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How much should you protect your brand?

The value of a brand can be huge. Especially when you own an historic, storied high-end name. Like  Ferrari.

The Italian sportscar maker is fiercely protective of its identity, and understandably so. Having to deal with fakes built in back street garages in Thailand is bound to make you a bit touchy. Even so, the legal threats against a British Ferrari owner seem a little heavy-handed.

Dan Cawley of Manchester, England, is coming under pressure from the manufacturer for customizing his 360 Modena into a stretch limo. Apparently the inclusion of an additional centre section means the car no longer has the right to wear Ferrari badges. The company has given him 14 days to remove them, or face the consequences in court.

Brand identity matters, but is this really such an infringement? Swelledhead thinks the negative publicity this story will generate isn't worth the brand protection it seeks to gain.

More details here.

Lessons for UK and European brand marketers in the Don Imus debacle.

The US continues its intolerance for intolerance, even when shrouded in the veil of comedy as was made clear by the cancellation of Don Imus’ Imus in the Morning Show on WCBS-AM radio and MSNBC cable television. Imus and his on-air producer exchanged very offensive remarks regarding the Rutgers Women’s basketball team last week, and a firestorm of protest has resulted in ending, for now, his 30-year radio career.

The judgment of whether this episode is worthy of canceling Imus is beyond the scope of Swelled Head. You can see the offending segment here on YouTube and decide for yourself.

 

What’s important for Swelled Head readers from the UK and Europe who own their companies' transatlantic marketing roles is to realize the risks associated with the speech and actions of your executives traveling and working in the US. What might pass for funny or inoffensive at home could generate a lawsuit, loss of business and damage to your reputation here. Society generally in the US has become very protective of people's feelings and there are consequences for those who “cross the line.”

And, crossing that line may not be as obvious as Imus’ remarks are to you and your colleagues. When we meet a prospective client from the UK or Europe who will have exposure to journalists, we strongly recommend media and cultural sensitivity training. The reason is that your instincts, successful behaviors and speech might not be acceptable here.

Has your spokesperson ever put his/her hand on a journalist’s wrist, shoulder or knee while making a point? Assumed a journalist was a liberal and talked politics during an interview? (While more journalists do lean Democratic than Republican, most prefer to keep their political views out of the reporting process unless they are political reporters.) Made a provocative remark about the appearance of a colleague? We’ve seen all these and more from company representatives who were unwilling to participate in training, and none of these episodes ended well.

The way in which the Imus matter unfolded has important implications as well. Today’s Wall Street Journal article describes how this 30-second segment of a four-hour radio show became an Internet cause célèbre, beginning with a single blog post on mediamatters and leading to national media coverage, debate, protest and ultimately the downfall of a top tier U.S. media figure. If you ever doubted the relevancy and power of blogs, those doubts should be erased forever.

In a culture where even the mighty can fall from one slip of the tongue, being prepared and aware makes more sense than ever. Have your executives been media trained? If not, and you need help, feel free to give us a call or contact us by email.

Technorati tags: don imus, MSNBC, CBS, media training, cross cultural training

Should Abercrombie & Fitch go transatlantic?

An interesting point of view from Annalisa Barbieri in online magazine, The First Post. She sees the arrival of Abercrombie & Fitch to the UK as potentially damaging for the brand.

And she may have a point. A&F has a huge following in Europe. Popularised by the gay scene, which appreciated its sexualised marketing literature (the firm pulled its racy cataogues in 2003 after complaints), the label percolated into a broader consumer culture of young transatlantic travellers or those of such aspirations. Whilst now somewhat passé for trend-conscious gay men, A&F still communications a certain distinction in style and attitude among the mainstream.

One store off London’s Savile Row is probably exclusive enough to maintain the brand’s standing, but it’s likely to be mobbed by fashionistas of relaxed taste. While that’s cool in the short term, once everyone’s got their hands on a chest/breast/crotch emphasising garment (their clothing really does push these benefits), the attraction will soon wane.

If A&F expands beyond the rarefied retail district of the West End, it could become an also-ran. As ubiquitous and dull as GAP. Managing its transatlatic expansion by translating the brand effectively for new audiences will be vital if it is to retain its valuable lifestyle appeal.

Browne to quit BP after “Annus Horribilis”

Ever since Queen Elizabeth II described 1992 as an “annus horribilis” the Latin phrase has become the vernacular appellation for any individual or organisation subject to 12 months of chronic misfortune. This year, the most worthy recipient of the dubious honour was oil giant BP. To many the name now stands for ‘big problems’, usurping the meaning from its green-espousing marketing mantra, ‘Beyond Petroleum’. Today, news that BP’s boss, Lord Browne, is to step down in July – six months earlier than initially announced – is more grist to the mill for a media that has chronicled a year of the company leaping from one self-induced crisis to another. SwelledHead considers how Lord Browne’s successor, Tony Hayward (currently head of exploration and production) can turn the corner with its public profile.

