LPGA speaks a tough language many don't understand

Considering it was supposed to be at least partly for them, at least one LPGA sponsor doesn't seem to be showing much gratitude for its decision to suspend players from the tour if they don't speak English.

State Farm, a general sponsor of the LPGA as well as the sponsor of the State Farm Classic Tournament was "flabbergasted" and "dumbfounded" by the news. "We don't understand this and don't know why they have done it, and we have strongly encouraged them to take another look at this," said Kip Biggs, a media-relations specialist at the company.

I first heard about this story yesterday when I read that Lorena Ochoa of Mexico had called the new LPGA policy "a little drastic". My first reaction was that the LPGA's No. 1 player has a career as a diplomat if she wants or needs it after finishing with golf. Drastic? Some of the other words that have been flying around in the press and blogs include "shameful" (Advertising Age), "offensive"(New York Times) "way out of bounds" (Boston Globe) and even "racist" (various blogs and blog comments).

What struck me about the decision was how last-century it seems (and not the last half of the century either). Carolyn Bivens, the LPGA Commissioner, upset by the negative press, told Golf World: "If these players don't take this step [and learn English], their ability to earn a living is reduced. They will be cut out of corporate and endorsement opportunities." But clearly she thinks they are not smart enough to figure that out for themselves so some tough love is needed. Paternalism with a big stick.

All this happens as the LPGA aspires to become a "global tour" holding more tournaments than ever before held outside the United States and with more international stars playing in its competitions. Already revenue from Korean television is the LPGA's biggest single source of income but it's the Korean players who are most at risk from this new policy.

Can you imagine another international or international-minded sport governing body acting the same way? Wait. It might be a great idea for the IOC--it would certainly help Britain win more medals in London. And no more French at the opening ceremony!

UPDATE (Sep 5th): LPGA scraps English 'exam' plans: Just two days after this blog posting, the LPGA changed its mind and scrapped the idea of suspending players who couldn't speak English. Coincidence? (Yes)

Links:
1) State Farm Blasts LPGA English Proficiency Policy: Advertising Age
2) What Was the LPGA Thinking? Advertising Age
3) Bivens speaks out about LPGA Tour's controversial English ruling: ESPN.com
4) Storm clouds gather after LPGA's English rule: IHT

Amway is back

Did you even know that Amway had gone away? Almost 10 years ago, Amway ditched its name and became Quixtar, hoping to ride the dotcom wave and put some distance between itself and its questionable reputation as a multi-level marketing company. Now the company has decided to change back to Amway recognizing that the name switch was a mistake.

Lawrence Delevingne wrote an article about the name change in this week's edition of BusinessWeek which includes this quote from me: "They will always have reputation- management issues, no matter what the brand is."

See the whole article here:
Amway: Shining up a Tarnished Name: BusinessWeek

Whole Foods: Your new discount store?

Back in June, I reported on how we were reshuffling our mix of shopping trips to manage through the steep increase in food prices this year. I mentioned that Whole Foods was the biggest loser in this shuffle, replaced by more trips to Trader Joe's and Safeway.

Well it looks like we weren't the only ones deserting Whole Foods and now the store is on a mission to try and get some of us back. According to the New York Times, Whole Foods has launched a campaign to change its Whole Paycheck reputation and try and show its cheaper side. The company is offering more discounts, more lower-priced store brand products and even inviting customers on budget-focused "Value Tours." Sign up now!

Frankly, it's going to be a tough sell. But kudos to them for getting started.

Links:
1) Whole Foods losing in the supermarket shuffle: Brand Mix
2) Whole Foods Looks for a Fresh Image in Lean Times: New York Times

"World's Worst Person Decides To Go Into Marketing"

Key quote: "I think it's the career path that will best utilize my networking skills and my ability to think outside the box."

Links:
1) World's Worst Person Decides To Go Into Marketing. 'I'm Thinking...Marketing,' Says Horrible, Horrible Man: the Onion

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

Crossing the product placement red line

"I think we should stand strong and indicate that that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line, for the United States of America.''

General General Norton Schwartz was talking about a report in Izvestia that Russia might consider stationing nuclear bombers in Cuba if the U.S. missile-defense plans go ahead. But he could just as well have been talking about Las Vegas-based Fox 5 TV's decision to start the day taking in some "nontraditional revenue" by placing two cups of McDonald's iced coffee on the news desk in front of morning anchors: Jason Feinberg and Monica Jackson.

