Gucci Is Committed To Improving Corporate Culture Because Of Racial Discrimination.

Luxury brands are always apologizing for cultural and racial problems, but they have done little to change. Now, the brands that are weak in speech have finally begun to take action.

Gucci, a luxury goods company in Italy, recently announced that after the controversy over racial discrimination, it will rectify and take a number of measures to promote cultural diversity and enhance employee awareness.

Gucci promises to hire diversified talents, including creative teams, in key functional departments and leadership positions of the group, and has released four latest initiatives.

First, executives are responsible for the diversity and inclusiveness of the global and regional sectors.

At present, Gucci has embarked on the search for suitable candidates to serve as the global director of diversity and inclusiveness to ensure the development and implementation of Gucci diversity and inclusiveness strategy worldwide.

In addition, regional and inclusive executives will focus on talent recruitment, the continuing development of Gucci education projects, and the collaborative efforts of Gucci Changemaker (Gucci Changemaker) to support cultural diversity and inclusiveness across the globe.

Second, establish multicultural design training projects.

Gucci will implement a multicultural design training program to train new talent.

The brand will cooperate with the global fashion school for a 12 month project to provide learning and working opportunities for minority talents to achieve a more diversified and inclusive workplace in the future.

The project will be launched in cities including New York, New Delhi, Beijing, Hangzhou, Seoul, Tokyo, Beirut, Robbie, London and Dubai.

At the same time, in order to instantly enhance the diversity of brand culture, Gucci will immediately hire 5 new designers from all over the world to join the Rome creative team, and creative director Alessandro Michele will personally participate in talent selection.

Third, create a project to enhance employees' awareness of cultural inclusiveness and diversity.

Since May 2019, Gucci will train 18 thousand employees around the world in cultural diversity and inclusiveness awareness so as to enhance employees' awareness of unaware cultural bias and create a more inclusive working environment.

The learning plan will first take place in Italy and the United States, and is expected to end in late June.

In addition, in the new employee induction training, the brand will take cultural diversity and inclusiveness as a new module.

Fourth, launch a global exchange project.

Gucci will launch a global exchange project internally to provide talents in other regions with the opportunity to work in Italy headquarters and accumulate experience. It will also help its matching mentors to ensure seamless integration in order to promote multicultural communication within the organization.

Marco Bizzarri, President and chief executive of Gucci, said: "brand acceptance of the overall accountability of this controversial event reveals the shortcomings of the brand's ongoing strategic approach to diversities and inclusiveness."

He further pointed out that the brand has made a comprehensive assessment and review of the status quo before making the reform plan, and has conducted in-depth exchanges with all stakeholders, especially employees and African American community leaders, in order to decide how to take measures to enhance the brand diversity and inclusiveness of Gucci, enhance the awareness of the global staff on various cultures, and avoid similar situations happening again.

A brief review of the "Gucci incident" is based on the latest black sweater "Balaclava". The black turtleneck sweater can be stretched to the face of the model, with a red lip gap on its lips. The black background and exaggerated lips of the sweater are considered by netizens to be a hit by netizens.

Gucci immediately removed the product from the store and the official website, and issued an apology letter, saying "the brand is deeply apologetic for the impact of the Balaclava sweater."

We regard diversity as the foundation of value and place it in the most important position before making any brand decision.

We will enhance the implementation of diversity within the organization and take this incident as a major lesson. "

But Gucci's seemingly sincere apology letter and skilled public relations skills have not yet received positive feedback in the social media opinion field. The discussion on Gucci's behavior and the recent racial discrimination incidents in the luxury goods industry has intensified.

Coincidentally, just two months ago, Prada caused waves of the same problem.

At that time, American netizens exposed an exaggerated red lip human hanging pendant on the Prada window, which was suspected of alluding to and smear black people.

Prada immediately recalled the circulated pendants on the market, and the apology statement received a completely different feedback from Gucci, even by some commentators as a template for the brand apology statement.

Prada first explains the situation. These pendants are called Pradamalia, but the imaginary creatures do not have any reference to the real world, nor are they black, and emphasize that brands hate all forms of racism.

More importantly, Prada has put forward a more specific solution, saying that the group will further enhance its internal training for diversity (diversity) and immediately set up a consultant to provide guidance.

At the same time, the group will also review the complete workflow of the product touch market, which is donated to an anti racist New York public interest organization.

The brand said, "the creative director from the company to the store manager works diligently every day, hoping to exceed the expectations of the consumers. This incident is a painful experience for us."

In February 13th, Prada announced the establishment of a multicultural and inclusive Advisory Committee, and invited African American behavioral artist Theaster Gates and African American women writer, director and producer Ava DuVernay as co chairs to enhance the cultural diversity of the company and the fashion industry.

