H&M appoints global diversity manager to fix monkey ad blunder

H&M is going all the way out to fix the damage made to both the brand and brand image by a recent racists advertisement.

The Swedish multinational had caught themselves amidst a very embarrassing and socially incorrect controversy. While everyone thought that racism was a thing of the past, H&M faced a lot of fire of an image that was posted on their website. The image was of a black child with a serious and blank expression dressed in a bottle green hoodie with a caption printed on it which said, “Coolest monkey in the jungle”. The image of the little boy obviously didn’t go unnoticed especially when the other two white boys from the same photoshoot wore fun and colourful hoodies from the same range with child-like captions on it, with H&M facing a lot of deserving backlash from celebrities and people all over the World.

The high street fashion brand in order to take hold of the crumbling situation has now appointed a global head of diversity and inclusiveness. H&M’s global manager for employee relations, Annie Wu will now take on the role of being a global head and will be based at the company’s Stockholm headquarters.

The company posted on Facebook, saying, “The recent incident was entirely unintentional, but it demonstrates so clearly how big our responsibility is as a global brand.”

After the outrage H&M immediately pulled down the image and the garment. H&M released a statement post the blunder, saying, “We strongly believe that racism and bias in any shape or form, deliberate or accidental, are simply unacceptable. We stress that our wonderful store staff had nothing to do with our poorly judged product and image.”

Will this new step help in saving H&M’s tattered reputation? Comment and let us know!