Responding To Rumors

A challenge facing all companies, and even individuals, in the world of instant worldwide communication is how to respond to rumors or slander. Where one person sending out an email to a small circle of friends can become a firestorm of misunderstanding and false information, it is important to know what the appropriate response should be to try and quell rumors. In the example listed in our Mass Communication text book, a Marine Sergeant sent out an email to ten of his friends, asking them to join him in a boycott of Starbucks because he had heard they "did not support the war in Iraq". This e-mail quickly spread, and it became a big enough issue that Starbucks was compelled to make a public statement on the matter. In this case I think it was an appropriate response, and if they had not taken these steps Starbucks could have unfairly lost customers.

Of course as evidence that bad news travels fast, the original author of the Starbucks rumor later sent out a new email apologizing for the misinformation, but that did not get nearly the amount of circulation that the false rumor did.

This kind of rumor has been going on for years, and often times it can actually be tied back to competing companies. In the early 1980's a rumor began circulating that the company Proctor and Gamble were being managed by avowed Satan worshippers, and the President of P&G even went on the Donahue show and confirmed that this was true. Of course this outraged many people in the United States as many of them were appalled at the idea that they could be contributing to the Church of Satan by buying Proctor and Gamble products. As proof, people were quick to point out the 666, the sign of the devil, in the P&G logo.

 
While one would think that something so absurd would be laughed off, instead the rumor gained traction. In the 1990's the talk show changed from Donahue to the Sally show, but the basic rumor stayed the same, that the board members of Proctor and Gamble were members of the Church of Satan, and every time you bought their products, you were contributing directly to them. Interestingly enough Proctor and Gamble later sued Amway, a company that made competing products, for defamation, and a jury rewarded P&G 19.7 million dollars for damages, due to recorded evidence given that Amway was helping to at least perpetuate the rumors.

While Proctor and Gamble never made a direct statement to the public regarding the rumors, I think in this case that was also the prudent course. The time period it first occurred in did not have the immediate global communication we have now, and it would have probably done more harm than good to possibly legitimize these accusations by feeling the need to defend yourself against them.