The Return of the Brand

You may have missed this tidbit - what with Kanye stealing a little girl's limelight and Joe Wilson forgetting he was a US Congressman not a member of the British Parliament during PMQs - but it seems there's a whole lot of trust going on in the world of brands. How'd that happen?

We all know that brands have been beaten and battered by the double whammy of a shattered economy previously built on consumption and the rise of social media, where a company becomes the caretaker of a brand - not the owner.

Consumers, too, have become incredibly mistrustful of institutions - especially large corporations, the government and the media.

I take heart that perhaps the tide is about to turn. The brand and reputation equivalent of "the recession is over, but the recovery will be slow." Here's why:

A study by Capstrat of Raleigh, NC shows the slide in consumer trust in brands has stopped the death spiral and is now climbing back up in some cases - including trust in bank brands. Trust in the media continues to spiral down the drain, though.

Trust is a two way street and it seems that Wall Street is also more willing to trust Main Street, to use a well-worn cliche`. Nine companies have announced they will follow new executive pay rules proposed by The Conference Board that is based on increased public transparency and shareholder involvement. Among the first nine, AT&T, HP, and Cisco Systems. Microsoft has adopted a similar policy.

"You can't be in the top 25% in pay if you're in the bottom 75% in performance," Bill Ide, director of the Conference Board's Task Force on Executive Compensation told CNN. "That's universal. We think all regulators and policy makers would be comfortable with that."

With trust breaking out all over leading companies, let's hope the rest of the brand community falls in line, too. Soon.

More Stupid Corporate Tricks: The Sports Edition

I’ll admit to being biased. I think most college sports executives played one too many downs without a helmet. The recent attempt by the Southeastern Conference (SEC) to ban Twitter, Facebook and other social media from their football games proves my point.

At one time in the past seven days, the SEC released a proposed policy that would have banned fans from updating their Facebook status, posting a game photo on Flickr or tweeting from the stands at any SEC football game. No calling the brother-in-law to brag about your seats or blogging about that game-changing interception caught before your very eyes.

Seems the SEC believed being sports fans would be violating the SEC’s copyright and their lucrative contract with CBS Sports by reporting their own game updates. The solution, of course, was to act like a salmon and swim upstream against the massive current that is the omnipresence of social media.

After about 24 hours of being bombarded with “Are you kidding me?” messages from the blogosphere, alumni and season ticket holders, conference leaders relented. The new policy makes it clear that you can tweet from your seat as long as you’re not making any money doing it:

“No Bearer may produce or disseminate in any form a “real-time” description or transmission of the Event (i) for commercial or business use, or (ii) in any manner that constitutes, or is intended to provide or is promoted or marketed as, a substitute for radio, television or video coverage of such Event. Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the Event are acceptable.”

That’s a reasonable policy, but why all the drama that damaged the SEC credibility and presented an image of an organization hell-bent on holding back the tide of progress? Let's hope other organizations and executives look at the SEC's example and skip the Hail Mary pass (and excessive sports analogies) to save their reputation the harm and embarrassment.

Stupid Corporate Tricks: The Marriott Edition

Even the best run companies screw up every now and then. Most of the time we never know or notice. But sometimes - like now - the mistake is so obvious that you slap your head and cry out "What were they thinking?"

Such is the case with Marriott and the decision to blame a rape victim for being assaulted in a hotel parking lot. I'll wait while you retrieve your jaw from the ground.

In 2006 a woman and her young children were approached by a man seeking money in the parking deck of the Stamford, CT Marriott. He proceeded to rape the woman and threatened to do the same to her children if she resisted or screamed. He, fortunately, is now behind bars.

What would have been a routine, but obscure lawsuit - Marriott being sued for failing to keep their property secure - has grown into a full-blown brand and reputation crisis because of the boneheaded defense Marriott outlined in recent court documents: it's the victim's fault she was raped.

Once news of Marriott's legal position became known, it didn't take long for the hue and cry to rightfully begin. That was last week.

Today we learn that Marriott has come to its senses and decided not to mount a defense to the lawsuit based on claiming the victim failed to keep herself and her children out of harm's way. Good move. Late - unnecessary even - move, but a good one nonetheless.

I dare say the executives at the top of the Marriott food chain were caught as unaware as the rest of us, and they reversed a monumentally stupid decision by someone deep in the bowels of the corporate legal department.

Now Marriott needs to ensure that everyone in the organization understands the value of their brand and the values of the company so decision makers will think twice before putting the company's brand and reputation in jeopardy.

If you want to learn more about protecting your brand and reputation, send me an email at james.lee@c2m2a.com or visit www.c2m2a.com.

Is Twitter the New Canary in the Coal Mine?

Overused analogy aside, it is a fair question: Is Twitter the latest version of an early warning system that can tip a business that trouble – monumentally big trouble – is right around the bend?

While legions of businesses are finding ways to use social media in their communications and marketing and top advertisers are rapidly moving to Facebook, the number of executive skeptics reveals too large a number of leaders stuck at the starting line.

According to a new survey by Minnesota-based Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law, 80 percent of executives surveyed agreed that SMM has the potential to help improve customer relationships and corporate reputations. However, half said they fear social media could be detrimental to employee productivity, and 49 percent believe that using SMM could damage company reputation.

Those companies surveyed who are not using social media say they are not using SMM primarily because of concerns about confidentiality or security issues (40%), employee productivity (37%) or simply not knowing enough about it (51%).

Those are not insurmountable issues and should not be a barrier to bring the benefits of social media to your organization.

