Why Google believes digital media is driving Oz culture and identity

This is an interesting take on Oz culture and identity by Nick Leeder, MD Google Australia & New Zealand.

$24Bn reasons to believe digital media is driving Oz culture and identity

Has Qantas damaged Brand Australia?

The idea of grounding an airline in today’s world of interconnectedness sounds like the stuff a Jeffrey Archer or Ken Follett block buster is made of.  If this was a case study you would probably be critical of its authenticity.  But that’s exactly what Alan Joyce (CEO) did with Qantas and the debate now is whether his actions have damaged Brand Australia?

In asking the question I wonder if we aren’t confusing two things here: brand identity and brand image?

The ‘problem’ for Qantas is an identity one – a fight for the soul of the airline.

Either it is a commercial enterprise run along commercial principles or it is a national airline with nationalist tendencies …. including a staff cost irreconcilable to a competitive environment.

Fix the identity problem and the image will be fixable.

Leave the identity issue unresolved and no amount of money or spin will pull a brand out of a death spiral that will end with a hard landing (ok weak pun but you get the point?).

I think Qantas will become a classic case study of how a CEO (with the unqualified support of his Board) can wrestle back the identity of a brand and go on to fix the fall out and crisis in image that Qantas no doubt feels right now.

Although$20m in free flights, and a no nonsense refund of costs associated with the decision to ground the airline, will go a long way to resolving an image problem even of this magnitude.

And as for those customers who swear they will never fly Qantas again?

They will be at the head of the queue for one of those freebies.

Integrity and brand building

Just as reputation plays an important role in the creation of a brand so too is it foundational to the development of a personal reputation an individual can be proud of. 

Benjamin Franklin reckons that ‘if you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing’.  

As with a brand then, and assuming you want to leave some sort of legacy, a personal reputation is just as important for individuals.  

I reckon reputation has one foundational personality trait:  Integrity. 

Integrity is an often misused word.  It means doing what you say you are going to do with honesty and truthfulness. 

A good reputation must enjoy public trust and strong equivalence between appearance and reality.  

How often have you met someone who can talk-the-talk but when it comes to delivery … well that’s another matter?

Make a decision today to walk-the-talk, not just talk it. 

To help you do that ask yourself two questions: What are you reading? and Who are you associating with? 

The idea here is that both influence who you are – this is something a parent readily recognises as they seek to protect their children from the influences of peer pressure and yet how few adults follow their own advice.  Where you will be in 5 years depends on both these factors – What are you reading? and Who you are associating with? – something obvious to Benjamin Franklin and critical to establishing your own personal reputation based on integrity. 

Make integrity the foundational personality trait in your life.  Integrity is inspirational.  Be inspired.

 

How do you create a good corporate reputation?

Ethical business practice makes you more competitive, not less so. 

That’s because ethical business practice gives rise to a reputation that attracts people to you:

• prospective employees want to be part of that reputation because they want to be proud of who they work for; 
• customers want to do business with a company with a good reputation because it reduces their risk;
• same for service providers. 

The more people want to do business with you the more selective you can be. 

• You can pick and choose between candidates making it more likely you will get the best possible person for the job. 
• You can focus on customers with a better risk profile than others; and
• You can discriminate between service providers which means you will get more for your money be it in delivery times, quality assurance or innovation in process, product and design.    

Ethical business practice then makes you more competitive because it makes you exceptional in a sea of mediocrity and product mimicry.

Most would agree to this point. 

Where things get tricky is how to develop that reputation. 

As with anything important in life it isn’t about one thing or a killer app. 

Rather it’s like a recipe in which there are four factors at work – the planning that goes into the process, the inputs you use, the way you put them together and external factors – similar to the heat of the oven. 

Trust me reputation takes on a whole new meaning the hotter the temperature.

Online reputation management – when the message is positive but off strategy

You can imagine the situation – a comment about a brand, while positive, is entirely off strategy. 

Years ago I worked for autotrader.co.za. 

From time to time we would receive ads that – while representing a positive commentary about the brand – were entirely off strategy. 

Private advertisers would try and list their mother-in-law at a real knock down price. 

