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In the midst of the racist sh*tstorm Roseanne Barr kicked up, which led to the comedienne’s sitcom being canceled, there was one response that perfectly shut down the BS. Roseanne had blamed her racist late-night tweet about Valerie Jarrett on taking the prescription drug Ambien. Not about to let their product be dragged through the mud, Sanofi, the manufacturer of Ambien, came back with a pitch-perfect response:
While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.
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[Mic drop]
People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.
— Sanofi US (@SanofiUS) May 30, 2018
It was a great social media moment, one I’m sure marketing classes will be studying for years to come. And the National Law Journal has an interesting interview with Chan Lee, Sanofi’s North America General Counsel and a member of the Legal Steering Committee, who approved the tweet before it went viral. He says the company’s communications team drafted the initial response, but ultimately, in the interest of time, he was the only lawyer who vetted the statement before it got released to the internet:
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This effort was led by our very capable communications team. I couldn’t tell you how many colleagues from communications were involved in thinking through one, whether we ought to respond, and two, once we made the decision that we should, how should we best do that?
I was the lawyer that approved it. I thought about consulting others, but again, I was acting in the interest of time.
Though this tweet certainly got a lot of attention, it actually wasn’t super difficult for Lee to pull the trigger and approve the statement:
Typically the questions that I ask myself on tweets like this: One, is it truthful and nonmisleading? Two, is it consistent with our values? Three, is there a possibility of legal liability and how would we mitigate that? So those are the key questions. The approval of that tweet was a fairly easy one for me.
As one might imagine, leadership at Sanofi is pretty pleased with themselves over the tweet. Lee says there’s nothing he’d change about the company’s reaction to the situation:
[W]e’re pleased with the overall reaction to our tweet. We’re pleased that our external audience understood Sanofi’s position on this—the importance of diversity and inclusion for our way of doing things. So I would not change anything about the internal process to get it approved or the content of the tweet itself.
As a purveyor of social media, I can only say thank you to Lee and Sanofi for such a great use of the medium.
Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).