How Should Companies Respond to Black Lives Matter?

Emily Lambert: Black Lives Matter is changing the discussion about racism in American society today, and it’s done so even more urgently since the murder of George Floyd earlier this year. Black Lives Matter is not about marketing, and the issues that it’s raised cannot be solved by marketing. However, it has created a strong demand for companies to respond to racism, and to racist events. So, how have companies responded, and how should they respond?

Welcome to the Big Question, a video series sponsored by Chicago Booth Review. This episode is filmed in conjunction with Marketing for Good, an event series sponsored by Booth’s Kilts Center for Marketing. I’m Emily Lambert, and I’m joined by an expert panel.

Chipo Nyambuya is the founder and principal of Virgil LLC, a consulting firm that advises companies on issues related to corporate social responsibility. She’s also director of externships at Loyola University’s School of Law.

Scott Uzzell is the president and CEO of Converse, a member of Nike’s executive leadership team, and a 1998 Booth alum.

Pradeep Chintagunta is the Joseph T. and Bernice S. Lewis Distinguished Service Professor of Marketing at Booth.

Pradeep Chintagunta, you have research that looks at tweets and Twitter sentiment on corporate responses. Can you tell us more about what you looked at, what you found, and why it’s important?

Pradeep Chintagunta: I think the work you’re referring to involved looking at the emotionality of words included or used in tweets by consumers and other folks about companies. So what is it that folks talked about when they were talking about a bunch of companies? I’ll mention which ones we looked at in a minute. And by emotionality what we mean is, whether these words were positive or negative. So by positive words this could be words like happy, negative words would be words like sad. And so we were trying to understand what the emotionality of these tweets were. And we looked at the period following the tragic death of George Floyd.

So more specifically, we look at the time period from May 25, when Mr. Floyd passed away, to around the end of June, beginning of July. In this period, companies put out a bunch of statements, and some of them made donations or took a variety of other actions. So the question that we asked ourselves was, if we compare emotionality in tweets one week before a company’s statement was put out and one week after the statement was put out, what exactly are we going to find? So, that was sort of the broad question that we were trying to address. And more specifically, we looked at five companies spanning a wide range of products and services: Amazon, Apple, Airbnb, Netflix, and Pepsi.

To control for other things that might have been happening on Twitter at the same time, we also look at the changes across 100,000 random tweets in the same time period. The other thing that I should point out is that firms released a bunch of different statements in this time period. And so, for purposes of comparison, we look at one week before the first statement and then one week after the last statement. And generally what we found was that by and large and perhaps to different extents, the positive emotionality for all the firms increased after the statements. So for all the five firms, if you compare the emotionality before to after, the after level of emotionality, in terms of the percent of words, the positive emotionality went up. However, things like words only statements, we found, actually increased negative emotionality as well.

And so, basically what would happen is, when firms just put out a “words only” statement, and I’ll give you an example in a minute, the negative emotionality associated with the tweets about those companies actually increased. So here’s an example, in this period, Netflix put out four different statements, but the first statement was essentially a generic Black Lives Matter statement, which did not make much of a difference. Next, there was a statement about how they were going to curate movies related to racial injustice, in America, on the Netflix platform. That again did not make much of a difference. Third, they announced a $5 million investment, and that actually increased the negative emotionality quite a bit. And it’s only when they decided to put in a substantial amount of money, $120 million, that the emotionality changed and it became much more positive for Netflix.

So I think our key takeaway from this is that it’s not enough just to put out statements, but it also has to be followed or backed up by some amount of commitment and investment to the cause as well. And so, that was essentially our main takeaway from this work and reflected in the article that we wrote for Chicago Booth Review.

Lambert: Thank you Pradeep. I think that highlights the difficult calculation that companies are making when they’re thinking about this. Chipo Nyambuya, you advise companies on ESG matters, social governance issues. What kind of calculations do you see companies making? There’s obviously many risks here. There’s the risk of saying the wrong thing, there’s the risk of not saying anything. What do you tell companies?

Chipo Nyambuya: I tell companies the same thing that I tell my students, which is essentially, you have to go inward before you start pushing out, before you start pushing out messages.

And part of that is in treating this kind of messaging like a crisis. We are in a crisis moment. We recognize it as a crisis moment. So, where are you in the crisis? What role have you played in the crisis? And what role do you want to play in the crisis? Because knowing all of that and being comfortable with all of that, then determines and dictates whether you put out a statement, as Pradeep said, gets a positive or gets a negative, because we’re certainly at a point and at a time of the non-apology of apology. I’m sorry if you were offended. That kind of messaging is not going to fly, is not going to work.

