April 20, 2009 in Brand Strategy, Public Relations by Orchardo
Sometimes, Your Company’s Wins Are Nothing to Brag About

david_goliath12061When your company scores a victory, it’s not always best to brag about it. In fact, it’s sometimes best for the public to think you lost.

I know this may seem a little counterintuitive to you transparency-preaching (if not always practicing) new-wave flacks out there, but bear with me a minute, OK?

Let’s look at the example of corporate lawsuits. I’m not talking about the kind of lawsuits where two corporate giants are battling each other over trademark infringement, a business deal gone bad, or other such snits. That may get the business wonks excited — but from the rest of the world, it elicits an “Is American Idol on yet?” yawn.

I’m talking about the lawsuits where an individual or group of individuals — a.k.a., “the little guy” — takes on your big, bad Fortune 500 company.

Beating the Little Guy

In the long run, John Maynard Keynes famously said, we’re all dead. Also in the long run (not quite as long, but close), deep-pocketed corporations usually beat the rap when they are dragged into court by an individual they have wronged (or allegedly wronged). This is true no matter how heinous the corporation’s misdeeds (or alleged misdeeds).

Let me guess: You don’t believe me. You’ve read too many of those “little guy wins big” headlines over the years, haven’t you?

Headlines like: “Old Lady Wins $3 Million from McDonald’s for Spilling Hot Coffee on Herself!”

It’s enough to make you pull at your hair and shout, “Damn lawyers!” — isn’t it?

The Fine Print

No one ever seems to read the fine print years later, after the esteemed legal counsel for those deep-pocketed corporations have earned their paychecks.

Remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which devastated the Alaskan coast in 1989? Despite a $5.3 billion judgment, Exxon didn’t pay a dime of it for nearly 20 years. The company only agreed to pay in 2008 — after the damages had been slashed by more than 90 percent.

As for that “old lady” who spilled her coffee — 79-year-old Stella Liebeck — she never did see the $3 million she was awarded in 1994. The judgment was reduced by 80 percent, and the plaintiff, who suffered third-degree burns, spent eight days in the hospital, and endured two years of treatment, settled for even less rather than wait through endless appeals.

And just last week, a respected photojournalist named Chris Usher, who sued Corbis after the stock photo agency lost more than 12,000 of his images — including coverage of the historic Bush-Gore presidential race — had to settle for compensation of just $7 per image after a seven-year battle.

See how it works?

And if you’re going to bring up the Greg Kinnear flick Flash of Genius, don’t even go there. Dude ruined his marriage and his life to win that case.

Hold the Press Release

What happens in these cases, almost invariably, is that it doesn’t turn out as well for the little guy as the media originally reports.

When the end finally comes, your execs may decide to take turns giving each other high fives in the boardroom. That’s fine.

But if one of them calls to tell you to put out a press release about the big win, I’d encourage you to pretend your cell phone is on the blink and to make a staticky hissing sound into the receiver. And if you’re on the office phone, I’d encourage you to pretend it’s your cell phone (the one that’s on the blink).

You see, this is the kind of victory that big companies shouldn’t brag about. Goliath beating David is not good PR for Goliath.

In fact, the best possible PR that companies can get in these situations is what they get without even trying. The media generally does corporations a big favor by losing interest in these legal battles long before the final verdict.

So sometimes when you win, it’s best to keep it to yourself.

Damn lawyers.

(Image source)

 
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November 21, 2008 in Brand Strategy, Corporate Communications, Crisis Communications by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Getting into Hot Water Once in a While Keeps You Clean

“I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.”

– G.K. Chesterton

Sometimes it’s good for brands to get into trouble — that is, for customers, and the public generally, to begin to question if a brand is what it says it is. In fact, I would argue that the more sudden and urgent the brand crisis, the better it is for the brand.

Whole Foods Market is a good example of a brand in crisis that has used its troubles as a wake-up call to shore up its reputation. When Whole Foods was forced to recall beef from its shelves in August in an E. coli outbreak, customers suddenly wondered whether its quality standards were really that much higher than other big-box grocers. It hasn’t helped that food prices have been going up across the board and the economy is in a shambles. In many consumers’ minds, Whole Foods had become “Whole Wallet.”

Since the beef crisis, Whole Foods has been working hard to prove that it is different — and not necessarily as expensive as everyone thinks. The retailer has blogged about the crisis, issued comparison shopping challenges, and reinforced its quality claims.

What if there hadn’t been a brand crisis for Whole Foods? What if the retailer had simply continued to charge high prices, had gradually lost its quality distinction in its customers’ minds, and little by little its growth slowed until, over a period of years, it began to lose market share?

Compared to this fate — which has befallen too many brands to count — a crisis that gets a company’s management moving sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

I’ve managed my share of brand crises over the years, and with few exceptions, they’ve ended up being good for the companies involved.

As the Wall Street Journal’s Jerry Seib opined today in reference to our current economic troubles and the opportunity they present for President-elect Obama:

The thing about a crisis — and crisis doesn’t seem too strong a word for the economic mess right now — is that it creates a sense of urgency. Actions that once appeared optional suddenly seem essential. Moves that might have been made at a leisurely pace are desired instantly.

The same benefit is true for brands — particularly at Fortune 1000 companies, where the bureaucracy levels can rival those of Congress.

 
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November 19, 2008 in Brand Strategy by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Reason and Emotion Are Not Antagonists

“Reason and emotion are not antagonists.”

– Nathaniel Branden

Try as we might, it’s impossible for us to separate reason from emotion. There’s no such thing as following your heart instead of your head (or thinking with “the little head instead of the big one,” for that matter.) Virtually all of our decisions — business decisions, political preferences, life choices — are made based on a combination of reason and emotion, and that mixture is far too messy to ever isolate the point where one ends and the other begins.

