Media can be tricky. Especially social media. One poorly written sentence, ill-timed tweet or poor photo choice, and you’ll end up with your corporate image in a sling.
Ask cloud storage company Dropbox. They know.
Poor Dropbox. When they released their diversity numbers earlier this week, they meant well, really they did. If only the trolls would stop trolling, and the eyes would stop rolling long enough to realize, the picture in their unfortunate Dec. 14th tweet was not connected — in a perfectly straight line — to the associated content’s message.
I get it. Tweet, “Diversity at Dropbox: http://bit.ly/2hFEqlS” and then show a picture of five white people and an Asian woman — who you might confuse for a sixth white person if you’re not looking closely — and it’s bound to cause a bit of confusion. But I sincerely believe the company and the unfortunate media/marketing person who created the tweet and is now locked in a dark room with an ice pack over his/her eyes was referring to the information, not the picture. It was just poorly done; a mistake.
According to an Inc. article: “About five hours after Dropbox sent out its report, the company clarified that the picture includes Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi who is Iranian, Head of People Arden Hoffman who is lesbian and Lin-Hua Wu, a vice president of communications, who is Asian.
“This photo was meant to highlight the increase of women in senior leadership roles,” the company said in a statement. “We realize it doesn’t fully represent the diverse workforce we strive for at Dropbox. Improving our diversity continues to be one of our top priorities in 2017 and beyond.”
OK, Dropbox. We’re here for that. We know perfection does not exist. People make mistakes. Companies do too. The thing is, it’s absolutely terrible to make them on social media. Really. It’s terrible.
For instance, I’m starting a YouTube channel — no, there will be no makeup tutorials; I’m not that skilled — and my sister, trying to help me get the 100 subscribers I need to get a custom URL and not the hodgepodge of numbers and letters that currently represent me, posted a notice on Facebook. But she spelled my name wrong, and she didn’t have a call to action: Please click here to subscribe to Kellye’s channel. So, essentially, she was misrepresenting me, and there is no point to it. I was not pleased.
You know me. You do not see my work full of errors. My picture choices may not always be fabulous, and they may occasionally veer over the controversial line, but they’re usually appropriate, my links work, and the basics are there. You get the message whether you agree with it or not.
But when I tried to correct her, she acted like I’d just kicked her brand new, shiny black fur, gold-eyed puppy across a field. Image is important! Especially when you’re trying to get a new project off the ground in a visual platform — or in Dropbox’s case, when a company is trying to convey valuable information, set a tone and position its brand a certain way.
The venom that followed Dropbox’s mistake — the tweeted photo of a row of different mayonnaise jars seemed especially painful — the heat? It was telling. It was also excessive and unnecessary, but people are tired of companies soft soaping them when it comes to diversity and inclusion.
Potential customers, clients and employees want vendors/employers to do better. In, many cases, they demand it. Just last week I blogged that organizational diversity is a key motivator for Millennial job seekers. Image is everything.
“It’s important that marketing material make people feel welcome,” said Deldelp Medina, director of the residency program at nonprofit organization Code2040, in the aforementioned Inc. article.
Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is not something one can be careless about. Not today. Not with what’s going on in the world. And certainly not with the shortages of skilled talent that so many industries — like tech — are currently suffering from. Companies cannot afford to needlessly alienate anyone.
The sad part is Dropbox’s new diversity report actually had promising data to share: It’s representation of women in leadership increased 6 percentage points, and its number of black employees rose from 2 to 3 percent in 2016. The number of Hispanics also increased from 5 to 6 percent.
“We’ve made modest strides,” Dropbox said in its report, “but we still have work to do.” The company called them modest strides. I’d probably say baby steps, but I’ve been known to quibble over word choice. Whatever progress they’ve made, now no one cares. All because of one photo.
Sure, it would have been kinder to say: “Um, guys? You might wanna send another tweet clarifying that you were actually announcing your diversity numbers. Also, a new photo would be great, as diversity amidst white-ish people — and one Asian — isn’t as visually compelling as a more colorful array of employees.”
But kind has no place on the internet. This is the era of Glassdoor and keyboard courage. Pick the wrong pic, and you should expect headlines like this: “Dropbox Roasted for ‘Diversity’ Tweet Featuring Too Many White People” and “Dropbox Photo Fail Shows How Not to Celebrate Diversity.”
Kellye Whitney is associate editorial director for Workforce. Comment below or email editor@workforce.com.
While your point is well taken, Kellye (very well taken), it also highlights that most people are quick to judge diversity based on skin color and gender, both of which are (usually) visibly identifiable. There are many other, sometimes far more important, dimensions to diversity. So while your message about social media not being very forgiving is true, from my perspective, the most important message is that we all need to broaden our awareness of the “invisible” elements of diversity. Inclusion means all people, and implies not assuming you know everything about a person based on what you can see. Yes, photos are a visual medium. But we must train our brains to think critically about what we see and read on media of all kinds.
There are tons of stupid overreactions in American society, thus I do not tread lightly when I say that this has to be one of the stupidest reactions by the public ever, and one that illustrates just how frightened we all should be that Millennials, AKA the “Shallow Hal” generation, soon will be in charge of our businesses and public institutions. This “story” is also just one other example of political correctness run amok, and yet another example of how our culture has set up a pantheon of false gods – diversity, the environment, sexual freedom – you name it. Shame on those who are persecuting Dropbox and many others for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Shame on those who have nothing better to do with their time. I feel sorry for this writer and her ilk that they have been completely socially and politically brainwashed to believe so many untruths and to worship at the idols of self-esteem, sensitivity, diversity, climate change, equality and “social justice.” I feel sorry for the Millennials who have been brainwashed into believing that they are somehow morally superior to all other generations, as though morality and ethics are in a constant state of evolution and they are farther down the road in their moral and ethical development than those who have gone before them when the reality is that they are by far the most devolved generation the world has thus far witnessed and a veritable blight upon the soul of mankind. Hang in there, Dropbox. It’s hard to fight institutionalized insanity; sometimes all you can do is wait and hope that the youngsters will grow up.