A Marketing Blog by Iris Zhou

In an effort to increase customer base and brand recognition in light of competition from other department store companies, JCPenney signed on American’s most popular talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres, as its new spokeswoman. While many praised the partnership, a strong group of women from the social movement group “One Million Moms (OMM)” opposed Ellen as the new image for JCPenney due to her sexual orientation and deviance from traditional values.

“Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there. The small percentage of customers they are attempting to satisfy will not offset their loss in sales.” – On the OMM webpage

To stand by their statement, OMM created their own Facebook page, rallying supporters for breaking off the partnership between Ellen and JCPenney and organizing boycotts of the brand’s products; however, many Facebook users who were not part of OMM posted messages on their Facebook page stating that now they will actually “start shopping at JCPenney because of Ellen” or “shop at JCPenney more often.” Additionally, supporters of Ellen took the matter into their own hands and created pages of their own to show their support.

Ellen offered her own take on the criticisms JCPenney faced for breaking their traditional values:

“I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need! To me, those are “traditional values” that’s what I stand for!”

The CEO of JCPenney, Ron Johnson, stated in an interview with CBS that the company shared the same values as Ellen, and that having her as their spokesperson was a no – brainer.

“We don’t look at it like a controversy. One of the great things about America is people can speak their mind. And you know, the organization that believes one thing has spoken and it was great to see Ellen share her views yesterday. And we stand squarely behind Ellen as our spokesperson and that’s a great thing. Because she shares the same values that we do in our company. Our company was founded 110 years ago on The Golden Rule, which is about treating people fair and square, just like you would like to be treated yourself. And we think Ellen represents the values of our company and the values that we share.” – Ron Johnson

It is apparent that JCPenney’s intended message of “treating people fair and square” was misinterpreted by a large segment of the company’s target market – the Christian families who frequented the store. Although the intended message was not properly delivered to the receiver, JCPenney’s reaction to the situation is admirable from a marketing perspective. Instead of giving into a small group of consumers’ demanding wishes, JCPenney stood behind its partnership and repositioned its statement, this time making it more clear to the American audience that JCPenney is a company who supports equal treatment of all kinds of people, and in doing so will not break off with Ellen due to her sexual orientation. As a result of this effective PR strategy, JCPenney received positive feedback from the public, was praised by many other social groups and famous individuals, and was noticed by Americans who have never visited the store, but now will because of the company’s firm stance and action against discrimination.