Jack Bauer: Not your typical green recruit

Photo: tyger_lyllie (Flickr)

24 has gone carbon neutral. So, in between between car chases and terrorist tortures, Jack Bauer now finds time to make PSA announcements like this one. Says Jack/Kieffer: "Global warming is a crime for which we are all guilty."

This, to me, is an example of a good idea gone bad. An idea that might have made sense had it come from the corporation but which makes no sense when it comes from the show.

Just think of the show's audience. Not one that's generally sympathetic to the whole global warming thing to begin with and even less happy about having their show hijacked by this kind of issue. Here are just a few comment snippets left by 24 fans below an article in E! Online about 24's carbon-neutral story: "I am turning off 24 because Global Warming is contrary to everything 24 is supposed to be about" and " I'm very sorry to see that the "24" cast and crew are among the successfully deceived by the global warming fraud" and "Are you kidding me? What is Jack now going to be against water boarding? OH geez, DON'T YOU KNOW WHO YOUR AUDIENCE IS? Who cares that 24 is chasing after a myth?"

The problem that Fox had and failed to solve for is that there's no Fox corporate site for these kind of stories so press announcements have to either come from individual shows like 24 or from News Corporation, the parent company. Except that News Corporation itself only carries press releases about business and investor-related issues so it doesn't really fit there.

Were there a Fox corporate site, the angle that could have worked would have been along the lines of: 1) Fox is committed to doing its part to reduce global warming 2) To prove this commitment we've take our worst offender (24) and made it carbon neutral 3) This shows that anything is possible and we encourage other TV shows as well as the general public to do the same 4) Except 24 fans--you can do whatever you want.

Instead of which, fans are mad and Bauer's perimeters have been compromised.

Car trouble, Detroit confesses

When I read the news that GM had taken out a full-page ad in Automotive News to apologize to the American public for its tragic missteps, it reminded me of the argument that information extracted under torture is not reliable because people will say anything to make the pain stop.

This forced-by-Congress-or-you-won't-get-any-money confession reads, in part: "While we're still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you." .... "At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs became lackluster." (Full text here.)

Meanwhile, consumer dissatisfaction with the Big 3 is running unabated as demonstrated by this ad that sends a different message:

Source (and full text): Imageshack

Keith Olbermann should be fired

For those who don't know, Keith Olbermann hosts "Countdown," MSNBC's most successful show. Olbermann saw and seized the opportunity for a program that provided a forum for liberal provocative commentary to match the model successfully developed on the conservative side by Fox.

In a recent Men's Journal interview, Olbermann described his goals: "I'd like it to be the accurate counterweight to Fox. My attitude is not to counterbalance them because they're conservatives; it's counterbalancing because some of their stuff is outlandishly in violation of every tenet of responsible broadcasting."

With his success, Olbermann has become the voice of MSNBC (if not, like Regis with ABC, its savior). But here's the problem and why he needs to be fired. MSNBC is not an independent company--it's the cable arm of NBC News and it's not distanced far enough away to avoid whatever it's doing leaching back into the mother ship. If MSNBC had a different name and didn't share staff, workspace and content with NBC, things might be different. But, given the connectedness of the two organizations, NBC does not have plausible deniability. Its reputation as a dispassionate, unbiased news organization is threatened.

Tensions between NBC and MSNBC had already been running high but things blew up at the Republican convention where MSNBC chose to use Olbermann as an anchor for the news coverage. This blurred the lines between news and commentary and reinforced the impression of the channel's perceived shift to the left. When Sarah Palin complained about media bias the delegates on the floor of the convention as delegates started chanting "NBC" (Note: Not "MSNBC"). Although MSNBC has since replaced Olbermann as an anchor, the damage has been done.

There is another option to firing Olbermann. That would be for NBC to follow his direction and position itself as the liberal equivalent of Fox. From a brand perspective, this would definitely be a differentiating strategy and position NBC away from ABC and CBS. In these partisan days where fewer people seem to want unbiased coverage, perhaps it would be more relevant as well.

Edward R. Murrow would turn in his grave, a few of NBC's high-paid headcount who fancy themselves as objective, non-political reporters would probably quit, but putting Olbermann in charge of the whole show might be an even better idea than firing him.

Links:
1) MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat: New York Times
2) Olbermann Talks Office Politics, Other Politics: TV Newser

PG&E donates $250,000 to keep California same sex marriage legal

Same sex marriage is a deeply divisive issue. In California, latest polls show that 50% are for and 50% against. And most people are not on the fence. So why would a company take a high profile position and donate $250,000 to fight Proposition 8 (the one that seeks to limit marriages in the state between a man and a woman)?

Some possible whys:
1) Its most important stakeholders are local and state government and the government, especially in its San Francisco home base, is solidly against the Proposition
2) Another key stakeholder group, its employees, are much more in favor of same sex marriage (than the average Californian)
3) Relative to most companies, PG&E can discount customer opinion since customers have no choice in service provider
4) PG&E has a long history of supporting diversity--it has received a 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index for the last five years
5) It wants to build a reputation as a forward-thinking, progressive company and put its (bankrupt) past behind it

Still and all, pissing off up to half your customers? Thoughts?

Links:
1) Slim majority of California voters would uphold gay marriage, poll finds: Los Angeles Times
2) PG&E sparks Prop. 8 opposition: Examiner.com
3) PG&E backs gay marriage rights: Sacbee

Now it's Greenpeace's turn to attack the Dove

It's becoming quite the year for the brand managers of Dove. Suddenly their award-winning "Campaign for Real Beauty" is being attacked from all sides. First there were accusations of hypocrisy (see links below) and now Greenpeace is holding up Dove as the poster child for the destruction of Indonesian rain forests:



This time it looks pretty clear that Dove is just a victim of its own success. Its campaign is so well known and iconic that Greenpeace has just latched onto it, leech-like, to make its point. It could have been any one of hundreds of other companies that are also using palm oil for their products.

