American coffee chain Caribou has come out with new packaging that promotes positive, optimistic and encouraging messages. Some of it is a bit of fun like ‘Indulge in chocolate therapy’ and other messages run deeper like ‘Be the first to appologize’.
Inspiring slogans and messages like these might be considered trite from certain companies, but they fit the context of this brand that began life by pushing an authentic, mountain-man lifestyle.
It shows us that with the right brand, we can take advantage of every square inch of space to promote the messages that help deliver a brand story.
This is our 101st post. Big thanks to all who have been following our blog and our tweets! We’ve struck up all sorts of interesting conversations with people and are thrilled about how much interest everyone has shown.
Thousands of people read our posts on a weekly basis and we broke the 1,000 Twitter followers last month. Without delay, here are the top ten posts read by you…
It’s been over 10-years since BP launched its ‘Beyond Petroleum’ positioning and the recent accident in the gulf poses some important questions for business leaders:
What is happening in the BP culture that such an accident could occur? Despite a huge push for safety under Tony Hayward, BP’s safety record remains worrying. With this new accident, BP is in danger of replacing Exxon/Esso as the black hat of the oil world.
If the beyond petroleum positioning was supported better, would BP have built up enough equity to help better the reaction that people are having over this latest accident?
One cannot help feeling that the board was not really behind Lord John Browne and the shift to non-petroleum products. To quote Kenny Bruno at Corporate Watch: “When a company spends more on advertising its environmental friendliness than on environmental actions, that’s greenwash.”
Tony Hayward, the (relatively) new chief executive has been public about steering BP away from alternative energies and creating a company more focused on shareholder value, safety and meeting tough engineering needs that difficult-to-reach oil demands.
Hayward: Start watching at 11.30 minutes for the change in strategy
Naturally, a shift in culture has occurred since Haywad took control. However, I wonder if the shift has been so large as to shake the culture and the belief of employees in the vision to unacceptable limits. It’s fair to assume that a degree of cynicism would creep into a culture when leadership direction changes from an aspirational promise that transforms society back to predicable aims like financial performance and putting cash into shareholders bank accounts.
The most depressing six words in the English language for any employee to hear from the leadership are: ‘Our brand is about delivering shareholder value’. As a geologist, Hayward may delight in this challenge as it means coming up with new, more efficient solutions for getting at deep oil. But employees will not feel connected to any greater purpose directed at shareholder wealth.
Where there is smoke there is fire (sorry). Serious accidents like this one and the near miss that BP had with it’s football-stadium-sized rig in the same area point to real hurdles in the culture and around leadership’s ability to drive a new vision for the company.
Changing the direction of the company is critical for BPs survival. In order to do so, the leadership must create a direction that is about more than shareholder value and goes well beyond marketing. If not ‘Beyond Petroleum’, a new story needs to be forged with employee’s and society’s concerns at heart.
Without a new vision, BP’s license to operate will dry up. Governor Swartzenager was the first to react by withdrawing his support for offshore exploration on the Tea Ridge project in California. The fallout from this incident will be severe on BPs ability to win bids and compete. It’s all too easy for governments to look like the good guys by not awarding BP a contract.
I was suprised to see the BNP endorse its campaign broadcast with the Marmite pack. Looking into the story, I found that Marmite actually dealt the first blow with a spoof ad on ‘the Hate Party’ that liberally samples from Nick Griffin’s semiotic grab bag.
It’s an interesting move from Unilever to make hey from election fervour and push the nationalist values from the brand, they borrowed heavily from Griffin’s party broadcast style. Unfortunately for Unilver, the BNP has nothing to loose and everything to gain from increased publicity and attention.
While the course of action may have been predicted, it is interesting to see another bold move from the same brand that brought us the Campaign for Real Beauty – challenging our norms and working to increase self esteem in women. While not likely to form part of a more universal brand platform, the Marmite brand might be used to describe more British dichotomies and explore the British identity more fully to increase brand meaning.
Lay’s have launched a new campaign called ‘The Happiness Exhibition’ aimed at sharing bliss and encouraging happiness across America. Anyone can log onto the dedicated Flickr site and enter their photos. Selected photos will be promoted in ads in major publications.
The campaign supports the overall ‘Happiness is simple’ positioning reminding us to appreciate simple pleasures (like potato chips).