Lambert: Obviously different industries may respond in different ways. Do you see this as something that all companies should respond to?

Nyambuya: I do, because we are definitely in a social, political, economic moment. There’s that complete confluence we’re in this moment and every company needs to figure out where they’re going to stand and be counted, because people are watching. Your customers are watching, your investors are watching, your shareholders are watching, your stockholders. All of your stakeholders are watching and so you have to balance that. As you look at your brand, as you look at your image, you have to balance that and push out, “Okay, exactly, what do we want to put out and how do we want to?” You have to be very clear on that. And like I said, in order to be clear on that, you have to be clear on where you are, where all of your stakeholders are as well.

Lambert: Thank you. Scott Uzzell, can you tell us how this matches with the experience that you’ve had at Converse? Without disclosing, what kind of conversations have you had?

Scott Uzzell: Emily, great question. Pradeep, Chipo, thank you for allowing me to join you. Yeah. It’s interesting for me, being both Black and a CEO, I never really thought about them intersecting, but they really did intersect right after the death of George Floyd. They were always intersected, but I guess a little bit of the way I operated was that, my head was something I brought to work, my heart and my gut, I left at home. But at this moment all of them had to come together. For a second, what happened was that, my 23 direct reports around the world, all had energy to do something after the death of George Floyd and wanted to take a stand in some way. And I was quickly thrust into a moment where, I’m trying to process all that’s going on for myself, my family, for my kids, and just dealing with it, but then also leading an organization of thousands of people that are looking for direction.

I never forget that Monday morning. I’m saying to myself, that really, I have two ways to move forward. One, internally, we had to have tough conversations around, before we start talking about social justice, how are we doing as a company? Can we really say that the audio and the video match? And having real conversations around, what do we aspire to be? What does the brand stand for from the standpoint of inclusion? And do we match that? And what we looked at, we came away with, was that, our aspirations and what we put out there, in the public domain, says all the right things, but inside the building, we still had a lot of work to do. So that was one, so we can get our employees engaged.

Externally we made a lot of strong commitments. One was that, we quickly said, we stand with the Black community. We’re going to make sure that we hire even more Black creatives, designers and athletes and businesses. We’re going to use our platform to amplify Black youth voice around the world. We’re going to put funds in the community to make sure that we’re enabling them to tell their story. And with Nike and Jordan, we put $40 million directed at the Black community. But we knew that you can’t just, from our viewpoint, either donate to an HBCU or to give to a great nonprofit, but not taking the real actions to make sure your culture is inclusive and representative of what you want to be, it’s incomplete. So we tried to bring it all together.

Lambert: One theme that’s running through all three of your answers, is the issue of authenticity, that not just as consumers, but as people respond to these messages that companies are putting out, looking for something deeper. When you look at what companies did, how companies responded, did you see certain campaigns that were particularly effective or campaigns that you thought missed the mark?

Uzzell: I mean, I saw many that I thought missed the mark. As a consumer of, one, that’s Black and sits on many different CEO round tables, I found a lot of CEOs had, when they develop their website, it has sustainability and diversity and inclusion, it’s like these standards you need to have. But when they would look at their gallery view, they would not see it. And they really had to ask the question of, is diversity and inclusion a real thing or it’s just one of the boxes you check when you have a big company? But for brands like ours, I’ve never worked on a brand like Converse or worked for a brand like Converse, where both the employees and the consumers, they don’t believe it’s owned by a public company, they believe it’s their brand, and if you don’t do what’s right by the brand, they will let you know.

I never forget talking to one of our creatives in Europe around this time, and he made the statement that, he would expect from the current administration, sympathy, he would expect from maybe future administrations, empathy, but he says, “I don’t need either one of those. I want credibility. And credibility comes from you’re walking the talk and, you know what, it’s not the moments of George Floyd—you’re doing it when no one’s looking, so that when these moments happen, you don’t have to institute new programs, because you’re already doing the work.” And that really struck me. And that is really what we’re trying to make sure we’re doing. It’s the hundred decisions you make every day to make sure you’re driving an inclusive and equitable environment, that it’s not based on what’s happening out in the broader public, it’s what you’re doing every day. And that’s what’s hard to do, and that’s what you have to do every day to live the vision and role model it.

