Nabisco released its first official statement on the lawn situation Thursday, a 212-word document that was meant to read “we take the concerns of all consumers seriously” and instead read “we pretend to take the concerns of women with bullhorns seriously.”
The statement remained live on the company newsroom for four hours and eleven minutes before being replaced with a version that said the same thing more slowly.
“It went through legal, it went through brand, it went through two agencies,” said a communications staffer who asked not to be named. “Everyone read it and nodded. In hindsight that should have told us something.”
The statement went on to describe the company’s “ongoing commitment to transparency,” its “long history of listening,” and a new “Lawn Dialogue Initiative” that staff confirmed does not exist yet and may be a folder.
Clark, now on Day 5, read the statement aloud in full through the bullhorn, then read the corrected version, then read the differences.
“They changed ‘pretend’ to ‘strive,’” she told the parking lot. “That is the whole press release. Everything else is the same. I want that on the record, and the record is this bullhorn.”
At press time the company had issued a third statement clarifying that the second statement superseded the first, and that neither statement should be read aloud.