Apparently the product is fake. But the news is still reality TV.

Links:
1) U.S. General Warns Russia on Nuclear Bombers in Cuba: Center for Democracy in the Americas
2) Eye-opener with a pitch: Las Vegas Sun

Fiji Water's green offensive

My very first blog, almost one year ago, was about the challenges faced by Fiji Water as it emerged as the poster child for all that environmental activists believe to be wrong with the bottled water industry. Its super-badge status, extreme price premium and the fact that it's shipped half way around the world from a place where many locals don't have safe drinking water of their own all contributed to this unsought position.

Fast forward to now and, whatever your opinion about bottled water, you've got to be impressed with the sheer commitment and determination that the company has shown to protect its business. Treating the press and blog commentary last year as an early warning signal, the company has geared up to meet its critics head on. And rather than play defense, Fiji Water is on the counter-attack presenting itself as an eco-friendly green company that's actually carbon negative.

It's also taken a whole series of actions to reinforce its green credentials: changed its shipping routes, made commitments to further reduce emissions, supported laws that would include water bottles in deposit-driven recycling plans (which most beverage companies oppose) and, with all that, launched FijiGreen.com and a new "Every Drop is Green" campaign to get the message out.

None of this will persuade its fiercest critics--but they don't buy bottled water. What it's more likely to do is turn back or at least weaken their critical assault and protect sales (which have, so far, stayed healthy). As Rob Six, Fiji Water's vice president for corporate communications, told Rob Walker in his New York Times magazine article: "Any time you see negative stories in the press, you have to figure out how to respond." In this case, all guns blazing.

Links:
1) Water Proof: Rob Walker (New York Times Magazine)
2) Message in a Bottle: Charles Fishman (Fast Company)
3) Trouble in Paradise: Brand Mix
4) Green water: Brand Mix
5) More water woes: Brand Mix
6) And more on water too: Brand Mix

Want to beat up the Dove? Take a ticket

Last week, it was Greenpeace. It went after Dove for contributing to the destruction of Indonesia's rain by using palm oil in its products, posting an adapatation of one of Dove's iconic "real beauty" ads on YouTube (here). Before that there were charges of hypocrisy from the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood because of the very different messages coming from Dove and its brother brand, Axe.

Now it's The New Yorker's turn. Not so much a direct attack on Dove. More like running over it by accident. Its May 12th issue has a profile of Pascal Dangin, the premier retoucher of fashion photographs--the one fashion magazines and photographers turn to make their make their pictures perfect. Turns out the famous "Real Beauty" picture was a Dangin job.

“Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he says in the interview “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

This seems to be a potentially fatal error considering the point of Evolution, Dove's most famous viral video, is that our perception of beauty has been distorted by retouching tricks.

This whole ethical marketing thing is proving to be quite difficult.

Update (May 9th): Unilever is denying that this photo was retouched and Dangin is quoted in this Advertising Age article as saying: "The recent article published by The New Yorker incorrectly implies that I retouched the images in connection with the [2005] Dove 'real women' ad. I only worked on the [2007 Dove Pro-Age] campaign taken by Annie Leibovitz and was directed only to remove dust and do color correction -- both the integrity of the photographs and the women's natural beauty were maintained."

Links:
1) Dove's 'Real Beauty' Pics Could Be Big Phonies: Advertising Age
2) Pixel Perfect: New Yorker

Earlier Posts:
1) Now it's Greenpeace's turn to attack the Dove
2) Don't axe my Dove
3) More on axing the dove
4) The Dove vs. the Axe continued

CEO candor sinks to all-time low

In this new age of transparency, CEOs at Fortune 500 companies are apparently notable holdouts. In 2007, they increased their output of unclear statements by 21% over 2006 and 85% from five years ago for a new record low, according to The 2007 Rittenhouse Rankings survey.

Rittenhouse evaluates candor in annual shareholder letters and the clarity expressed in the discussion of topics such as strategy and accountability. An example (from Coca-Cola, one of the least candid companies): "We remain fresh, relevant and original by knowing what to change without changing what we know."

Does this kind of gobbledygook matter? Apparently yes. Rittenhouse has shown that the average stock prices of the most candid companies consistently outperform the least candid companies the following year. And probably the reason that this is a record year for unclear statements is that, with tough economic times, the temptation to obfuscate has been hard to resist. Only when the economy improves will the fog start to clear.

