Evan, the poor have big mouths too
Snapchat's founder, Evan Spiegel, allegedly made a conscious decision not to enter 'poor' markets such as India and Spain a couple of years ago. From a business standpoint, for a company that relies on advertising revenue, it makes sense. Since the eyeballs in India have relatively little spending power, the money brands are willing to spend to acquire these eyeballs is also a fraction of what they spend on a rich one. And yet the effort to acquire both the eyeball and the adspend are similar. Digital ad spend in India is expected to touch $1 billion this year, while much smaller Australia's was $6.8 billion in 2016. Given that Snapchat's marketshare of that spend is small even in the US, it makes sense to avoid over-exposure.
On the other hand saying that India is poor is clearly not a good step from a reputation perspective. Snapchat's stock fell by 1.5%, not a big deal, but I'm surprised there was an actual impact at all. Lots of people - who don't use Snapchat - seem to have a lot of time and inclination to be angsty about these things, a really big voice on social media. And so Snapchat is trying to undo the damage by denying it, and launching India-specific filters. Spain, on the other hand, seems to have kept its mouth shut and thoroughly ignored the comment. No pacifiers have been announced for the poor folks there.
One of the big challenges for corporate reputation professionals is that we all have big mouths. Including CEOs. So the organization has a vision, a mission and carefully crafts a whole strategy around it. And then the CEO opens their mouth and talks about something which wasn't discussed in any briefing!
When you're a startup the organization relies on the founders to build its brand. Social media gives you an unprecedented platform to do so, and it rewards those who are interesting or, well, controversial. But once the organization becomes a brand in its own right this same frankness and desire for public speaking can be a detriment. You have to delink the brand's authenticity and personality from that of any one individual. Because despite certain exceptions - Richard Branson comes to mind - the bigger the mouth the more likely the foot will fit.
This is one reason Reputation (aren't they called PR any more?) professionals - and of course CEOs - need to know marketing. Every element of marketing has potential for a positive or negative impact on reputation, and unless you not just understand but have a say in it you will not be able to do much more than (a) tell the official story (b) pull the foot off the mouth and do damage control. With the decline in influence of traditional media PR professionals have had to look at online influence and eyeballs and in my view that will require them to work ever more closely with marketing. If you're wondering, yes, I've handled PR for Infosys, iGATE and Wipro Technologies, though in a much simpler age. You can view my deck here.