Ironically, back when I was a brand manager on Coffee-mate, we ran into some political fall-out when we stopped using tropical oils. We had reacted to health concerns about the fat content of these oils and had plastered our reformulated product with garish "No Tropical Oil" stickers. We got the news from corporate that this promotion was not appreciated by palm oil exporters (i.e. Indonesia) and could we please think about taking these stickers off.

Sometimes, you just can't win.

Earlier Posts:
1) Don't axe my Dove
2) More on axing the dove
3) The Dove vs. the Axe continued

(Video via Scott White at Brand Identity Guru)

UPDATE (May 2nd): Score one for Greenpeace. Unilever has announced that it will now only buy palm oil only from sustainable palm-oil suppliers (those who can prove they haven't cut down forests.) The Greenpeace ad above has been watched more than 250,000 times on YouTube.com. As of right now, Greenpeace hasn't taken it down.

The Dove vs. the Axe continued

Grant McCracken has a great blog called: THIS BLOG SITS AT THE Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. I even thought that before he decided to address a comment I'd left in an above-the-fold post today.

For those who want to follow the discussion on whether Unilever does or doesn't have a problem when two of its brands (Axe and Dove) have headed off in different and contradictory directions, tune in here.

For those that have already read that and are visiting here because Grant said some nice things about my blog: Welcome! I hope you're not disappointed.

If you've not read enough about this subject already, here are links to my earlier posts on the Dove/Axe subject:
1) Don't Axe my Dove: the danger of telling radically different stories with different brands in your portfolio
2) More on axing the dove: One explanation of why it was only the latest Dove campaign that triggered the hypocisy response

IAC: another conglomerate bites the dust

Conglomerates have, to say the least, gone out of fashion. There seem to be many factors including Wall Street's current preference for the "pure play," the rise of private equity and poor relative performance over the years.

Now IAC has announced that it will carve itself up into five pieces separating out a group of businesses that had very little in common (Lending Tree, Ask.com, Ticketmaster ...).

In announcing the breakup, Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive of IAC was quoted as saying: "While we've created a lot of value, I've always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors."

Which is a great articulation of one more downside to conglomerates - no simple story to tell and, therefore, no easy way to build or leverage the corporate brand.

More on axing the dove

Why has the latest iteration of the Dove campaign generated more of a backlash and more accusations of hypocrisy than previous versions? David Taylor's theory (here) is that the latest campaign has gone a step too far and climbed too high up the brand ladder, too far away from the product itself.

Or, the new Dove campaign has more of a corporate than a product perspective and people are, therefore, judging the campaign at this higher level where they find the disconnect between this message and those for other products more difficult to accept.

(Link to my original post here.)

Don't Axe my Dove

Trying to tell radically different stories with different brands in your portfolio can be quite tricky. I described the challenges for GM managing its Hummer/Volt brands in this post.

Unilever has the same problem with Dove and Axe. Can one corporation act sexist with one brand while promoting real beauty with another? This video says no.

The successful use of a corporate brand endorsement

Back in the early 90s, not long after Nestlé had acquired the Carnation company it decided to start using the Nestlé brand as an endorsement on most of its products.

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth from the brand managers and a whole slew of complaints and concerns. "Nestlé doesn't mean anything", "Nestlé only stands for chocolate", "I don't have room on my label" (that was my excuse and I used my little 3oz jar of Coffee-mate to illustrate the point).

Of course, all such complaints were politely ignored and now the Nestlé logo appears on most Nestlé products (one pretty obvious exception is pet food). So, what has Nestlé gained by its insistence over 10 years ago:

1) People no longer think of Nestlé as being only a chocolate company
2) Nestlé's portfolio of products and brand are better connected - useful for sales, cross promotions, PR and investor relations
3) Now that Nestlé is better known, its use on the label adds a level of stature and acts, as intended, as a quality seal. This is particularly helpful for new brands that are launched
4) Nestlé's corporate reputation is strengthened by its more visible retail presence and its direct association with its brands

I'm not saying I was wrong all those years ago. I mean it was a small label.

Such a great brand: it should be illegal

This was supposed to a blog about the Harley-Davidson brand being so powerful that it can get away with selling a product that's so deafeningly loud and obnoxious. Surely, I thought, as I heard a Harley roaring past me on the Embarcadero, someone would do something about this if it wasn't for HD's reputation as an American icon.

But then I did a little research and found out a) that the decibel-breaking loud exhaust pipes are fitted after sale and that "stock pipes" are relatively quiet and that b) there's legislation pending all over the place trying to ban these after-sale exhausts (which take advantage of a legal loophole and are sold under the label "for off-road use only").

So, instead, it's a story about challenges for companies that need to keep different stakeholders happy without compromising their brand and what it stands for. For HD that means finding a way to convince those have the power to restrict what it does (i.e. the government, community and opinion leaders) that it's listening to them without appearing all wimpy and establishment to its consumers and dealers. It's a high level of difficulty.

One approach that HD has adopted has been a PR campaign: "loud pipes risk rights" (to counter a pro-noise mantra: "loud pipes save lives"). This is good, as far as it goes, because it's using a brand-consistent, anti-establishment message: "they will take away our rights" to try and undermine one of the rationalizations for louder pipes. The question is whether this will be enough or will the company eventually be forced into other more damaging measures such as voiding warranties of modified bikes or going after dealers who sell and install these loud pipes.