Endorsements

What happens when racists hijack a company’s brand.

The neo-Nazis were hungry. They had spent the day in a Charlottesville, Va., courthouse testifying at the preliminary hearing for a white nationalist jailed for pepperspraying counterprotesters during August’s deadly Unite the Right rally. Now, after the long drive home to Alexandria, Via., they craved pizza.

“We were going to order from the local place where we get pizza all the time, but we said no, Papa John’s is the official pizza of the alt-right now,” said Eli Mosley, the 26-year-old leader of the white separatist group Identity Evropa. “We’re just supporting the brands that support us.”

That show of support — unsolicited and unwanted by Papa John’s — exhibits an emerging danger to major American brands negotiating the racial politics that have cleaved the country.

It is no longer enough for companies to keep a low profile when it comes to polarizing issues involving race, brand experts say.

Instead, some companies are preemptively stating their positions, hoping to avoid being hi- jacked by white supremacists eager to spread their ideas into the mainstream by tying themselves to household brands, from pizzas and burgers to sneakers and cars.

Last week, Papa John’s tweeted an explicit rejection of neo-Nazi ideas.

“Companies need to take a public stand on issues that are affecting consumers in advance of being co-opted,” said Heide Gardner, chief diversity and inclusion officer at IPG, one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing conglomerates. “Brands need to build a certain level of sophistication around racial issues. They need to be really mindful of how charged the environment is and take pains to look at situations through a diversity lens.”

Papa John’s learned this lesson the hard way after the chain, a major NFL sponsor, found itself in the unwelcome embrace of neoNazi groups following its chief executive’s Nov. 1 call with investors in which he blamed disappointing pizza sales on football players’ protests against racism and police brutality.

Following the call, a neo-Nazi website hailed Papa John’s as “Sieg Heil Pizza” with a photo of a pie whose pepperonis were arranged into a swastika.

It didn’t matter that the company immediately condemned racism and all hate groups.

“We do not want these individuals or groups to buy our pizza,” a statement from Papa John’s said.

“They can signal all they want, but we know,” said Mosley, praising Papa John’s chief John Schnatter’s statements.

The same unwanted attention has come to New Balance, Wendy’s and other companies. The neoNazis’ campaign to co-opt brands has forced firms into a familiar pattern: corporate statements disavowing white supremacy, typically followed by silence, in hopes the controversy will blow over without long-lasting damage to their image and sales.

But that approach did not work for Papa John’s.

In a renewed attempt to disown the neo-Nazis who have attached themselves to the brand, Papa John’s tweeted an emoji of a middle finger to “those guys.” The company also apologized for Schnatter’s “divisive” comments on

EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Tiki Brand’s bamboo torches were used by white nationalist protesters during a march in Charlottesville, Va.