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Adamson, co-founder and managing partner of

Metaforce a marketing and product consultancy.

“Just saying you are standing with them is nice

but probably isn’t going to be meaningful

for them or for the brand. It can be seen

as opportunistic.”

Wendy Liebmann, founder and CEO of WSL

Strategic Retail, agrees, saying there is no reason

to make a public statement unless the company

actually has a concrete plan to help resolve the

issue of racism. She praised Peloton’s Twitter

pledge to donate $500,000 to the NAACP legal

defense fund as an example.

Jeans giant Levi Strauss & Co. is also backing its

statements with money, committing $100,000 to

its longstanding partner ACLU. YouTube pledged

$1 million to support efforts addressing social

injustice. And semiconductor chip manufacturer

Intel is pledging $1 million to address social

justice and racism.

Some of the most moving statements so far

have come from corporate executives who

are black.

Marvin Ellison, president and CEO of home

improvement chain Lowe’s tweeted a statement

about growing up in the Jim Crow South

and the company’s zero tolerance for racism,

discrimination and hate. Citigroup’s Chief

Financial Officer Mark Mason repeated Floyd’s

words “I can’t breathe” in an emotional corporate

blog post.

And Jide Zeitlin, chairman and CEO of Kate

Spade, Coach and Stuart Weitzman parent

Tapestry Inc., who along with Ellison is one of

only a handful of black CEOs of Fortune 500

companies, noted in a heartfelt LinkedIn post

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