At Nike, they do it through the lens of sport. At Converse, we do it through the lens of youth. But both cohorts are about progress and change and bringing justice to our world, and both sport and youth keep us honest.

Lambert: Chipo Nyambuya, what did you see in the market place?

Nyambuya: I mean, having been in this world and as an observer, as a contributor, suffice to say, those who came out with authentic, meaningful statements, I was not surprised. Those who came up with performative statements, I was not surprised.

Lambert: Can I push you? Which were some that came out with statements that you thought worked?

Nyambuya: Top of the list, Ben & Jerry’s, because it’s what they do. To Scott’s point and as I was saying earlier, you essentially have to turn inwards first before you start pushing out anything. So with someone like Ben & Jerry’s, it’s what they do anyway. So essentially all they did was wrap around a statement of the moment, contextualized it, and then pushed out the work that they’re already doing. So they’re a good example. I did do a list here. You have B of A, while their statement was kind of lukewarm-ish, their actions, and then putting forth what they’re going to be doing, is, “Okay, this is something interesting, this is something meaningful.” Pepsi, I think Pradeep mentioned Pepsi before. So you have those entities that are okay.

We were thinking about working in this space and it’s clear that they’re thinking, because you don’t dedicate those kinds of resources and funds if something might not have been in the process. And so, it is like, “Okay, so we’re going to put these funds, we know how we’re going to direct them.” And what I find, is that, a lot of the companies who did make the meaningful statements and make the meaningful commitments, were doing those things in the background, but they were trying to navigate politically, “Okay, how is this going to look if we promote this?” And so, this moment essentially, afforded them the opportunity to come out, and to come out more boldly.

Lambert: You mentioned Pradeep’s research a little bit. One thing that is interesting, that I’m hearing from both of you, is that, if a company is smaller, more nimble, if they were already doing this work, then it wasn’t a big leap. For bigger companies, where they weren’t already doing this work, they’re thrown into new territory. And in that case, Pradeep, I would imagine that they’re then closely monitoring or trying to monitor how that plays in the marketplace, and is Twitter the best source for that?

Chintagunta: Yeah, that’s an excellent question. First of all, I agree with what both Scott and Chipo said. I think, the first thing that a firm should monitor is their own core beliefs and values. What is it that we stand for as a brand and what is it that we are communicating to the marketplace? Beyond that, I think, even though there may not be any public response, you certainly have to respond, as Chipo mentioned, to all your stakeholders. So you can monitor what’s happening with your employees. You can monitor what’s happening to your shareholders. You can monitor what’s happening relative to your suppliers. So I think these kinds of monitoring can happen all the time. But in terms of marketing, I also think that it’s important to look at, sort of the whole piece, firms should monitor their products. What are we doing with respect to the product? And you see companies doing that now, that there are lots of name changes that we all hear about: Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s, Mrs. Butterworth’s. There’s also something I came across more recently, Beso de Negra, which is a Nestlé candy, which I think they’re also planning to change the name.

So I think names are one, but the products themselves are different. I come originally from India, and we have a product there called Fair and Lovely. And you can guess or imagine what that product is intended to do. There’s a toothpaste that Colgate has in Asia called Darlie, which originally was called Darkie. So I think, what you do with products like that, so you monitor your product, you monitor your prices, is your pricing discriminatory in any way?

Then your advertising. Unilever, I think, recently said that they were going to change the jingles on these ice cream carts that they’ve been having going around, because the jingle has been repurposed with racially charged lyrics.

And then finally, with respect to channels, what is the access that you’re providing to the different customers?

So I think thinking about it systematically, in terms of monitoring the four Ps [product, price, place (where a product is marketed), and promotion], and then you can look at various media, you can look at Twitter, Facebook, whatever you want, but I think you should first start with home. Who are you as a company? What is your core value? What is your core belief? And then work onwards from there.

Lambert: One thing I’m hearing you highlight, is that, there are risks of not doing anything. There are risks to continuing business as usual, when there has been a shift that companies need to shift with. What are the risks of shifting wrong? What are campaigns that could go wrong? We’ve touched on inauthenticity, not going deep enough. Are there any other risks that companies need to take into consideration as they do this? What risks do companies need to consider as they are deciding what to say, what to change, how to move their businesses?

