General Mills, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to be "globally politically correct" and not include Paul Hamm, the first American to win the men's all-around Olympic gold medal for gymnastics, on its series of U.S. Olympic champion Wheaties cereal boxes. Bad PR move. Very bad. Snippet of the Reuters story:
General Mills Inc, the maker of Wheaties cereal, announced on Monday three U.S. Olympic champions will appear on millions of its iconic orange cereal boxes - but Hamm was not among them.
For those of you who didn't watch the Olympics, (and according to NBC, there weren't many of you - ratings rocked and NBC/Universal made a killing), a scoring error caused one of the biggest controversies of this year's summer games, and a gymnastics ruling body (not the Olympic ruling body) asked Hamm to return his gold medal, so that it could be given to South Korean bronze medalist Yang Tae-Young. Bad PR move there as well, but that's another rant entirely.
It's not Hamm's responsibility to return the medal. He didn't do anything wrong. He accepted the medal that was awarded to him. The gymnastic ruling committee (which seems to be about as ethical and credible as the figure skating ruling committee - remember that fiasco two years ago?) should petition the Olympic ruling committee(s) to give another gold to Yang Tae-Young. They can do something about it, not Hamm.
Back to General Mills...
Why are Wheaties and General Mills getting into this controversy? An American company, with an American cereal product that has displayed gold medalists on its "Breakdast of Champions" box cover for 80 years doesn't want to upset South Korea? Why snub Hamm? Spin control at General Mills has already begun. Snippet:
"We feel pretty good that they were among the top performances, and they include a broad cross-section of sports" at the just-concluded Olympics, General Mills spokesman Greg Zimprich said.
Here's the funny thing - the "Contact Us" link on the bottom of the Weaties.com web site home page don't seem to be working (at least tonight at 1:00am). Go ahead, try it: http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/comments/.
Read the entire Reuters story here. Read General Mill's press release here.
-aB
1 comment:
Robert,
Great point. I think one way that Wheaties could have balanced out the issue would have been to showcase the entire men's gymnastics team on the cereal box cover. They would then have been able to present Hamm on the box while mitigating any fallout from the international audience.
Thanks for the post,
Adam
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