We continue to be amazed at how often a marketing campaign brings a company not joy and riches but rather a nasty crisis that needs to be confronted. It seems not enough thought is put into what could go wrong. Our latest example comes from Starbucks, whose troubles in South Korea started last month but continue.

The coffee chain’s South Korean branch launched a marketing campaign to promote stainless steel tumblers it called “SS Tanks.” It declared May 18 to be “Tank Day.” The problem: That date marks the anniversary of a 1980 pro-democracy uprising in the city of Gwangju that was suppressed — including with tanks — by the then–military government. Hundreds were killed and injured. Starbucks’ campaign was seen as mocking the victims.

The backlash was quick and intense, with calls for boycotts and reports that sales have fallen. Police opened an investigation after relatives of Gwangju-crackdown victims complained.

“On this historic Gwangju May 18 Democratization Movement Memorial Day, calling an event ‘5.18 Tank Day’ that mocks the blood-soaked struggle of the Gwangju victims and citizens,” South Korean President Lee Jae Myung wrote on X, according to the platform’s translation. “They must be held accountable with the corresponding moral, administrative, legal and political responsibility.”

Fired CEO

The negative response should have been predicted. Fortunately, the company recognized the seriousness of the situation. It pulled the effort within hours and fired the chief executive of Starbucks Korea, according to the Associated Press. The chairman of Seoul-based conglomerate Shinsegae Group, whose supermarket chain Emart owns 67.5 percent of Starbucks Korea, issued a nationally televised apology. That was his second apology concerning the matter.

But apparently it wasn’t enough. The crisis continues. This week, Starbucks Korea announced it would conduct companywide training to address the issue.

Managers and employees of Starbucks Korea HQ were scheduled yesterday (Wednesday) to undergo training led by history and sociology professors. On June 22, for the first time since the chain opened in South Korea in 1999, it will shut its more than 2,000 stores early, at 3 p.m., so employees can watch a videotape of that coaching, which the AP called “mandatory history and social sensitivity training.” The Shinsegae chairman and chief executives of Shinsegae affiates will undergo separate instruction June 24.

“This shows how seriously we are taking the marketing incident and our determination to prevent any recurrence,” Shinsegae said of the companywide effort, according to the Financial Times. The news of the early close got a remarkable amount of coverage, including from the FT, AP, BBC, Bloomberg and Reuters.

‘Public Sentiment’

Starbucks Korea will also overhaul its internal decision-making process in an effort to prevent a similar occurrence, Bloomberg reported. The motivation for the instructional exercises is the same. “The training is aimed at preventing future mistakes by bridging the gap between corporate messaging and public sentiment, and will touch on modern Korean history and how corporate activities intersect with sensitive social themes like gender, labor, human rights and hate speech,” the company said, according to Bloomberg.

That makes sense. That’s the kind of effort it takes. Our only issue is that that sensitivity should have already been part of the company culture. Such sensitivity can prevent crises.

Photo Credit: pinglabel – stock.adobe.com

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