Branding works because it plays on your emotions and your reason. It doesn’t give you a list of product benefits and hope you’ll rationally choose this product over a competitor. It goes after your whole mind — and frankly, you are powerless against its force, if it’s done well. You are powerless because, as Spock-like as you may think you are, you can never separate your brain from your feelings.

The Frame Is More Important Than the Picture

Facts don’t speak for themselves. They need framing to be understood — and that’s where the real battle for public opinion and brand preference takes place.

For example, “estate tax” and “death tax” are two terms describing the same thing. However, if you survey Americans, the majority favor the estate tax and oppose the death tax. But framing goes beyond simple wordplay. When done well, it aims directly at our greatest hopes and deepest fears — and ties these to our decisions, including purchase decisions.

The author George Lakoff says that, in the world of U.S. politics, Americans tend not to vote on issues; instead, they view the country metaphorically, as a family, and vote on the type of family they identify with — a family dominated by a strict father (the Republican party) or a nurturing mother (the Democrats). The emotional impact of these frames is enormous, and determines what facts resonate with the public.

Girly-Man Democrats and Erratic Republicans

For example, Republicans have been effective in emasculating their Democratic opponents by using images of the slightly built Michael Dukakis in a tank, or John Kerry windsurfing — images that reinforce the “softness” of the Democrats in the public’s mind. Similarly, the Obama campaign was effective in portraying John McCain as “erratic” — not the kind of strict father Americans could trust to lead them.

Until I read Lakoff’s work on frames, I wondered, as many political analysts have, why the public tends to line up with Democrats on issues ranging from abortion rights to a progressive tax system — but has generally voted for Republicans in national elections for the past 30 years. I was particularly interested since my own parents were die-hard Republicans despite supporting the Democratic position on the majority of issues.

The answer is that they supported the Republican frame.

Frames in Branding

You can’t brand your organization successfully without creating and leveraging frames — for your customers, for your investors, for your employees. There’s an old story about someone asking a janitor at NASA what he did for a living. His reply: “I’m helping to put a man on the moon!”

The facts are that he’s mopping the floors, scrubbing the bathrooms, and making minimum wage. But framed as part of a larger, inspirational mission, this emotional context is far more important than the facts.


Image source

 
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November 14, 2008 in Brand Strategy by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
A Brand for a Company Is Like a Reputation for a Person — Except When It’s Not

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.”

– Jeff Bezos

Branding is all about personification — giving human traits to things that aren’t human.

If you think about it, Nike, or Disney, or the company where you work are no more than a stack of papers filed by a lawyer somewhere. They are legal entities created specifically so that their activities are considered separate from those of the people who formed them (for liability, tax and other reasons.)

But a stack of legal papers can’t make decisions, or have a personality, or do anything but sit there. And we’ve established that the corporation is distinct from the people who created it or who run it; they can leave the company at any time. The only thing that really holds a corporation together is its shareholders — and they’re here today and gone tomorrow as well.

So really, there’s no there there — is there?

Well, yes and no.

Brands Create Continuity

You see, whenever a shareholder sells his or her stock in a company, the buyer has certain expectations of continuity. And the people the shareholders entrust to run the company are expected to maintain (and increase) the company’s value by meeting these expectations — not only in terms of sheer dollars and cents, but by having a predictable business model that shareholders can count on for the long term.

And that’s where branding comes in. Branding communicates the continuity of a company’s business model — to shareholders, to customers, to employees. It says, “This is the kind of person we are — if we were actually a person.”

So Disney is family-oriented, fun, magical. Nike is outdoorsy, rugged, adventurous. And so on and so on. To the extent a company’s products, advertising and other projections of itself support these traits, the brand has continuity — which over time, can become a company’s most valuable asset.

In this sense, it is like your reputation or mine.

Corporations as Wannabe Humans

But there’s a point at which branding is not the same as reputation. At a certain point, we must face the fact that while people actually are human, corporations are merely wannabes. This has all sorts of implications for PR — and specifically, for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs.

I help companies with their brands for a living. I think one reason I’m good at it is that I don’t blow sunshine up people’s behinds. So here’s the deal:

Corporations are not human. And that’s a good thing, because if they were human, they would be sociopaths. This isn’t a cheap shot. A sociopath is a person who is interested only in their personal needs and desires. By definition, corporations are designed expressly to serve the interests of their shareholders — and only those interests.

ROI of CSR

Yes, CSR programs can do good. The thing to keep in mind is, these programs only exist to the extent shareholders can be convinced that the spending will ultimately boost the bottom line — like any other marketing expenditure. It’s the equivalent of doing something good so someone will see you doing it.

People are smart enough to know when someone is doing good for the right reasons — and they value these efforts far more than they value the efforts of those who do it for appearances’ sake (like corporate brands).

So what does this mean in terms of dollars? Let’s say you’re a large corporation that spends $50 million annually on CSR. Now, let’s say the public only values your spending about half as much as they do that of a grassroots organization whose motives are considered pure. Well, that means you’re spending $50 million to buy $25 million worth of good will.

Maybe you’re Exxon, and considering your reputation, this still sounds like a pretty good deal to you. Or maybe there are other places to better spend your money.

All of which is to say that a brand for a company is like a reputation for a person — except when it’s not. To keep your bearings, and hold on to your soul, in today’s corporate world, it’s important to know the difference.


Image source

 
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April 14, 2008 in Brand Strategy by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
What’s in a Name? Sometimes, It’s the Difference Between Success and Failure

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the stock photography business, there are two types of stock: “rights-managed” and “royalty-free.”

I bet — even if you don’t know the difference between the two — you already have a preference based on their respective names. Am I right?

Read more at Black Star Rising.

 
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