Chung Yong-jin, chairman of Shinsegae Group, and executives and employees of E-MART institutional sector affiliates, as well as Starbucks Korea headquarters staff, will receive education on historical awareness and social sensitivity. It is a self-help measure to avoid being embroiled again in controversies like the mockery of May 18.
Shinsegae Group said on the 15th that on the 17th, including Chairman Chung, all executives and employees of E-MART and Starbucks Korea will receive history and social sensitivity education, and the company will redesign the overall approval system for marketing activities. First, partners working at Starbucks Korea stores are scheduled to receive training on the 22nd. On that day, all stores nationwide will close early at 3 p.m., and each store will receive education on historical awareness and social sensitivity by watching the training video conducted on the 17th.
Chairman Chung Yong-jin will also receive separate history education with affiliate CEOs. Before presiding over the presidents' meeting on the 24th, Chung will receive education on historical awareness and social sensitivity with the CEOs. This both fulfills Chung's promise, made through a public apology after the incident, that "I will also receive history education," and once again solidifies the resolve that all management will take responsibility.
Employees of other affiliates in the E-MART institutional sector will take the same course through online e-learning over two weeks starting on July 1. Headquarters staff and on-site managers are the initial targets.
This historical awareness education will be led by Oh Je-yeon, a professor in the Department of History at Sungkyunkwan University. Professor Oh is a historian who has researched modern Korean history as a primary field; in this lecture, the professor will review major events in modern and contemporary history since the 1950s and lecture on how to recognize them correctly.
The social sensitivity education will be conducted by Koo Jeong-woo, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Sungkyunkwan University. This session will share how corporations should consider and heed social issues such as history, labor, gender, and human rights when conducting corporate activities including marketing.
Starbucks Korea also decided to systematize risk prevention by overhauling various online and offline marketing processes to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents.
With advice from an external professional agency, the company will create a "social sensitivity" checklist and conduct mandatory risk reviews from the planning stage based on it. Whereas the planning stage previously examined mainly illegality and brand fit, the company will now also pre-screen socially sensitive issues such as "history, anniversaries, politics, disasters, military, gender, violence, and hate speech."
Through the checklist, the company will closely diagnose whether anything conflicts with the meaning of public anniversaries or memorial days, and whether any expressions could be interpreted as attacking or hating a particular group.
It will also improve the conditions needed to ensure proper review. When conducting marketing, the company will secure sufficient review time from planning to launch to prevent shoddy reviews due to tight schedules, and in the approval and alignment process, it will standardize report formats so that timing and key phrases can be clearly checked at a glance.
Starbucks Korea will establish a new system requiring final reviews not only by the responsible department but also by the heads of related departments such as quality and legal just before executing marketing content, rigorously managing all content exposed to customers so it can only be executed after multiple verification procedures.