A lot of people are expressing anger and dissapointment over the recent crisis at Toyota. It reminds me that a good apology can enhance reputations and relationships – that a good apology can be a defining moment for a company.
Unless you’re a Vulcan, bad mistakes effect everyone on a personal level inside a company. Good people are always ashamed of acting badly in the first place. But its important to get beyond this hindrance so we are not ashamed of making the apology. Remember:
Express regret but don’t stop there. Explain how the incident has effected us emotionally and why the damage done matters to us as people who are working at the company.
Say sorry about the right thing. Focus on the damage done by the incident, not on the incident itself.
Act quickly. Any delays make it look like we’re hiding things.
Act with complete openness. Apology can be a cathartic experience, so make it into one. Since we’ve all made mistakes, the audience will all know when you are truly sorry about what happened. So dig in, find all the reasons and share the ones that matter most.
Adpulp reported:
Jim Edwards at BNET reports that Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide chairman Bob Seelert thinks Toyota should stop advertising until it gets its house in order, but the company says it will ignore its agency’s advice and continue to advertise. “Such a public disconnect on strategy between a senior agency official and a global client is extremely unusual,” Edwards writes. Because the brand is known for reliable and durable cars , Seelert says customers will forgive Toyota, especially as it has been a leader in hybrid technology.
When Chris Anderson challenges Sergey Brin on the Google’s ‘Don’t be Evil’ mantra, the founder of the search engine speaks about the importance of long-term thinking, whistle-blowing and acting as a community of ethical business people:
I do think that often companies end up being short-sighted with respect to their decisions, and perhaps they’re motivated by the next particular earnings and whatnot. In particular, actually, as we’ve gone though this investigation, it turns out that a number of companies were aware of certain attacks on their systems, and yet they didn’t come forward, and as a result other companies couldn’t be better prepared.
Now, I should give a lot of credit. Some companies have, and I would point you for example to Northrop Grumman, that had a significant intrusion where the details of the … terabytes of data about the F-35 fighter were stolen. That’s recently … That’s public, and that’s in congressional reports and was actually very useful to our investigation. If more companies were to come forward with respect to these sorts of security incidents and issues, I think we would all be safer.
In our last post on the China/Google subject, we highlighted how these challenging situations (understatement recognised) can define the company for decades to come. Brin puts some convincing arguments forward and makes it easy to believe that the interests of the Chinese people are being considered in his deliberations on this crisis.
When you have a code of conduct like Don’t be Evil for such a large company, it creates a big spotlight and has the potential for creating binary views on company actions. With such little ambiguity in the credo and people’s tendency for oversimplification of actions into good and evil, Google sets itself up for a great deal of public scrutiny.
Brin offers that the situation is complex and there are “many potential answers” for this difficult question. So far, so good. The ball is now in the court of the Chinese government and the line has been drawn in the sand.
Drink, laugh, game, flirt, holiday and dance your way to better health. The GE sponsored Howcast Health channel on YouTube is promoting a healthier lifestyle by playing up the fun things in life that can lead to a more healthy lifestyle.
Again on the subject of creating non-zero-sum games where only zero-sum-games are perceived, GE creates a win-win story where a paradox previously exists.
Creating a narrative around a paradox is the equivalent of putting a two-headed cow in a field. The primal part of our brain is trained to spot anomalies like red fruit in trees, tigers in the grass and other items out of the ordinary. It’s a survival instinct that has stayed with us and one we marketers employ in order to grab ever-floundering attention spans.
There are many kinds of paradoxes that we can employ, but turning win-lose stories into win-win stories provides a powerful nudge to customers: one that can be effective at creating a more civil society. If we can save the environment without compromising our lifestyle, stay healthy without the pain or have peace in our time without subsuming our values and beliefs, what a wonderful world it could be.
Caught this video promoting the Pepsi Refresh Project with Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon. Nothing like a little celebrity endorsement to boost the campaign. It’s nice to see these two battling it out for funding their charities, creating a little publicity in the effort.
Civil Branding is about harnessing the power of brands to create social influence,
change the wider social agenda and increase brand difference. We're on a mission
to encourage marketing professionals to consider their brands' impact on society
to help us progress and to help create ever more worthy brands.