Leading the list of most candid companies in 2007: Eaton, Entergy and Wells Fargo. The least candid company was Humana, a health plan provider whose stock has already fallen 25% in the past year.

Source:
The 2007 Rittenhouse Rankings survey press release

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.

Hertz values (mostly) represented by LAX bus driver

Hertz has a rather typical and bland mission statement on its website. "Our mission is to be the most customer focused, cost efficient.....shared-value culture of.... strategic investments in...."
It also has a list of aspirational values such as: passion, integrity, accountability, transparency, commitment, teamwork.

So, it was refreshing to hear a Hertz driver at LAX trying his best to live up to those values by making the following announcement (as best I could record in my note book) to his passengers as they got on his bus:

"Several of you have complained about the long wait for this bus. I'm sorry about the service. I admit it was pretty disgusting. When the new management took over the company, they made lots of changes. They fired 15 drivers. They took the customer complaint cards off the buses. They just don't care about you. Or about us. Welcome to LA!"

Let's see: Passion: check. Integrity: check. Accountability: check. Transparency: Definitely. Big check. So, a little bit of work to do on teamwork but otherwise more or less perfect.

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

Absolutely Scrabulous

For a great example of what happens when the worlds of new marketing and old marketing collide, tune in to the debate currently raging about Mattel and Hasbro, joint owners of Scrabble, asking Facebook to remove the Scrabulous application from its site.

Scrabulous is one of the ten most popular Facebook applications with 600,000 active users, 2 million people signed up and 70 million page views a month. It's huge. But, unfortunately, by name and design, very similar to Scrabble.

So how should Mattel/Hasbro look at this? The way they appear to be going, the traditional way, is to put their crack legal teams on the case and get the application shut down for infringing copyright and intellectual property. It looks like an open and shut case and the only question is: Why did you wait until the game got so popular before you pulled the trigger?

But another perspective, a perspective that takes into account the marketing and corporate reputation angles is, now that someone has developed a real, huge, massively popular Web 2.0 hit, wouldn't you be better off to work with the flow than against it?

The launch of this application has generated energy and passion for Scrabble that couldn't have been bought with millions of dollars of PR and advertising. There are pages and pages of comments being posted by Scrabulous players concerned that they are about to lose "their" game. Already some people are forming boycott Mattel sites.

Yes, Mattel/Hasbro, you have the right to shut Scrabulous down. Yes, you may also have an agreement with EA about an online version and you may have something in development (according to reports). But, my advice, take a long hard think before you go down that path. The goodwill that you could generate by partnering with "the brothers" (as the developers are affectionately called by their fans) may be worth by far more than a legal victory can deliver.

Some links:
1) CNN Money article and comments: "Will someone please start a Facebook group to save Scrabulous?"
2) Someone did: A Facebook group

Meatball Sundae Thought #2: Get your story straight

In his new book, Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin identifies 14 trends that he says are ushering a new era of marketing. Trend 3: Need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases. As he points out: "Saying one thing and doing another fails, because you'll get caught."

Let's take a look at this values statement:

Respect
Our Associates are our greatest assets. We expect every Associate to demonstrate that they respect and value others for their efforts, their knowledge, and the diversity that they bring.

First of all, there are lots of companies that say that their employees are the greatest asset but there's certainly fewer of them that actually behave as if they mean it. But this particular statement comes from Circuit City's values and this company beats all others in 2007 for saying one thing and doing the opposite.

As Dean Baker reports in his Beat The Press post, Circuit City decided earlier this year to fire all its senior salespeople and replace them with cheaper, new hires. The math looked great just as long as they didn't assign any value to the experience and knowledge of the people that were let go.

Dean refers to this Washington Post article that shows that this decision has not helped Circuit City's performance, although it has financially helped senior executives because they've all been given up to $1 million retention awards to encourage them to stay on through this difficult period.

Now the company has is seeking "to rebuild our selling culture," according to chief executive Philip J. Schoonover. Good luck on that.

Mind your trap and where you park

Two stories yesterday in the Oddly Enough news feed from Reuters reporting on people who have been fired for being off-brand and less than perfect representatives of their organizations.

Emma Clarke, the voice of London's Tube who has been warning underground passengers for years to "Mind the Gap," was dismissed for allegedly saying she doesn't ride the Underground because it's "dreadful." She claims she was misquoted but she's also been adding spoof Tube announcements on her site making fun of Americans, Londoners, sweaty commuters etc.

