Retailers Pay Price For Bad PR

One of the biggest media attention grabbers over the Christmas new year break was the call from major Australian retailers to reduce or eliminate the GST-free threshold for goods bought online from overseas.

In Australia the threshold is $1000 while New Zealand and Canada offer a much lower threshold or have other sales taxes.

The campaign by Australian retailers has turned into a public relations disaster with master media spinner Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman bidding a hasty retreat from the limelight after receiving a cyber-flogging from consumers.

Despite having millions to spend on the best PR agencies in the land, the retail coalition was no match for the succinct three point message coming back via online news story comments, Facebook and Twitter:

Consumers should be free to source the best price available for goods and services

Many Australian retailers haven’t effectively embraced the Internet era

The service at many Australian retailers is lousy

The mangled messaging from the retail coalition blames the consumer of being greedy and unAustralian and makes threats regarding employment – not exactly the best way to win over the people whom the politicians make a virtue of listening too.

Whether or not there is justification for reducing or eliminating the GST-free threshold, the PR damage has been done with the vast majority of people agreeing with the following sentiment (if not necessarily the language): "It becomes me, Gerry Harvey and Solomon Lew - billionaires, greedy, ugly, old, out-of-date c---s, and the people writing this seem to think we have been ripping them off for years and that we deserve this, (Harvey) told the (Sydney Morning) Herald."
There is also something of a high level of cynicism in the general public when retailers cry poor every year when they see their own wallets emptying and credit cards filling.

It’s difficult to find anything positive to say about the retail coalitions’ PR offensive – it was poorly timed, poorly conceived and poorly managed.

The other big story of the holidays has been the unrelenting rain and flooding across Queensland.
The team at Business Communications Management wish to say a big thank you to the emergency services teams including the SES who are performing an amazing service.

Anyone who can donate to the flood appeal or offer support in other ways should do what they can to support their fellow Queenslanders.