Hollard Insurance advertised 24 individual photographs depicting where a motor vehicle should have been.  The only problem was they had been stolen – not to worry said Hollard ‘that’s what we are here for’.  Great for Hollard, not so good for Auto Trader. 

And then Rand Aid advertised ‘a 1916, work horse, in great condition if a little worn around the edges, looking for a good home’.  You guessed it – the model was someone’s grandfather, an octogenarian who, having fallen on hard times, had nowhere else to go.  Rand Aid, a charitable organisation, was asking for donations to help them provide for people when they couldn’t provide for themselves.  Clever take but not on strategy. 

In the social media space we see the same sort of commentary. 

‘I love my jeans because no one else can afford them’ – not great if the brand aspires to coolness rather than exclusivity. 

‘My car is so hip I pick up guys all the time’ – a problem if the vehicle is pitched at the family values conscious yummy-mummy brigade.  

We call this sort of message ‘Incongruous’ – positive (I love my jeans and I have a hip car) but where there is dissonance between the nominal brand message and the commentary (coolness and family values not exclusivity and a guy magnet).

In such circumstance a brand should adopt what Pierre Berthon, Leyland Pitt and Colin Campbell refer to as the ‘applaud stance’. 

Here a brand is primarily positive about the comment but doesn’t do anything to encourage it.  

By applauding, the brand doesn’t appear tyrannical but is able to legitimately observe the conversation real time.

Matrix: Source:  Berthon, Pitt and Campbell, California Management Review, Vol.50,No.4, Summer 2008

How to use social media – when the social commentator is being contrarian

From the previous post we know marketers have a choice when using social media.  Engage or ignore? 

The first question you need to ask is to what extent the social commentator reflects what Pierre Berthon, Leyland Pitt and Colin Campbell term ‘the nominal relationship to the official brand message’. 

Is it dissonant or assonant meaning does it fit or not fit with the brand’s message, cultivated by the brand manager over a period of time? 

Using a 2×2 matrix let’s put that continuum on the Y axis.  On the x let’s look at whether the response is negative or positive. 

With me so far? 

This is what the matrix looks like:

Source:  Berthon, Pitt and Campbell, California Management Review, Vol.50,No.4, Summer 2008

Let’s talk quadrant 1:  The contrarian

In this scenario the underlying message in the social media space is negative and the relationship with the brand message is dissonant (in conflict with what the marketer intends).  Here the social commentator is trying to be difficult – to create doubt and to question the brand.  It can be fun and entertaining but left to its own devices may develop a momentum of its own to the detriment of the brand.

Engagement in this instance is usually passive and attitudinally would be disapproving.   A passive response would leave the issue up to resolution by other users e.g. other members of the online community– there is a tendency for marketers to think about planting a response but this is never recommended and it carries more reputational risk than it is worth.  Another user may simply disagree with the other party and ideally refer them to an authority on the matter.

Reputation in a changing world …..

Social media gives us access to an audience at a speed we never imagined possible.

In the past the only people with access to an audience were the privileged and very powerful media barons via their media empires.

If you owned a newspaper you could make or break a career. A radio station? A pervasive and ever constant presence in the lives of people who would never ordinarily have let you in. TV station? King maker and a network that granted access to the rich and famous at pretty much anytime of your choosing.

Now anyone with a cell phone has the same sort of editorial power – a built in production capability and a platform through the likes of YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter.

With such power (cheap at that), we have the rise of the internet superstar. Do you know who Judson Laipply is? Have you heard of the ‘Evolution of dance’? As of today Judson has recorded over 164 million visits on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg).

What then are the reputational implications for a brand?

Marketers will find strategy definition easier if they acknowledge that brand equity is now defined by the consumer.

As the consumer uses social media to take control of the brand so they have access to an audience at the speed of life.

Marketers do have a choice – engage or ignore them.

Both options however represent a purposeful action and how you exercise it, together with the attitude you choose, can either enhance or detract from a brand’s equity.

Reputation and social media

I remember in the early 90’s how just about every pundit I listened to celebrated the idea that as we entered the information age so marketers and marketing would become ever more powerful. We would be able to dive deep into data innocently given by consumers and glean all sorts of insights into their buying behaviour. With this insight we could satisfy any manner of needs and wants – even those our customers didn’t know they needed.