Nyambuya: I think the big risk, particularly when you’re talking about consumer goods companies, have gotten fundamentally lazy in, “Okay. Let’s flex with the pricing, let’s flex with this, let’s flex with that.” And they’ve largely ignored the market that is outside of whatever study they’ve done. And the risk they run is in turning off, and in turning off a market that they’ve already neglected, by not saying anything, by not doing anything or by being too inauthentic with their messaging, with their outreach or with their silence. We’re very clear on the buying power of African Americans in this country and yet we still play to, “Oh, okay, 18-65 white male,” or whatever. Thinking that, “Okay, because income is this then there’s that, so that’s where we want to go after.” But fundamentally, if you don’t reach out, if you don’t message properly, you run the risk of turning off an entire market that can really be significant to your bottom line. So I think that’s a big risk.

Lambert: And Scott, before you were at Converse, you were at some big consumer packaged goods company.

Uzzell: Worked at Coca Cola. I ran the Venture Capital Group at Coca Cola.

Lambert: Okay. Obviously you aren’t there now, but how does this calculation, in this discussion, how is it different, do you think, in different industries?

Uzzell: I can say a couple things. One, is that, less around Coca Cola already, I saw a number of different CEO forums. And I watched CEOs that spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to say something, but to make sure nobody was offended, and that’s a tall task. And what that does is, one, they’re very late to respond. Two, when they actually do respond, weeks after they should have, they didn’t say anything. And so, when a brand has a DNA of authenticity and they’re really clear about who their consumer and who their employees are, they can feel really confident in coming out and making an authentic statement, and they can back it up with either, this is what we’re doing or this is what we’re going to do.

And so, what I’m really fortunate about Converse is, we’re there. We’re not far from perfect, but we did spend a lot of time thinking about what the message is. Other challenges that these companies face, generically on that, is that, when they want to say the message, if they don’t have representation to help write the message, the message falls on deaf ears, because they’re like, "Who are they?" It doesn’t even feel authentic. You can see it in the words. And so, all of those play in to the fact of how you communicate it. And I strongly believe it impacts, not only your consumers, it impacts your employee base, it impacts the culture of the company. And it could be Black Lives Matter, it could be around gay, transgender, it could be a host of issues that this could play, the “me too” movement, etc., all of it. And it’s really around, do you stand for all of your employees or do you stand for a few?

And that’s where it really comes down to, as a CEO or a company. We espouse every day when everything’s great, than we’re for all of our employees. But in moments like this, and employees need to know where you stand as a company, if you want more than them just showing up, showing up and just complying nine-to-five. If you want their passion, you’ve got to know that the company’s got your back.

Lambert: Did you see examples of companies that you thought were too timid or seemed to be too concerned about seeming political or they were afraid of turning off that white male, 19-70, not vote, but vote with your dollars?

Uzzell: Yeah. I don’t have any that come exact to mind, but because the list is really long. I think, actually, the majority of businesses spend most of their time trying not to get in to social issues. It’s not partisan. I just think that, 20 years ago, businesses were like, “I sell stuff, and when I leave at five o’clock, then I go do whatever my politics are.” But the consumer today, the employee base today, they fuse it together, it’s all one cocktail. And I think CEOs that don’t get that, they are missing the boat. But as leading the venture-capital group, where I’m working with a company and it’s all around health and wellness, everybody there’s a super athlete, or one that’s all around societal impact, everybody’s around sustainability. I mean, it’s just not a job, it’s a lifestyle.

When I look at the employees at Converse, they are passionate around creativity, sport, being yourself, inclusivity. If I’m not driving that every day, they’ll go work somewhere else. This is not just a job. But I’d say, still a lot of firms are missing that boat. Places like Nike and Converse, we know we have our gaps, but we understand this is very, very important to our DNA of our business.

Lambert: You mentioned also, some of these other social issues need to and try. How much of what we’ve discussed... it seems like that there’s definitely some that applies from a BLM discussion to other social issues. Are there certain things that don’t translate or does everything that we’ve been talking about translate to other social issues and social movements?

Uzzell: There probably is something that doesn’t, I don’t know what that is. The list is long on what it does. I think it just provides an asset test, that if you say you’re inclusive and you’re for all of your employees, when issues come around social justice, regardless of the ones you just mentioned, you as a company have to take a stand, and our employees expect it. And I’ve never worked anywhere where, it’s not only expected, but you’re excited to be a part of it and your activism through the brand and through the voice of your consumer is what’s expected. I will tell you, also we wrestle with, is that, we try not to profit from these moments. We will walk away from anything, even if we know in a court of law, we are actually helping the cause. If it could be misconstrued that we’re doing it for commercial reasons, we just don’t do it. It’s not worth it, because no one’s going to be in the room to understand we were not doing it for that reason, so we’ll walk away.

