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Did a complete lack of tabouli at Target groceries seal Gregg Steinhafel’s corporate doom? Some communities think so. Why does Gregg Steinhafel hate tabouli lovers?<\/p><\/div>\n
You can scour the grocery section of any Target store, anywhere in the country, and find not a single box of tabouli mix. \u00a0On Steinhafel’s watch, the chain not only gave away the entire bulgur\/vegetable salad market, but told the nation’s millions of tabouli lovers that Target hated them and watned them to die.<\/p>\n
Many observers \u2013 many, many, many of them \u2013 believe this was the turning point in Steinhafel’s doomed regime.<\/p>\n
Gregg Steinhafel – the executive who came up one box of tabouli short at the end of the day.<\/p>\n
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Does it seem like I might be adding a lot more importance to boxed tabouli than the rest of the market does?<\/p>\n
And, perhaps, tacking a “many” behind the premise, to make it sound like my opinion is really some sort of groundswell?<\/p>\n
Abe Sauer, writing<\/a> for the Joyce Foundation-supported MinnPost,\u00a0<\/em>writes (and I’ll add emphasis):<\/p>\n That same year, Steinhafel and Target blundered into a PR disaster that, in many communities, still sees the brand’s name synonymous with homophobia<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The “PR Disaster” was actually a tornado of PR hype, ginned up\u00a0in toto\u00a0<\/em>by the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, working in conjunction with Big Gay (the Human Rights committee), repeated at full volume by a media that was no less bald-faced in working for a Dayton victory than the DFL was.\u00a0 It’s a Big Lie repeated until the ill-informed figured it must be true, done\u00a0entirely\u00a0<\/em>to stifle dissent from the DFL party line among Minnesota’s big businesses – especially those that the DFL and its cronies wanted to serve as examples, the ones that were “gay friendly” from the beginning. \u00a0The message to those businesses; “Merely accepting us as employees and isn’t enough. \u00a0You have to behind everything “we”, the political movement that owns Big Gay, stand for politically, too”.<\/p>\n The public reaction to Target’s 2010 campaign giving to conservative anti-gay candidates supported by the MN Forward fund are not the reason Steinhafel stepped down today. But they certainly should have a been a dire warning that the CEO and his top management circle was in danger of driving the entirety of the Target brand into the ditch in pursuit of a few minor tax cuts. Target (and Steinhafel’s family personally) supported candidates for no other discernible reason than that they claimed to be “pro-business.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Making political donations to seek a political result most advantageous to the business?<\/p>\n One wonders what criteria Abe Sauer (and the people who pay for his writing)\u00a0think<\/em>\u00a0a CEO’s goal should be – especially when faced with a DFL governor (and, now, legislature) who are turning out to be disastrous for business (although less so for businesses in Target’s weight class)?<\/p>\n What did\u00a0<\/em>happen to Target’s business fortunes after the 2010 campaign, anyway? \u00a0How can we accurately track what the ultimate “many” – the market – thought about Target?<\/p>\n
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