Why then do I feel that marketing is a profession in less control than it has ever been? Remember the 4ps? Ok 7 if you are in the services sector.

Let’s see what we still control.

It’s not ‘Product’ because now we rely on all sorts of online panels and focus groups to tell us what we should be doing to deliver on our brand promise.

It’s not ‘Price’ – price aggregators put paid to that as did eBay. Imagine the customer determining the price of what we sell?

It’s not ‘Distribution’ – one viral email is all it takes to end up with a 100 million YouTube views of something we may have preferred to have remained …. er …. our little secret.

So that leaves us with ‘Promotion’. Advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, direct mail and PR all now reside firmly in the new media space with traditionalists falling over themselves to remain relevant. Even if pwc is right and only 6% of the world’s A&P will be spent in the digital spaces by 2015 that’s a lot of money for a relatively new media type.

If we add ‘Physical facilities’ to the mix? A remote workforce is a reality and I have no idea where the person I am talking to in a call centre actually lives.

‘Process’ design has long been dominated by the web (think Dell) and as for ‘People’? Well now we get into something called social media and as I have argued elsewhere in this blog technology will rehumanise us – as it does reputation in the social media space becomes a new frontier for marketers and with it once again the quest for control.

More about that next post.

Building a corporate reputation to be proud of

What is a ‘good’ corporate reputation?

A reputation is a distillation… it is the sum total of the experience, knowledge, feelings and emotions people have when interacting with an organisation or brand. Whether it is ‘good’ or not depends on the extent to which the public views the organisation (or brand) as delivering on the organization/brand promise.

How come an organisation can do something to damage its reputation but recovers regardless?

It’s important to differentiate between a corporate reputation and a corporate image/identity. Much confusion exists between the three because we use them synonymously when in fact they are distinctly different. A corporate image is how an organisation choses to portray itself to its various stakeholders. It tells people through its products and services, and the way it advertises and promotes them, what it stands for and why that has benefit for their customers. Their communication is rich is symbolism (think the Nike ‘Swoosh’ or the Mercedes ‘bangle’) and ‘success by association’ (Nandos humour and Breitling watches). If corporate image is about how others view an organisation/brand then identity speaks to how an organisation sees itself. An identity is inward looking. It concerns itself with values and what it stands for. It is intended to appeal to its employees and shareholders. If reputation, identity and image are different, then it follows that by damaging one you don’t necessarily damage the other. So an organisation that does something to damage its reputation (what others think of it) and image (the way it promotes itself) it can recover if its identity is sound.

Give me an example of how reputation is damaged but recovery is possible.

 Toyota and Tiger Brands are two recent examples of how reputation takes a hit but recovery is possible because their respective identities are sound.

How do you build a corporate reputation to be proud of?

Understand the difference between identity and image and that reputation is about a complicated web of net effects. An organisation that knows who it is (identity) and who communicates that effectively to others (image) is likely to have a reputation to be proud of.

Is it posisble to reconcile the profit motive to ethical business practice?

Is it possible to reconcile the profit motive to ethical business practice? 

Yes but only in certain circumstances. 

Firstly, business needs to be undertaken outside of a traditional business model within a stakeholder paradigm.  Within this construct all stakeholder interests are viewed in an egalitarian sense where it is the role of the Executive to bring about value creation for all. 

Secondly, business needs to be founded upon contractualist theory where all stakeholders are rational, reasonable, free and equal. 

The emphasis is placed on reasonableness so that the third requirement may be met: Reasonableness is defined in terms of ‘Can we all agree, or at least not reject, a course of action?’  Again, the Executive is responsible for framing issues in a manner that leads to one or the other of the available responses without resorting to trade off. 

And fourthly, a virtue ethic account is offered to mitigate the dual role business practitioners play in and outside of business. 

Virtue or ‘character’ ethics is viewed by many in corporate life as being an out dated concept. 

The reality is different in that almost every decision taken as to reward or discipline an individual comes down to a character assessment.  

Certainly King III, the New Companies Act, the Competition Commission all place personal responsibility on the part of a business practitioner fore and centre in any decision relating to right or wrong action.  

Virtue ethics then are as important today in asking ‘What sort of person would do that’?