When Brand Safety & Community Collide
Spinneys, one of Lebanon’s leading supermarket chains, operated by Gray Mackenzie Retail Lebanon has faced three separate hits in the last 2 weeks.
The timeline:
1- Aug 7, 2025: Marketing misstep
Spinneys rolled out a “MISSING” billboard campaign to promote new store openings. The creative featured large-format portraits with location names, echoing the visual style of missing-person posters. Landing days after the Beirut port blast anniversary, it triggered widespread misinterpretation and backlash, with many mistaking it for actual missing-person alerts.
2- Aug 10, 2025: Fire at Jnah branch
A tent in the parking lot caught fire, flames reached the building wall, and Civil Defense contained the blaze in around 30 minutes. Cooling operations ran another 90 minutes. No casualties occurred, but operations were disrupted, inventory was damaged, and shoppers were unsettled. Employee concerns about safety protocols and escalation processes surfaced.
3- Ongoing: Price integrity and loyalty friction
Customers report mismatches between shelf prices and checkout scans, unclear loyalty rules, and difficulties redeeming points. High turnover, micromanagement, and perceived poor treatment persist. These everyday frictions quietly erode trust.
What’s really at stake?
1– Trauma-blind creative: Messaging clashed with a nationally sensitive date and the word “missing,” draining public goodwill.
2– Decision gating failure: No red team or cultural/ESG checkpoint caught the risk before spend.
3– Incident readiness gap: Fires, even in tents, exposed EHS controls, vendor compliance, and thermal-stress planning.
4– Narrative vacuum: Slow or defensive comms let social feeds set the story.
5– Community license at risk: Civil Defense is stretched; communities expect brands to reduce risk, not add to it.
6– Leadership signaling: When misfires and incidents stack, speed and clarity of response matter.
What a stronger system would have done:
1– Trauma-aware creative discipline: Vet all imagery/wording through cultural checks and a local panel. Keep a trauma-anniversary “do-not-touch” calendar. Avoid ambiguity.
2– Built-in decision gates: Red team for high-visibility campaigns, with veto power and a 24-hour cooling-off period.
3– Safety hardwired into ops: EHS lead per branch, monthly drills, and external-structure audits. Vendor contracts to set fire-load limits and grant shutdown authority.
4– Crisis comms muscle: Comms cell active within an hour with clear, human updates until closure.
5– Community reciprocity: Partner with Civil Defense early: education days, equipment support, visible prevention.
6– Leadership presence: Speak early, share timelines, and close the loop publicly.
Brand and safety are not separate.
They either reinforce each other or they collide.
The smartest operators design for empathy, safety, and clarity long before a crisis hits.
That’s what we build at LEVEL11.
