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Facebook hell for Lowes

Submitted by James on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 5:33pm

It's hard to imagine a more spectacular social business fail than what we've witnessed from Lowes over the past two days. Under pressure from a handful of high-profile religious activists, the company backed away from an informed business decision in order to placate bigotry ... which is never a winning strategy. The result? Lowes has pissed off millions of Muslim Americans, as well as millions of other people, like me, who object to their corporate cowardice.

A dumbass move and a crappy apology. If I were on their board, the CEO would be fired.

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Comments

That first link is from Adweek

Submitted by James on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 5:38pm.

and had a good summation of Lowes' incompetence:

Josh Bernoff, senior vp of idea development at Forrester Research and co-author of Groundswell and Empowered, says Lowe's has made several strategic errors throughout this ordeal. First was the decision to pull the ads. Now, he says, it's compounding the problem by responding only to press questions and remaining mute in social media. Its most recent tweet, from Saturday, directs people to the Facebook post. Since then, the discussion has only gotten more heated as national news media have picked up the original story. "Hoping this will die down if you don't participate never works," says Bernoff. "It doesn't tamp down anything." He adds: "The first thing they need to do is decide what they believe. It's not clear at this point." After that, he says, they need to put that message out in every online medium possible.

I wonder if people are starting to think that the leading companies in North Carolina are led by boneheaded, ignorant executives?

Home Depot cut out earlier

Submitted by gregflynn on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 6:00pm.

According to the Florida Family Association website, Home Depot cut their ads prior to November 16th:

We checked into this and although one of our commercials did appear during one of these episodes, we are not a sponsor of this show and we do not have any advertising scheduled to run on future episodes. Thank you very much for contacting us.

Lowes

Submitted by Chris Lines (not verified) on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 6:11pm.

My partner and I quit shopping at Home Depot some months ago when the founder made some asinine RWNJ informed about Democrats. Then when he was trying to get Chris Christie to jump in the GOP race, that sealed it. Now. Lowes is being utterly stupid. Well. We'll have to find a local independent hardware store. Good luck with that considering the above mentioned stores have killed most if not all independent local hardware stores. Lowes was STUPID in their cognitive dissonance on this decision. Just like NBC was when the caved to the American Family Assoc. and cancelled Book of Daniel several years ago. I'm so f'ing tired of companies and MSM caving to these RWCNJ's.

More advice for Lowes

Submitted by James on Wed, 12/14/2011 - 12:02pm.

Too bad they didn't think first and knee-jerk later.

Fabulous email re: Lowes

Submitted by James on Wed, 12/14/2011 - 1:27pm.

From a friend:

___________________________________

Yo Mateys,

Much as I love going to Lowe's, they've REALLY pissed me off on this one. Lowe's just pulled its ads from a reality show on TLC which features the everyday lives of Muslim families in Detroit.

Seems the mega-board store caved in to the disgusting blather from a "Christian conservative" group based in Florida. The Florida Family Association (exactly whose family are they a part of? Charles Manson's?!) objected to the Discovery Channel/TLC's "All-American Muslim" calling it ...

"propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values."

In other words, those devout wackos didn't like the fact that this show portrayed Muslims as "normal" Americans as opposed to insane jihadists seeking to destroy us all. How the hell those dick-heads can call themselves CHRISTIAN is beyond me.

In any case, there have always been hate groups spewing their toxic nastiness in the name of God. The KKK comes to mind. These morons from Florida are just one of many. But that doesn't mean anybody should cave into their vitriol. Lowe's demonstrated bad judgment and money-grubbing
greed in their decision.

So, If Lowe's wants to boycott an entire race of people just to make a few bucks, well, screw 'em. They'll have to get by without my money.

California State Senator Ted Lieu called Lowe's decision "bigoted, shameful, and un-American" and "profoundly ignorant."

CREDO joined State Senator Lieu in calling on Lowe's to reverse its decision. And I did, too. I actually went a bit further than just signing this petition. I visited my local Lowe's store and told the manager face to face what I was doing and why. For what it's worth, he was embarrassed by his company's actions.

You can sign the petition at the link below.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/lowes/?r_by=32042-1944016-c7ZaDKx&rc...

C'mon, folks. What are we fighting for around the world? Is this bigoted crapolla the "democracy" we hope other countries will embrace? Really????

Don't be silent on this one.

Thanks for the link

Submitted by jlgolden on Wed, 12/14/2011 - 5:07pm.

I also wrote Lowe's ... as much as I enjoy going there, they've lost my business. If they apologize and do the right thing, I'll be back. If not, I don't mind driving a little farther and paying a little more for a little less blatant bigotry.

ignorant people look for

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 02/22/2012 - 9:08pm.

ignorant people look for things to blow out of proportion, stretch truth & facts into gross misreprsentations of truth, james you need to get educated to see the facts for what they are