Posts Tagged ‘trust’

Beating the Bankers

Monday, August 30th, 2010

No offense to all my colleagues in the PR industry, but the world is pretty topsy-turvy when the public has a more positive view of us than of bankers.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Ah, the exquisite joy of nah, nah, na nah nah.

For my entire career, advertising and PR people have scraped the bottom of the barrel full of miscreants not to be trusted, right down there with used car salesmen.

According to Ragan’s PR Daily News Feed, (okay, consider the source) the public has a whopping 36 percent approval rating of the ad/PR industry.  That might not seem like much if you’re an art director or a copywriter, but let me tell you, it beats the airline, pharmaceutical and banking industries, to name a few.

I’m not sure our image has risen among the public, but perhaps others have just sunk while we stayed the same.  Or maybe with those glamorous Mad Men running around cable TV, our image has improved.  Or not—all those three martini lunches were nothing to brag about.

Of course, since “image” is our stock in trade, you’d think we’d do better for ourselves.  What is that homily?  The cobbler’s children go barefoot?  While, what?  While we PR people are busily boosting the image of the airline, pharmaceutical and banking industries?  Ooops.  I guess not.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , ,
Posted in marketing | No Comments »

50+ Years Later, Brand Basics Remain

Monday, June 21st, 2010

There’s an iconic B2B ad by McGraw-Hill Publishing from 1958 that’s been played and replayed over the years.  I first saw it in the ‘80s, and now it’s been reprinted in the current issue of B2B magazine.  It’s a fabulous photo of a grumpy businessman sitting in his office chair on a white background, glowering at the reader.  Here’s the copy:

“I don’t know who you are.

I don’t know your company.

I don’t know your company’s product.

I don’t know what your company stands for.

I don’t know your company’s customers.

I don’t know your company’s record.

I don’t know your company’s reputation.

Now—what was it you wanted to sell me?”

It’s a classic ad, as true in 1958 as it is today.  Yes, things have changed significantly, but it’s still important to build your brand, maintain your reputation and be memorable in the marketplace.  It’s still important to pre-sell your audience, regardless of the vehicle you use.  Of course, in 1958 there was only one practical vehicle, and hence the final line of copy in the ad:

MORAL:  Sales start before your salesman calls—with business magazine advertising.

Now sales start with web sites, e-mail campaigns, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and so much more.  But the fundamental concepts haven’t changed a bit.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »

When Your CEO Chokes on His Own Foot

Monday, June 14th, 2010

It’s been a few days since we’ve heard from BP’s Tony Hayward.  I envision his PR team struggling with rope and duct tape to bind and gag him in the boardroom, posting sentries at the door.  The man just kept spewing gaffes like, um, oil in the Gulf.

To recap a few of his most egregious utterings:

“What the hell did we do to deserve this?”

PR lesson #1:  It is not about you, Tony, or even your company.  It is about the 11 people who died, and the people whose livelihoods are destroyed, to say nothing of the environment.  How can a CEO be this tone deaf?  People’s lives are lost.  Keep priorities straight.

“The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it [the Gulf] is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

Are you trying to tell us this is not much of a problem, Tony?  If so, here’s PR lesson #2:  Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  Do not attempt to downplay or understate the problem.  It just irks people deeply when you assume they are too dumb to know the biggest environmental disaster in history when they see it.

“I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.”

Tony, Tony, Tony.  See PR lesson #2.

And finally, the ever famous, “I’d like my life back.”

PR people everywhere are checking their records to see when they’ve last updated their CEO’s media training.  For years I tried to get one of my clients to develop a crisis communication program that included CEO training, but they always had other priorities.  And yes, I understand that.  It’s easy to put off and invest the money in more urgent initiatives that have obvious payback.

But if a disaster strikes, it’s too late for media training.  You’ll have to get out the duct tape.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »

EMS Outsourcing and Trust

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Circuits Assembly recently had a couple blogs with some interesting topics:

1)  Nokia is outsourcing again after a year of pulling the work in-house.  This can only be good news for our business.

2)  Some opine that it’s best to manufacture electronic products in the region into which the product will be sold.

And what about outsourcing in the region in which electronic products will be manufactured?  Isn’t that a good idea?

With all the talk about globalization, do things just come down to the fact that people like to do business with their neighbor?  Is there some kind of comfort level we have when we deal with people in our own region?  Is there greater trust?

Because, in fact, trust is everything when you’re doing business.  Recently some financial and petroleum companies, among others, have seen trust in them erode.  It would be interesting to determine how lack of trust has affected their bottom lines on a case-by-case basis.  Because surely it has to some degree.  I’d like to see how much.

Then we could quantify the importance of trust and reputation.  And then we’d have an idea of the value of maintaining that reputation.  Which would make all of us in PR breathe easier.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Branding | No Comments »

BP: Bummer Petroleum Part 2

Monday, May 17th, 2010

In my last blog I said that no amount of PR would help BP if, indeed, they were not safe and environmentally sound.  Their brand is certainly damaged, particularly because they built it to be green.  BUT crisis communications are still essential, regardless of what the brand stands for.  And man, is this a crisis.