Sample: "Residents of London are reminded that there are other places in Britain outside your stinking city, and if you remove your heads from your backsides for just a couple of minutes, you may realise the M25 is not the edge of the Earth." Nice.

So, she's gone as is Giovanni Catanzaro, Rome's traffic and parking chief, who was reported parking his car in a no parking zone using a handicapped parking permit that belongs to an 86-year old woman.

We just need an airline chief to be caught riding Amtrak for the trifecta. With airline service the way it is these days, that's not entirely impossible.

Absinthe makes the ...

Banned for 100 years, absinthe is making a comeback with two brands, Lucid and Kubler now available for sale in the U.S. and many more available in Europe. Few products have such a wealth of lore:

1) It was banned
2) Its association with numerous writers, poets and artists including Oscar Wilde, Manet, van Gogh and, more generally, with fin-de-siecle Paris
3) Its mystery ingredient, wormwood and its alleged hallucinogenic properties
4) Its preparation in a theatrical ritual with specialized spoons
5) Its unique green color
6) The many ways names it has been given like the green fairy, emerald witch and bottled madness

Collectively these create a mystique and reputation difficult to match but mostly based on tradition and heritage. It will be interesting to see whether this richness of history works its magic on today's consumers.

Price of quirky = $110 million

That's Google's estimated lost annual revenue for keeping the "I'm feeling lucky" button on its home page.

As reported on Marketplace, Tom Chavez of Rapt, a media monetization solutions company, calculated how much money Google was losing by people selecting the "feeling lucky" button and bypassing its ad-rich search results page. Quite a chunk of change, even for Google, for what Marisa Mayer, a Google vice president, describes as a reminder that employees are real people with personality and interests.

Still, as Google becomes ever more market dominating any reminders, even expensive ones, of the days when it was much smaller and less threatening may be well worth keeping alive.

Global warming is hot

A story about a factory in Arizona planning to make some upgrades and modifications - not your typical front page of the New York Times above-the-fold material. But, when the angle is green, all things are possible.

Frito-Lay has announced that is going to create an eco-friendly chip by taking its Casa Grande plant in Arizona off the power grid, running it on renewable fuels and recycled water. It's only one plant and more and less an experiment for PepsiCo but it's a good example of how everyone is starting to get in the game.

The article quotes Andy Walker from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory saying that his phone is now ringing off the hook with companies asking for his help where, only a few years ago, no-one was interested.

Inevitably, toe in the water initiatives like the Casa Grande plant tempt companies to exaggerate their green credentials. But it's important that they don't get ahead of themselves in terms of what they say vs. what they've actually done. Consumers and advocacy groups are in a state of high alert looking for any suspicious and unwarranted green credentialing.

On the other hand, this particular initiative has given the company a huge product brand opportunity because its SunChips products are made in the plant. These will now be made using solar energy, just a perfect connection and one of the still relatively few examples where the way that the product is made is going to help the way it's sold.

Going forward, the stakes in this game are only going to get higher. I expect that natural food companies, for example, will soon find that it's not enough for them to make products that are healthy to eat. They will need to show that they are healthy for the environment as well - all the way through the supply chain.

Nothing to love at Levitz

I remember when I first arrived in the U.S., some 20 years ago, driving all the way from Santa Barbara to Oxnard, an 80 mile round trip, just to go to a Levitz store. And being absolutely appalled by the furniture which I remember as being almost uniformly beige.

Having gone all that way I had to buy something, so I bought a foam chair that folded-out into a very narrow and spongy mattress. I can't remember how much it cost. Hopefully not much more than $20. I rarely sat in the chair and never used it to sleep on but I did keep it for years and years, in fact until I got married when my wife cleaned house of this and other relics.

So, it's surprising for me to hear that Levitz has only just now filed for bankruptcy. I would have thought they were long gone. Maybe the furniture got better over the years (I wouldn't know since I never went back and the web site picture above suggests not.) or maybe there was just enough of a market for the spongy, beige and ugly for them to limp along until now.

GM brand: Hummer or Volt?

I've got to admit I admire the chutzpah of the new Hummer ads as described here. It's just short of literally incredible that the new campaign "Hummer Heroes" positions the gas-guzzling monster as a positive thing for humanity.

Whether the campaign has any effect on Hummer's image remains to be seen. But one thing's for sure: while consumers associate GM with the Hummer it will be impossible for the company to position itself with any kind of credibility as a leader in the battle against global warming.

In the reputation stakes, the Chevy Volt is no match against the mighty Hummer.