One thing after another

Before moving onto the positive, it’s worth a recap of just why 2006 was so awful for one of Britain’s largest and best known companies. The litany of disaster stems from the devastating explosion at the Texas City oil refinery in March 2005 that killed 15 and injured 180. It was the worst US industrial accident in more than a decade. The site had previous safety problems. In March 2004, it was evacuated after an explosion that cost the company $63,000 in fines. In September the same year, two workers died and another was seriously injured by scalding water that escaped from a high-pressure pipe.

In 2006, accusations of behind-the-scenes mismanagement of critical environmental and safety matters, and underhand business practice, was revealed one event at a time. In March there was the 1m litre (267,000 gallon) oil spill at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which threatened 8% of US supply and was enough to raise world oil prices. In June the US energy regulator filed a lawsuit accusing BP of attempting to manipulate the American propane market. The next month there was a rather public row between Lord Browne and chairman Peter Sutherland over the Browne’s departure date, while operationally the company closed 12 wells at Prudhoe Bay following the earlier leaks. To add to the criminal investigation faced by BP for Texas City, in August it emerged that the company was also being probed over possible manipulation of crude oil and unleaded petrol/gasoline markets. And further wells were closed in Prudhoe Bay.

In September, the start of production from Thunder Horse, BP’s giant offshore development in the Gulf of Mexico, was put back two years following the discovery of failure in key components of the system. In October, murmurings about a laissez-faire attitude to safety gained credence following the US Chemical Safety Board’s interim report into the Texas City refinery explosion. It accused BP of ignoring “catastrophic safety risks” and of knowing about “significant safety problems” at 34 other facilities around the world. CSB chairwoman, Carolyn Merritt, blamed the explosion on “aging infrastructure, overzealous cost-cutting, inadequate design and risk blindness.”

November saw the release of a consultant's report about the Texas City refinery, written a few months before the disaster, which said he had never seen a site “where the notion 'I could die today' was so real for so very many people” and that there was an “exceptional degree of fear of catastrophic incidents” at the plant. BP’s head of exploration and production, Tony Hayward, confirmed what many suspected when he said “[BP] has lived too long in the world of making do and patching this quarter for the next quarter.” His criticism of the company, which were put on its intranet system by staff, noted that BP’s leadership does not listen enough to what “the bottom” says and that safety needed more work.

Proponents of BP say that the incidents and events, while lamentable, are isolated and should not be linked as evidence of systemic failure within the organisation. A reader of SwelledHead commented that our post in January made the same mistake as other media by citing incorrect evidence due to misunderstandings of the Alaskan pipeline system. Maybe so, though our point was less about the detail of how BP’s troubles occurred and more about how mismanagement was damaging to the firm’s brand. Indeed, the City is unconvinced that BP’s problems are exceptional. Its shares have fallen by 20% since April of last year.

Turning the corner

So, what can Tony Hayward do to remove the tarnish of a full year of troubling headlines?

Clearly BP needs to get its house in order, but the key to restoring faith in the brand (and gaining back lost stock market value) is in how it communicates that effort to its stakeholders and the wider public.

• BP needs to openly address its failings and explain with clarity and a fair degree of candour, what is being done at every level within the organisation.
• It must be willing to meet with and fully engage the media, including some of its sharpest critics, so that journalists feel they are being properly informed and not being fed ‘spin’. This will help to end the ‘bandwagoning’ that keeps bad headlines flowing.
• As well as working with the media, BP should take control of its own reporting. It should set up a dedicated website, ‘BP Better Practice’, that details the company’s plans for its own redemption and charts the positive work as it takes place. This site should include an executive blog, with key management figures reporting regularly on how lessons are being learned and problems rectified.
• The admission by Hayward himself that employees are not being listened is an issue that needs to be tackled head on. The Better Practice website should show how safety and environmental related investment tracks advice given by those on the front line. This will help to restore confidence and morale among the company’s staff worldwide.

Telling the story of how BP is turning back to success should not be an end in itself. It creates the opportunity to resell the green agenda. Much was invested of the re-branding exercise, ‘Beyond Petroleum’, with its bright green logo. The company has put billions into technologies such as wind power, solar power and bioscience research. BP is also pioneering a technology whereby carbon dioxide emitted from power stations can be pumped into underground wells. This eye on the future is seen by both the public and the City as wholly good news and the change to bring the positive to bear when working through to a difficult period change adds potential to the end result.

Perhaps BP will take on some of these initiatives, perhaps not, but SwelledHead hopes that, however the company pulls itself out of the quagmire, by the end of the year it can be justifiably seen as being Beyond Problems.