Citi Chief Brand Officer Pens Painfully Long-Winded Way Of Saying The Bank Stands By Justin Thomas
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Over two weeks ago Justin Thomas let out a homophobic slur that cost him a marketing partnership with Ralph Lauren at 7 pm on a Friday night and has him headed to a “training program”.
Having detected which way the winds were blowing or believing Citi needed to justify paying Thomas to wear their logo, they are now speaking out. Because, you know, there isn’t much of significance taking place in the world these days.
But if you miss agonizing visits to the dentist’s office, here is the full post by Carla Hassan who is looking out for the brand and fending off internal forces that appeared to ask a silly question like, “we pay him how much to wear a logo, do one outing a year and say stuff like that?”.
Hassan writes:
We considered terminating our relationship with him. It would send a clear and important message, but we decided to use this moment to work with Justin to try to create change. While we have engaged with many in the LGBTQ+ community who agree with our decision, there are some – including some of my Citi colleagues – who believe that anything less than termination undermines our firm’s commitment to the LGBTQ+ community. We strongly considered that perspective and have great respect for it, and balanced it against the opportunity this situation provides to drive a more sustainable effort to shift minds and behavior.
You noble pioneers!
We want to do more than make it clear that it is wrong to use this word.
Now there’s a newsflash from the city.
Instead, we hope our efforts can lead more people to make an affirmative choice not to use this word or others like it – and to speak up when others do – because they understand the impact it can have, including on a friend, colleague or teammate who may be struggling with the decision to disclose their sexual orientation.
But good news, they will work with Justin so the ending is a happy one resulting in paychecks still clearing, charitable write-offs, and the brand remaining that of a soulless financial services company that loves the free market until it needs a bailout. Whew! Close call.
To that end, Citi will work with Justin to use his platform to play an active role in accelerating support for the LGBTQ+ community and to increase awareness of the discrimination this community continues to face. In addition, he will donate a meaningful portion of his Citi 2021 sponsorship fee to mutually agreed upon LGBTQ+ organizations. We will work with Justin, our internal Pride networks and LGBTQ+ organizations to develop an action plan to quickly move this effort forward.
Meaningful portions! An action plan! It’s also so darned progressive.
The strong feelings this situation has evoked among many, including some of my colleagues, weighs very heavily on me. While not everyone will agree with the approach we are taking, I can give you my strongest assurances that this course of action is based on our allyship for the LGBTQ+ community and is backed by my personal commitment to lead the effort necessary to create something positive out of this. We hope that even those who would have preferred a different course of action will work with us to make this effort as impactful as possible, inside and outside of Citi.
So essentially they heard from some internally but a higher up decided they just had to keep that logo on Thomas’s shirt and Hassan was tasked with justifying the decision.
At least they didn’t news dump this at 7 pm on a Friday.
