst way when social media users pointed out the obvious racism in putting a hoodie with a slur on a young black boy. People also pointed out the fact that the white boy wearing the other jungle design was not in this same hoodie, therefore sparking debates over whether this was a pointed use of a racial slur. H&M faced major backlash for this terrible mistake, going truly viral, as everyone, including celebrities were talking about the incident.

To social media users, this mistake was a very obvious and purposeful one. Whether intended or not, it really showcased that H&M didn't seem to care about educating their staff on diverse issues. This photoshoot was seen as being extremely behind, and not up to par with the equity people deserve and expect in 2018.

Many celebrities brought up how terrible this is. Even Lebron James took to social media to 'redesign' the photo of this young boy where he is being celebrated as a black boy and not wearing the hoodie. A strong response also came from The Weeknd. The Weeknd was heavily disappointed, and took action on the issue by cutting ties with the brand. This garnered even more media attention, because the huge celebrity names made this crisis reach even more people.

H&M then took action on the issue by announcing they would hire a diversity manager, and making the hoodie no longer for sale. This was important movement in the brand, because many people's initial assumptions of the brand based on the photo was that they probably did not have any diverse persons in the decision making room. This also hurt people because it is sad to see such a major company lack diversity.

I believe H&M did what they best could after a crisis like this. In a perfect world they would have hired diverse people from the get-go, however, that's not what happened. One of the key things I believe an organization can do after a crisis is proving they can change with a tangible action. I think they did just that by hiring a diversity manager. My only critique is they probably could've gone the extra step by committing to hiring more diverse people across departments including in leadership roles. I think their response was appropriate, however, I think their crisis was severe enough where it will take a while for the public to trust them again. That's why I recommend over these next few years H&M continues to commit to more and greater diversity efforts so something like this never happens again.