UPDATE: Wells Fargo Stands By Transgender Community
June 5, 2009 by Andy Marra, Senior Media Strategist @ GLAAD
Today, GLAAD has received confirmations from three different companies pulling their advertising contracts from KRXQ. Bank of America, Verizon and Carl’s Jr have all publicly issued statements (here and here) that announced the pulling of their advertisements on the radio station as a result of the offensive comments made by radio hosts Rob Williams and Arnie States.
At 4:51pm EST, Wells Fargo reached out to GLAAD about KRXQ. Apparently, the radio station had placed Wells Fargo’s logo on their website leading people to believe they were current KRXQ advertisers.
Wells Fargo provided the following statement to GLAAD on the issue:
Thank you for your message. We appreciate your feedback and take such matters seriously.
We are strongly committed to equality for all and we do not tolerate discrimination. When we learned of the inappropriate comments made during the May 28th KXRQ broadcast we immediately removed our logo from the radio station’s Web site.
Wells Fargo was not an advertiser on the May 28 broadcast, is not currently advertising with KXRQ, and has not done so for more than a year.
We’re proud of our commitment of supporting many organizations that serve our diverse communities – which is consistent with our company values.
We very much appreciate your comments.
Diversity is at the core of Wells Fargo’s vision and values and Wells Fargo is honored to be on DiversityInc Magazine’s Top 50 list for 2009.
Thank you for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention.
Wells Fargo Communications
The list of companies no longer advertising on KRXQ includes:
- Chipotle
- Snapple
- Sonic
- Bank of America
- Verizon
- Carl’s Jr (CKE Restaurants)
- Wells Fargo
Please check back with us for more developments on this story.
Have an update to share with GLAAD? Send us a tweet on our Twitter account @glaad.
Oh yeah, I think that they’re going to start feeling it. I bet there are some interesting conversations going on right now at KRXQ.
I hope that the community will make an extra effort to support these businesses which did the right thing and pulled their advertising. Their support should be supported.
But all of this is amazing!
I wonder if anyone has been in touch with the Omaha family. Just so they can see that they have people behind them.
If no change is made by the end of the week, all KRXQ advertisers should be contacted, not just those of the RAD show. It’s all one station. The money all goes into one place.
We should focus some attention on the advertisers that specifically sponsor their daily “Pay My Bills” contest that undoubtedly draw a lot of extra listeners, they are Cost-U-Less insurance http://www.costulessins.com and Cache Creek Casino Resort http://www.cachecreek.com/contact_us/ , but I haven’t found PR/Advertising contacts for those companies.