Here’s the problem, from a communications point of view.  The first rule in a crisis is to tell the truth.  And if the truth isn’t good, tell it anyway, express sincere remorse and then explain how you’ll fix it.  Well, the leak continues, and as long as it does, BP is in the spotlight.

So it’s not a finite event.  You can’t just say ‘mea culpa’ and move on.  You can’t promise it will never happen again when you don’t even know how to stop it from happening now.

To BP’s credit, they are admitting to mistakes.  They are taking some responsibility.  They are offering to pay all legitimate claims.  (Although you immediately wonder what BP’s definition of “legitimate” is.)  But in a catastrophe of this magnitude the normal rules of crisis communication, even when applied properly, may not be enough.

Perhaps that’s why I saw this headline in PR trade press a couple days ago:

BP Launches Lobby and PR Blitz

These efforts are mostly to respond to Congressional hearings as well as reporters.

The article mentioned that the company has also hired another PR firm, Brunswick Group, specializing in “critical communication challenges.”  (So says their web site.)  But to bring in new people at this stage of the game?  A couple weeks after the initial incident?  What about BP’s existing firm?  What about the existing crisis communication plans that every company should have in place?

We can only hope BP knows how to stop leaks better than they know how to handle crisis communications.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing Communications | No Comments »

BP: Bummer Petroleum

Monday, May 10th, 2010

I suppose it was just a matter of time before the cheery BP ads with cute little icons representing alternative energy sources became a nightmare for BP PR people.  I know some of those folks because I was privileged to have BP as a client for quite a few years.  And, even though my heart bleeds for them, it bleeds much more for the people and the animals that suffer—and perhaps will suffer for years to come—as a result of the Gulf Coast disaster.

When you bill yourself as a super-duper environmentalist, you gotta make the rubber meet the road, so to speak.  A few years ago, I was pretty impressed with the company’s green commitment because the division I worked for did some serious R&D to mitigate the environmental impact of drilling for oil (in cold climates, though, not in Gulf waters).  But then BP sold off that division, and possibly their good intentions went with it.

Even when you are squeaky clean environmentally, you just know it’s dangerous to build your entire brand around it.  Drilling for oil is a risky business.  If you aren’t 150 percent certain that your multiple redundant safe guards will never ever let you down, then no.  Don’t beat your chest about how pro-environment you are.

Because there is no PR campaign in the universe good enough to save you if you really are not safe and environmentally sound.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Branding | No Comments »

Toyota: Crisis Communications or Catastrophe?

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Over the years I’ve counseled my clients to have crisis communication plans, up-to-date and ready at all times, just in case. Central to those plans is a process for identifying the problem, and telling the truth about it—the whole truth, and quickly. But what do you do when the truth will not set you free but will instead send you into a free-fall of catastrophic proportions?

The truth about Toyota is not good. Seems the problems they have are systemic. Seems they’ve been cutting corners all over the place. Seems, according to Fortune magazine, they have “a culture that prizes speed and efficiency over reliability and safety.”

There’s just no amount of PR that can change those fundamentals. Not until the core problems are thoroughly examined and totally corrected. When the problems are ingrained in the culture, like Toyota’s, that could take some time. Usually, in a crisis situation, you can find a reason things went wrong and fix it. There have been some online comparisons of Toyota to the classic crisis situation of Tylenol in the early ‘80s. But Toyota wishes they could have it so good.

Tylenol was a victim—they were sabotaged with poison. Toyota sabotaged themselves by abandoning what their brand had represented for years—quality. Tylenol had an expensive but relatively easy fix—recall the product and design those irritating but safe tamper-proof caps. (I’m sure this didn’t seem easy to Tylenol at the time, but they came out with the new bottles pretty quickly.) How long will it take to change Toyota’s entire way of doing things?

And here’s one more reason Toyota’s situation is very different from Tylenol’s. The Tylenol crisis didn’t happen in the age of the Internet. There were no legions of bloggers whipping up a froth of vitriol. There were no web sites popping up all over with URLs like ToyotaSucks.com. There was no Jon Stewart doing a six-minute segment entitled “The Toyotathon of Death” that’s played repeatedly on YouTube.

As a veteran PR person, I would like to say that PR can do its job to get Toyota out of this mess.  And certainly PR can help.  But slapping on a band-aid when you really need major surgery will only make the patient sicker in the long run. Yes, Toyota is Tweeting. Yes, the company is offering whiz-bang incentives to get customers’ confidence back. Yes, the company is doing some public groveling.

But no amount of PR will change the fact that Toyota can’t be trusted right now. The company played fast and loose (pun intended) with our safety for the sake of profit. And all the Tweets in the world won’t restore its reputation until it makes some fundamental changes. And even then, the climb back will be tough. Maybe impossible.

The headline in a recent morning’s paper makes me doubt Toyota’s future: Fixed Toyotas Still Accelerating. That’s not a crisis. That’s a catastrophe.


  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , ,
Posted in Branding | No Comments »