So you spend a lot of time making sure you understand, what is the DNA of the brand? How are you connected through your consumer? And making sure, truly you can help them amplify their voice.

Lambert: Chipo, are there certain things, when you advise companies, did they ever say to you, “We have this idea,” XYZ, and you steered them away from it, because it would come across to, either inauthentic or profiteering or in a way that wouldn’t play well?

Nyambuya: I’ve not come across that, because as it is, my approach to ESG, CSR, advising, demands a lot from people. So by the time it gets to where they’re having to make that decision, we’ve already gone through that narrative so that they know that, that is not a good decision or they ask the question. Because essentially, fundamentally, I do come in with that approach. It’s a constant self-assessment, self-reflection, as an organization, organizationally speaking, reflection in where these things can and should align with your operations and being. As Pradeep said, that there are many avenues in engaging with your stakeholders.

And so, some of what I do is also, expanding that issue of like, “Okay, do you know who your stakeholders are?” You know where you are in the marketplace, but do you know who your full stakeholders are? Friedman aside, that question of broadly speaking, who are you serving, as it relates to you being a product and an organization in the marketplace? What is your image? And so, that question of, “Okay, maybe you shouldn’t do that,” is something that comes way ahead, as opposed to, in a moment of crisis, where you have to make a decision.

Lambert: I can imagine that, if you’re having that discussion in a moment of crisis and you haven’t done that legwork that you’ve all described, then you would just be caught not knowing what to do. But it also sounds, from what you’re saying, there are quite a few companies that are in that situation and that you’ve seen that. And then you can see it-

Nyambuya: And they’re the ones reaching out for training and implicit bias training and things like that.

Lambert: So at a company, let’s imagine a company, it sounds like it’s not hard to do, where they are caught in this situation right now. What do you tell them? Where do they start? If it’s not in their DNA, if they don’t have representation in the room, if they don’t know what to do you, what do you tell them?

Nyambuya: So, I’m a lawyer, so of course it’s going to be, it depends. But the first question I ask them is, where do you want to go? Why are you asking me this question? Where do you want to go? Do you want to be performative? Or, do you want to be organizationally transformative? And depending on that answer and, of course, the questions that go along with that, depending on that answer, then it determines which way I go. If it’s a performative and we want to just kind of like keep where we are, then it’s a matter of, “Okay, then this is what you do. You go to your stakeholders and say, ‘Fundamentally, we’re bummed about this moment, but we’re still here to help our customers wherever they may be.’”

So you can “All Lives Matter” it or you can specifically, “Black Lives Matter” it, but then, that will require you to say, “Okay, where do we want to be?” And then look at where in your organization, particularly within the leadership, where that leadership can then guide and say, “Okay, here’s the strategy. Here are the goals we’re going to try and reach, and this is how we’re going to try and reach them.” And then you can go out and make your statement.

Lambert: So we have a question from the audience that I think is somewhat related to this. It says, how can employees pressure their leadership to take a stance in social justice issues, not just BLM? In other words, how can employees steer a brand? Scott, could you take that one?

Uzzell: Yeah. That’s a great question. The reason I say it’s a great and challenging question, is that, I think about the employees that work at Converse, and I never forget my first day on the job, 24 months ago, and I look out in the audience of 500, 600 people in our headquarter building and I see skaters that actually have skateboards with them. I see people who are the jock, the basketball player. I see the creatives that look like they play in the bands at night, with the tattoos.

They live the life. They clearly are not at a tool-and-die company. So, my point is, they chose to work here, and it’s a lot of the values that the brand’s espoused over the last hundred years, of why they signed up here. So when they raise their hand and say, “We need to get behind the issue,” or whatever, they’re in the right place.

I have been with CEOs in the last four months, grappling with the challenges of social justice and I’ve watched CEOs say the question of, “I did everything I could to make sure we didn’t have all the challenges happening in the street, happen in our building. So therefore, we don’t talk about that in our building.” And this is a very intellectual CEO. He thinks that, by the people walking inside and making sure we don’t talk about anything that happens in the world, outside the building, that this is a respite for their employees. And I just was blown away by that.

