Ye has told Bloomberg that he plans to cut ties with his corporate suppliers. After he was suspended from Twitter and Facebook,Ye offered to buy conservative social network Parler.
An email message sent to a representative for Ye was not immediately returned.
Adidas,whose CEO Kasper Rorsted is stepping down next year,said it reached its decision after conducting a “thorough review” of its partnership with Ye,whose talent agency,CAA,as well as Balenciaga fashion house had already dropped the rapper.
Despite the growing controversy,Allen Adamson,co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce,believes that adidas’ delayed response was “understandable”.
“It’s a hugely profitable,edgy brand association,” Adamson said. “The positives are so substantial in terms of the audience it appeals to – younger,urban,trendsetters,the size of the business. I’m sure they were hoping against hope that he would apologise and try to make this right.”
Loading
But Adamson noted that adidas was facing pressure from everywhere including customers,employees and stakeholders.
“There’s the short-term profits of selling shoes,and then there is the long-term equity of the adidas brand,” he said.
In the hours before the announcement,some adidas employees in the US had spoken out on social media about the company’s inaction.
Sarah Camhi,a director of trade marketing at the company who described herself as Jewish,said in a LinkedIn post that she felt “anything but included” as adidas “remained quiet;both internally to employees as well as externally to our customers” for two weeks after Ye made his antisemitic remarks.
The rapper,who has won 24 Grammy Awards,has been steadily losing audience on radio and even his streaming numbers have declined slightly over the last month. According to data provided by Luminate,an entertainment data and insights company whose data powers the Billboard music charts,his airplay audience has slipped from 8 million in the week ending September 22,to 5.4 million in the week ending on October 20. The popularity of his songs on streaming on demand also went down in the same period,from 97 million to 88.2 million,about a 9 per cent drop.
Ye has earned more of a reputation for stirring up controversy since 2016,when he was hospitalised in Los Angeles because of what his team called stress and exhaustion. It was later revealed that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
He recently suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast,” among other comments. He also was criticised for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his Yeezy collection show in Paris.
MRC studio announced Monday that it is shelving a complete documentary about the rapper. JPMorganChase and Ye have ended their business relationship,although the banking breakup was in the works even before Ye’s antisemitic comments.
Gap said it is also taking immediate steps to remove Yeezy Gap product from its stores and has shut down yeezygap.com in light of West’s comments. The clothing retailer said that in September it was ending their relationship but at the time,it said that it planned to continue to sell Yeezy Gap products that were in the pipeline.
Jewish groups have pointed to the danger of the rapper’s comments at a time of rising antisemitism. Such incidents in the US reached an all-time high last year,the Anti-Defamation League said in a letter to adidas last week urging it to break with Ye.
Jonathan Greenblatt,CEO of the Anti-Defamation League,applauded the company’s decision to drop Ye.
“This is a very positive outcome,” he said. “It illustrates that antisemitism is unacceptable and creates consequences.”
The saga of Ye,not just with adidas but with brands like Gap and Balenciaga,underscores the importance of vetting celebrities thoroughly and avoiding those who are “overly controversial or unstable,” said Neil Saunders,managing director of GlobalData Retail.
“Companies or brands that fail to heed this will get stung,especially if they become overly reliant on a difficult personality to drive their business,” Saunders said.
AP
Get a note directly from our foreigncorrespondentson what’s making headlines around the world.Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.