I finally realized that Ms. Mariani wasn’t going to respond to my email. Doesn’t the acronym ‘PR’ stand for Public Relations?! Isn’t responding to an email the most basic of relationship building? But what do I know? I am not the CEO of a PR firm!
I tweeted back @Nordstrom to see what their suggestion for a next step was. As I told you before, Nordstrom has impressed me with their customer service up until this incident. This is the reason I keep giving their team a chance to guide me through resolving this issue. Here is the tweet thread:
Once again, I DM’d my contact info. I get it – social media managers are busy people. I actually feel for the SM manager at Nordstrom trying to respond to hundreds, if not thousands, of daily tweets they must be getting about this issue.
I waited a little bit. I admit my patience wasn’t as great this time as it was with Angela Mariani. But then in my last blog post, I did say I’m going to write to Blake, Eric, and Pete Nordstrom. This issue is haunting me. It is keeping me awake at night. It was around 1AM that I pulled out the laptop and let my heart communicate through my fingers:
Will I get a response? Are these individuals the caring, ethical people that I have built them up to be or is it all a sham? Will they read my email and think, “Who cares?” or will they actually do the right thing? These were some of the questions that occupied my mind as I closed my laptop that early morning.
A short few hours later, I saw ‘Peter Nordstrom’ in my inbox. Can you imagine my excitement? “They do care”, I thought. There is still hope for corporations caring about people over money in this world. I clicked on the email and read it:
I don’t know about you, but I get a feeling of heartfelt concern from his writing. Am I wrong? Am I being too naive? Comment on this and let me know what your thoughts are.
I included a link to this website in two places in the email but I understand. Mr. Nordstrom is busy. He may have his team working on what the issue entails so that they can brief him on #TakeOffJustLogo. I am going to do my part and write back to Mr. Nordstrom with a quick glimpse into the campaign. I am going to include links to the petition, videos, and our protests worldwide.
The thing about ‘word of mouth’ is it can work both ways. Companies work hard and diligently to build a positive reputation. It takes one wrong move to tear it all down. We’ve give the Roberto Cavalli company and it’s “PR”(Ms. Mariani) plenty of opportunities to redeem themselves but they’ve failed to come through every time. The negative publicity for Roberto Cavalli and co. is spreading like wildfire globally but they do not seem to care.
I am positive that Nordstrom does not want the same. At the moment, it appears to me that the right step for Nordstrom is to pull down all Cavalli products from both their shelves and eCommerce sites immediately. I do however understand that they may need to give Cavalli a chance to explain the situation. I just hope they do this quickly. Our patience with this situation is wearing thin. We are already starting discussions about protesting in Seattle in front of the Nordstrom Headquarters along with other stores across the nation.