Or I watch CEOs that talk about how they could write a note and make sure that no one was bothered by it, which meant they said nothing. So I don’t know if the employee worked at that company, if they could actually move the needle besides talking about tool-and-die, because that’s what that CEO... and I will say that CEO is coming from a place of, they think they’re well intentioned, but I’m not quite sure we’d move them, by having a couple of employees pushing on them to do whatever the particular social issue is.

Lambert: There was actually an example that accompanied this question that I didn’t read. The NFL message from the players and how a corporate employee initiated that.

Uzzell: Very good point. And it took several years and a lot. And even then, yes, just coming around.

Lambert: Here’s another question that came in. It says, you are speaking to an audience of future leaders who will be either in positions of constructing their own companies or joining companies with existing cultures that we may be inheriting, what’s your guidance for those of us who are going to be in the room, driving those difficult conversations to become organizationally transformative?

Nyambuya: This is what I would do. So this is great. The space I work in is largely small, small and medium size, and startups. And so, for startups is actually much easier, because there’s nothing to undo and you come in with this culture. And so, it is, again, defining your identity, because once you have your identity, then that will inform how you want to go about operating it. It will inform how you treat your employees. It will inform your wages. It will inform your supply chain and all of those issues across the board that touch social justice issues broadly. When you’re talking about going into a larger multinational, it’s about relationship and it’s about relationship and mentorship and getting relationship with your colleagues and your peers, while making sure that the classic, advocate, mentor and sponsor, so that you can then have that space to have those conversations. But it is something that takes time.

So, as you’re interviewing to go into these spaces, make sure that you’re not only being interviewed, but that you’re also interviewing, so that you know what the culture is and your ability to then navigate and affect change in ways that are meaningful to you, for the issues that are important to you.

Lambert: Okay. I think we have time for one more question, and I’m going to toss this at least, to start, to Pradeep. Somebody asked, how does this discussion fit into or expand into the international conversation? For example, how does it expand into the conversations, like the Divestment, BDS movement, with Israel and Palestine? And the question here, specifically calls out Ben & Jerry’s, operates in illegal Israeli settlements, and many other companies do work with Israel. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I pass this on. And I ask you, Pradeep, mostly to ask, also, when companies are monitoring sentiments, are they monitoring it, I would imagine, internationally? Tweets aren’t just looking at the reactions of US Twitter users, correct?

Chintagunta: You can do that. I think in many situations we would probably just look at US Twitter users, but you can certainly do monitor things internationally. I think though, when you’re thinking about how well things go across different types of issues, I would go back to the issue of, what is your core belief? What is the core emotion that your brand is connecting with? And I think you should work off of that and I think that emotion should travel. So let me give you an example of Subaru. Subaru for a long time used to compete with the likes of Audi, because they’re also a four-wheel-drive-car company. At some point they realized, that this functional basis of competition, that is not going to get them anywhere.

And so, there’s this campaign about love. Love is what makes Subaru a Subaru, and love, I think is a very strong emotion. You may not initially connect it with an automobile, but they have over time linked their brand so closely with the notion of love, and the concept of love, I think, translates very easily to whatever social or political situation you can think about. So, I think the way they operationalize that is, every year they come up with four charities that they give money to, based on the price that you pay for their cards. And by doing that, I think they’ve linked themselves to so many different moments. I would say, think about, what is, sort of the core value or emotion that your brand stands for, and then try to make the linkage with that emotion, with whatever you think is appropriate, that you should respond to, in sort of a more local sense.

So for example, going back to the issue of Subaru, Subaru, one of the things they do, is that, they try to get the local dealerships also to get involved with a local charity. So for example, Subaru in Chicago is involved with the Anthony Rizzo Cancer Foundation. So basically what they’re trying to do is, they’re trying to make a link with the customer in Chicago through their overall message of love, which is what makes their brand. So I would say, whatever you do, think about what the core emotion is, that your brand is all about.

Lambert: Thank you. So I’m just looking at the clock, because I know we’re running out of time. Chipo, I saw that you said you’re happy to answer some of the questions offline, if we don’t get to them in time. Which is good, because I don’t think we will. I think we have to wrap it. So I want to thank our panelists, again, so much, for participating tonight, Chipo Nyambuya, Scott Uzzell, Pradeep Chintagunta. To everyone watching, there will be an edited video of this discussion that will be available on the Chicago Booth Review website, at review.chicagobooth.edu, and along with research analysis and commentary from faculty at Chicago Booth, on BLM and other issues. So thank you again panelists, thank you to the Kilts Center and thank you to everybody who has participated tonight.