In addition, the Prada group and the Advisory Committee will work with some universities and institutions to develop internship and apprenticeship training programs in minority groups to narrow the gap between the racial and cultural industries in the fashion industry.

Prada creative director Miuccia Prada said that Prada is committed to training, recruiting and retaining diverse talents and contributing to the various departments of the company. In addition to enhancing cultural diversity and inclusiveness in the industry, Prada will also endeavour to ensure that the fashion world can reflect the world we live in.

The two different attitudes of the public to the apology statements of Gucci and Prada show that they are no longer satisfied with a letter of apology, and action is what they most need to see.

With the process of globalization, race sensitivity is being amplified and become a new topic in the fashion industry.

In fact, in the fashion industry, race has always been traceable.

According to CNN statistics, only 17 of the 495 members of the US fashion designers committee were identified as blacks.

In the modeling industry, skin color is a long-standing issue.

In 2011, John Galliano was expelled from Dior for anti Semitic remarks, but the temporary turmoil has never had a significant impact on the brand level.

Last January, fast fashion H&M was racially discriminated against by a black boy wearing the coolest monkey in the jungle (the coolest monkey) slogan in the official website. After that, 6 entities in South Africa were smashed by the radical militant economic freedom fighters in Africa.

Then H&M invited lawyers and company insiders Annie Wu to lead a new four person team at Stockholm headquarters, focusing on global diversification and inclusiveness.

Suspected racist incidents were out of control, and 6 shops in H&M South Africa were smashed.

In November of the same year, Italy's luxury brand Dolce&Gabbana showed an Asian female model who used clumsily to eat three pieces of Italy traditional food because of the video "chopsticks eating". She was accused of racial discrimination. Then the Stefano Gabbana, the co founder of Gabbana Instagram, was shocked by the disgrace of Chinese material. The fashion conference was canceled, and its products were removed by the major e-commerce websites. The brand's founder recorded an apology video, but was questioned about its sincerity.

Ironically, in order to get the recognition of consumer groups, European luxury goods such as Gucci and Prada have been trying to position themselves as pluralistic and ethnically motivated agents.

Last autumn, Prada hosted the The Black Image Corporation exhibition of film director Spike Lee in Milan, while Gucci released a dance scene featuring all the black models celebrating the late 1960s.

This kind of behavior and consciousness are apparently superficial and superficial, revealing the two aspects of brand awareness and working process.

There is a view that today's fashion industry has been in the bubble. Consumers' pursuit of fashion and luxury brands and fierce competition in the industry have led to faster and faster brand development.

On the one hand, they can not stop in the face of great interests, observe and reflect the shortcomings and shortcomings in other aspects of Commerce. On the other hand, the period from design to production of products is shortened from several months to several weeks, and there is not enough time to thoroughly examine products.

In the final analysis, fashion brands have not kept pace with the global expansion and complexity.

But fashion, as a reflection of social trends, should be more sensitive to this.

When the brand is expanding outwards, it should pay more attention to other cultural and social factors while focusing on its own culture. It should also be vigilant to avoid hitting minefields.

Race issues are only one of the problems that need filtering. The failure of fashion brands to embezzle culture on many overseas battlefields can directly reflect the lack of cultural awareness and understanding of the major brand design teams.

In China, the annual Spring Festival series has put the brand in an awkward situation. Consumers are looking forward to the launch of the special series on the one hand.

In fact, in the process of cross-cultural communication and global market expansion, luxury brands need to have an in-depth understanding of local culture if they want to avoid risks and achieve better localization.

As Wendy Liebmann, founder and chief executive officer of WSL Strategic Retail, a retail consultancy, said diversified training and new ways of thinking must be "integrated into culture".

According to a study by McKinsey, from a financial point of view, a company's racial diversification will bring greater economic benefits.

In the first quarter of the cultural diversity, the company's financial return is higher than the median of their respective industries by up to 35%.

This means that cultural diversity is starting to become a competitive advantage. As time goes on, market share will shift more to cultural pluralistic enterprises.

The penetration of social media has given consumers more regulatory rights, and the cultural problems in the fashion industry have also reached a turning point.

More and more people realize that a pale apology can only be a fig leaf, and the most fundamental thing to improve the industry is action.

Gucci and Prada's reform measures aimed at cultural diversity and inclusiveness seem to be very small at the moment, which includes the awareness and diversity of the whole structure from top to bottom, but it takes time for the whites who have long been ignored and dominated by the fashion industry.

More importantly, MNCs should strengthen communication between different cultures instead of building doors behind closed doors. The cultivation of cultural diversity is a long-term topic. Luxury brands must continue the important dialogue of cultural diversity in order to truly get consumers' recognition and love.

After all, respect is the two sides. In the moment when consumers choose to spend their eyes in a confused way, they won the invincible position by gaining the inner approval of consumers.

Author: Sherry Wang