If you’re among the businesses still afraid to take the plunge, here’s a suggestion of how to stick your toe in the water (and how I’ll weave in the Canary – Coal Mine theme): Use Twitter, Facebook and Technorati to search for your company. You might be surprised what you read and you could find the next business or reputation crisis brewing without your knowledge.

Need a case study of how to use SMM as a reputation tool, look no further than the US Air Force. Public Affairs officers tracked public opinion - real time - on Twitter after an Air Force One photo-op over lower Manhattan sent people running into the streets fearing another 9/11 style attack was underway.

In short order, military officials quickly and correctly assessed the situation to have moved from a public relations coup to a PR disaster based on the comments of New Yorkers posted on Twitter and other social network sites. If the Air Force had only used traditional tools, they would have been far behind the public opinion curve and ill-equipped to deal with the heat the fly-over generated.

Once you discover there’s a whole conversation about you going on without you, chances are you’ll leap into SMM, too.

Come on in, the water – and coal mine - is fine, even if the metaphors are mixed.

Need to know more about how you can and should use social media, send me an email at james.lee@c2m2a.com or visit my Web site for more information.

Working in a Data Mine

I’ll admit it. I can’t get the old Divo version of the song “Working in a Coal Mine” out of my head while I write this. Bet you can’t either, now.

But there is a serious point to this analogy. Data mining is as important, if not more so, than ever. How you do it is, too.

I was reminded of this by a new client who wants to find business prospects with a very specific profile. I mentioned these businesses are easy to find, just pull permit records from local government agencies. A little digging proved the data was available from an information aggregator who collects the records on a daily basis.

In this particular case, these were businesses engaged in a very specific activity and all the information needed to contact the business was right there in black and white. So were all the details about the permitted project.

For my client, this was the Mother Lode. It might as well have been rocket science, too.

In the rush to Social Media Marketing (SMM), we tend to overlook some of the tried and true means of finding customers and prospects. We often overlook the oceans of valuable information about the people who pay the bills sitting in our own databases or those we can access for free or a low fee.

How you collect and use the information is just as important. If you’re new to the data-driven world, there are strong restrictions with serious penalties (if regulators decide to use them) for using a consumer’s personal data for marketing. Protecting that data once you have is also a deadly serious issue – just ask any company that’s lost control of personal information.

While integrating SMM into your business practices is the price of admission these days, don’t forget there are still “old school” techniques that are still valuable.

What other strategies and tactics have you or will you import into the digital marketing world?

For more information about data-driven branding and marketing, send me an email at james.lee@c2m2a.com or visit www.c2m2a.com.

The End of the (Media) World

I love the movie Independence Day, the story of when an evil alien race arrives to the strains of REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

There’s a new book that chronicles a different end of our media-driven world. No aliens this time, but the life altering changes in civilization are real.

AdAge editor Bob Garfield’s The Chaos Scenario looks at how the shift to a digital world spells doom for the symbiotic relationship between mass media and mass marketing. Garfield makes the case that the 400 year old practice of dictating to audiences is being replaced by consumer control that requires organizations to listen to people.

The core message – of which I am a true believer – can be found in this passage:
"(Consumers) aren't necessarily listening to you. They're listening to each other talk about you. And they're using your products, your brand names, your iconography, your slogans, your trademarks, your designs, your goodwill, all of it as if it belonged to them -- which, in a way, it all does, because, after all, haven't you spent decades, and trillions, to convince them of just that?"
You’ve heard it before from me and others: the days of companies being able to practice top-down communications with their stakeholders (employees, customers, shareholders and community leaders) are numbered.

The Independence Day aliens were set on destroying the human race. Media & marketing will survive the digital Apocalypse, but in very different forms.

Those businesses that are prepared to take transparency and consumer control to heart will also survive. And thrive. They're the people who will be singing the REM song...”it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”

For more information about how you can prepare for the new digital world, visit C2M2 Associates. To buy Garfield’s book (and you should), visit thechaosscenario.net.

When Good Brands Go Bad

Anyone who’s ever checked a bag when flying, spent hours waiting for the cable installer, or celebrated a birthday on hold with customer (no) service, wishes they wrote the latest YouTube hit “United Breaks Guitars.”

Poor service is always a risk to your brand and reputation. Thousands of successful transactions get lost when the one screw-up makes it into the social media. That’s not news and not particularly surprising.

Now comes a survey that explains, in part, why well known brands at seemingly marketing savvy companies continue to be caught off-guard by completely predictable and preventable events – like baggage handlers destroying a musician’s guitar.

According to findings from UberCEO.com:

• Not a single CEO has a blog. Zero. Zip. Nada.
• Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
• 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, but only three have more than 10 connections.
• Fewer than 20 CEOs have a personal Facebook page.
• Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.

I know several CEOs and have worked directly for two who led multi-billion dollar public companies. CEOs and other execs are busy people.

However, irrespective of the reasons why – busy schedules, fear of technology, fear of liability – the survey reveals a shocking lack of respect for customers. It reflects executives out of touch with the people who pay the bills now and in the future.

It’s no wonder, then, that superstar brands keep getting caught with their shorts down by the folks who create YouTube videos and post Tweets about their bad customer experiences.

Until CEOs join the conversation on social networks in a meaningful way, we’ll continue to watch episodes of When Good Reputations Go Bad. And the rest of us will blog about it, even if the CEO won’t.

For more on branding, reputation and social media marketing, visit C2M2 Associates.