After complaints from locals in Nyack, New York, Bed, Bath and Beyond pulls black jack-o’-lanterns from its website. According to News 12, the law offices of Feerick, Nugent, MacCartney Law Offices on South Broadway displayed the festive Halloween decorations on their steps a week ahead of Halloween, but they took them down two days later.
News 12 spoke to the specialty retail behemoth and was able to get a comment from a spokeswoman who said, “We have immediately removed the item from the sale. This is a sensitive area and, though unintentional, we apologize for any offense caused.”
The store says it took action after News 12 reached out but would not say if it had received any other complaints – https://t.co/Lg8rSYwcbH
— News12WC (@News12WC) October 21, 2019
Regional director at the NAACP, Wilbur Aldridge, said in a statement to the New York Post, “By now I would believe everyone [would] know that anything in Blackface is offensive… Equally as offensive is that a retail store would have such an item in [their] inventory for general purchase.”
When asked about the outdoor decor, Mary Marzolla, who is a partner at the firm, explained to News 12 that her team meant no harm in placing the black jack-o’-lanterns on the steps of their office.
“We understand that someone complained about them and so once we got word of that we immediately took them down,” Mary Marzolla, a partner at the law firm, told News 12.
“We represent people of all colors and faiths, and we would never do anything to exclude anyone from any community,” she adds.
Human #AF.
Sade Disu is known and sought after for her ability to leverage storytelling, data, and business operations with her innate understanding of the cultural consumers’ lifestyle attitudes.
She attributes this aforementioned attention (press and awards) to her grit for creating cross-cultural content, platform solutions, and activations that engage (what she coins) the ” multi-hyphenated millennial women.”
Her content strategies and live event platforms were deemed unmatched for its convening power of global content, culture, and empowerment according to Forbes, LA Times, Essence, and Black Enterprise. And even more, was given a proclamation, by former Mayor of New York (now Presidential candidate) Michael Bloomberg in 2010.
All in all, Sade has delivered award-winning and has been press ordained (had a 4-page press feature in Black Enterprise and 2-page press feature in Forbes French Edition for her global experiential marketing and digital work across various clients.
Brands like Kimora Lee Simons, Iman Cosmetics, Pikolinos, Zara, Roommate Hotels and USAID, immediately tapped into her three-tier prong approach “community, content, to commerce” when looking to connect with the cultural consumers.
Under her auspice, she managed a team of 25 and built a 10-year-old marketing and digital communication firm, responsible for offline and online platforms that connected brands to consumers organically and authentically.
The results increased brand awareness 8.5 million views; $300+ K in revenue generated per event (total of 3) for project sponsors, and performance beyond the expected for key performance indicators such as newsletter subscribers. Media giants such as Hearst Magazines caught wind of her competencies — the ability to connect to cultural consumers through content and experiential solutions– and immediately hired her agency to build and produce its international spin-off of COSMO (which Disu also helped cultivate and manage editorial teams for).