Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

Whole Foods Market has been attacked in what seems to be one of the rare fake brandjacks. Pastor Jordan Brown released a video and picture of a cake he purchased at Whole Foods in Austin, TX, bearing the inscription "Love Wins", as per his order, and the word "Fag" which as he puts it "is not the cake I ordered". Brown is openly gay. This is a damaging. Whole Foods has a cult following in liberal, urban, areas even though, as was discussed in a case study in Brandjack, the founder and CEO is a libertarian, not a liberal. 

Whole Foods has hit back hard. The company investigated quickly and claims the cake has been doctored. Its statement includes the claim that the bakery team member in question is a member of LGBTQ community and  a security video of Brown paying for his cake. Whole Foods says the video shows  the "UPC label" – the bar code – is on top of the box not on the side as it is in Brown's video. Certainly, you can clearly see the cashier scan the top of the box, not the side. Yet Brown shows it on the side, sealing the box, and uses this to argue that it's clear he hasn't opened the box.

Other Twitter users have chimed in to support Whole Foods, making points about the handwriting and colouring of the writing to suggest that the word "Fag" was plainly added by someone else.

Whole Foods is threatening legal action against both Brown and his attorney. This blog doesn't usually recommend legal action. It is often taken to close down a debate with which an organisation should engage. In this case, however, the company seems to be the victim of a completely faked attack. If that's right, then the attack is malicious, and not designed to make some wider point about the corporation's policy. In this case, legal action seems appropriate. 

Update:

Some four weeks after this post on Brandjack News the NY Times confirmed that, as speculated here, the story was a hoax.