Clicks advised on black customer communication
Board member raises case in strategy session
Clicks Group’s independent non-executive board member Nonkululeko Gobodo says she should have followed up on questions she asked the retail pharmacy’s executive on their plans to adequately communicate with its black customers.
Gobodo told Sowetan yesterday that about two months ago, she had asked the company’s executive team during a strategy session with the board if they were looking into the issue of being able to communicate with their black customers.
“My daughter had educated me on brands not understanding their black customers, so with this knowledge I was asking the executives, ‘how do you talk to your black customers?’” Gobodo said.
The retail pharmacy chain received a backlash last week after it released a TRESemmé advert on its website with pictures of black and white women’s hair. The advert, which caused outrage, described black women’s hair as dull, dry, damaged and frizzy. On the other hand, it said white women’s hair was straight and
normal. Clicks has since cut ties with TRESemmé.
“So I was advising them that in terms of their marketing strategy they needed to make sure that they know how to address their black customers,” Gobodo said.
She said though she got reassurance that the executives were “on top of the situation” and they were looking into the matter, with the benefit of hindsight she could have asked more questions as Clicks
now finds itself in a racism storm.
“I’m admitting now that maybe I should have asked in that meeting, ‘who are your agencies? Do you have any black agencies?’ Those are the things I should have asked but I didn’t want to waste the board’s time but now I realise that I really should have taken that question further,” Gobodo said.
She said it had “now been proven that our strategy towards our black customers is not adequate”.
“This is something that as a board member I need to make sure that I understand further and be part of making sure that Clicks has black agencies in its books,” Gobodo said.
Some black employees at Clicks have defended the embattled retail group, saying it had transformed and embraced diversity. Clicks was forced to close all its stores yesterday amid ongoing protests led by the EFF.
An employee at a Clicks store in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, who has been with the company for more than five years, said the racist adverts that were posted on its website were a “big surprise as they don’t represent what Clicks is about”.
The employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the overwhelming majority of employees and area managers were black. “What the advert depicted is nothing like Clicks. We were all taken by surprise because we are black, most of us, and the hair they referred to as dry and damaged is our hair,” the employee said.
“It’s TRESemmé that has a problem and it’s really them who have to take the blame for this.
“Clicks is definitely not racist and the person that approved this campaign from Clicks’s side must have been ignorant to allow it,” the employee said.
Another employee from Pretoria who has been with the company for three years in different provinces said: “There’s no racism here, I am very comfortable being a black woman at Clicks. We have white colleagues and we are all getting the same treatment.”