Corporate reputation and communication: The case of ‘Arla Foods’ and Prophet ‘Muhammad’ cartoons

This article examines product boycotts driven by religious and political reasons, and develops insights regarding how corporations may respond to minimize the impact of such boycott calls. Conclusions show that Arla Foods was late in interpreting the signals of a crisis, so it could not identify possible dangers and deal with it in good time. Crisis prevention was not an active area of Arla’s Crisis Management Plan in the Middle East in the years before the Cartoon Crisis. Moreover, issues management did not receive adequate attention before the crisis. Arla neglected the prevention stage and only fully started their crisis communication when the crisis was well underway. The lack of preventive measures taken meant that Arla’s aggressive communication strategy was mainly used in a reactive fashion throughout the crisis. The research findings suggest that the company lacked local representatives; Arla also did not engage in a continued two-way communication with its Middle Eastern stakeholders, overlooking the fact that opinion leaders play an important role in influencing the opinion and behaviour of consumers in the Arab countries.