Hallmark miscalculated when he deleted a lesbian scene in a Zola commercial

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Editor's Note: Allison Hope is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Slate and other media. The opinions expressed here are exclusively from the author. See more opinion on CNN here.

(CNN) - If any brand can be considered synonymous with festivities, Hallmark would be the closest, if it is not already number one. That's why his decision last week to erase a lesbian scene from an advertisement on his network left a particularly bad taste in people's mouths, which caused a violent reaction and the company's final decision to restore the Ads in your chain.

Two days ago, Hallmark made an instinctive decision in response to some criticism from a well-known conservative group, and withdrew advertising from the Zola wedding site where a same-sex couple was shown. It should be noted that the network did not eliminate the other ads of Zola with couples of different sexes.

• Countries in which unions between same-sex couples are legal

The One Million Moms organization, known for frequently condemning content that contains LGBTQ themes, issued a statement stating that "Hallmark's films are suitable for the whole family and ruined it with the commercial."

To add more salt to the wound, a Hallmark spokesman said Friday that the announcement was withdrawn because it violated the channel's policies with "public displays of affection." Another important detail: the other ads were almost identical, except that they presented a girlfriend and a boyfriend instead of two girlfriends.

On Sunday night, Hallmark chief executive Mike Perry issued a statement apologizing and reversing the company's decision, saying: “The Crown Media team has been fighting for this decision as we have seen the damage it has caused unwittingly. Simply said, they believe this was a wrong decision. ”

The reversal to restore the ads on Sunday may be too late after a decision that could harm the brand's results not only in the short term.

Let us leave aside that same-sex couples who access their right guaranteed by the federal government to legally marry their loved ones are as familiar as possible. We are not debating live orgies here (as much as I can increase Hallmark Channel's ratings).

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However, the fact that Hallmark initially yielded to a noisy marginal group but without teeth is worrisome.

On the one hand, One Million Moms has much less than one million followers. They have just over 96,000 fans on Facebook, not even a tenth of the number they claim in their name. And as of Sunday night, they have just over 4,200 followers on Twitter. The reality is that they don't have the size of the audience or the purchasing power to move the big brands to do something different. The LGBTQ community, on the other hand, does.

What the homophobic group One Million Moms has is a good public relations machine; precisely what Hallmark lacks. As a public relations and marketing professional with more than 15 years in the trenches for large and small brands, including extensive experience in crisis communications, I can imagine how Hallmark came to a wrong conclusion at the beginning.

The whole thing probably started with a tweet or two. An angry person who does not believe that same-sex couples have the right to exist alongside heterosexuals saw the commercial and turned to social networks to complain. Probably, Hallmark took note, the social media manager and the public relations team were put on high alert, but they rightly took no further action.

Then, One Million Moms issued a statement, which generated a stir. They deployed their form letter and asked their followers to send letters to Hallmark. Hallmark saw an increase in the coverage of negative news and an avalanche of letters from angry mothers.

This is where they were wrong.

Instead of entrenching himself to support his advertiser Zola and his clients, viewers and LGBTQ allies, Hallmark was scared. They could have issued a rather innocuous statement that would have obtained a more positive than negative response, if they had only resorted to brands such as Nike, Pantene or Coca-Cola to ensure that supporting diversity pays dividends.

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In addition, if Hallmark had investigated a little to confirm that One Million Moms are actually about 100,000 'mothers' (moms), and some of them are probably people who follow them but do not totally agree with their agenda, they may have mitigated his fear. In fact, Hallmark's main demographic, women ages 25 to 54, overwhelmingly supports same-sex marriage. There may be more than one million mothers of LGBTQ children who are now angry with Hallmark for removing loved ones from their programming.

By taking the side of One Million Moms for two days and removing the ads from its network, the brand not only bothered millions of customers, LGBTQ and allies, which are the brand's daily bread, but they also did it right In the middle of the Christmas season, Hallmark's busiest time of the year. Making a decision in favor of less than 100,000 angry “moms” and setting aside 63% of Americans - more than 200 million people - who support same-sex marriage is a failure, not a calculated decision of a brand with rational thinking and crisis communications planning.

Zola was right to remove all of his Hallmark ads. Not only because it is the right thing, but also because they will probably see an increase in business as people flock to support the brand they chose to be on the right side of history and inclusion.

Somehow, Hallmark has done the same thing that many of our family members have done to us as LGBTQ over the years, essentially telling us that we cannot go home for the holidays because a fanatic aunt threatened not to come if we did . It is very bad for Hallmark that homophobia is bad for business.

Attacks against the LGBTI-Lesbian community