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Chemistry or contamination: Dow at the Olympic Games

By Mark Di Somma

Right now a brouhaha is building between the India Olympic Committee and the IOC over the presence of Dow Chemicals at the London 2012 Summer Games. In particular, India is up in arms over Dow’s sponsorship of an $11.4-million decorative wrap to be installed around the London’s Olympic Stadium, according to this post in Brandchannel.

The Indian Olympic Committee takes exception to Dow’s ownership of Union Carbide, which Dow bought in 2000, 16 years after that company’s plant in Bhopal had leaked gas killing thousands and injuring hundreds of thousands more. For their part, Dow seem to be saying that they didn’t own the plant when the accident happened and therefore the Bhopal tragedy is not their responsibility.

In a letter to the Indian Olympic Association quoted here , IOC President Jacques Rogge explained that “Dow had no connection with the Bhopal tragedy.

“Dow did not have any ownership stake in Union Carbide until 16 years after the accident and 12 years after the $470 million compensation agreement was approved by the Indian Supreme Court.

“The court has upheld this agreement twice since then, in 1991 and 2007. We understand that this is being reviewed yet a third time by the India Supreme Court and we are aware of Dow’s position in this matter, and of the sensitivities of all parties.”

There are some far-reaching implications in this story that I thought it would be useful to explore.

To my mind, it is simply not true that Dow has no connection with the Bhopal tragedy. They were not directly involved, but that does not mean they are not connected. And that’s because there is a significant and important difference between legal ownership and brand ownership. In addition to the lingering contamination and the human misery that continues to haunt the families of those affected, and which will continue to affect perceptions of their brand, what Dow seems to have overlooked in their statements about Union Carbide, and the big lesson for brand owners and acquirers the world over, is that when you purchase a brand, you pay for all the assets.

That includes the physical property and goodwill of course, but Dow have also, and unmistakeably, purchased the “badwill” as well because, when they bought the Union Carbide brand, Dow acquired the global memories of what transpired at Bhopal and the enduring emotional reaction to that tragedy. They continue to own that “badwill” regardless of the actual legal arguments and decisions.

When they bought Union Carbide, Dow inherited emotional responsibility for how the world feels about the legacy of what occurred, whether they wanted it or not. They can rationalise all they like that a compensation agreement has been paid, and that they have legal decisions in their favour, but that does not mean that the company can sweep the inconvenient parts of its acquired history under the carpet and somehow view them as divorced from the plant they bought.

Indeed, one could argue, if you apply that line of thinking elsewhere, that no company today  should be responsible for cleaning up what has happened to the environment because the damage was first done years ago by someone else.

Global companies are not just globally accountable for the brands they own and the companies they acquire, as shareholders they are responsible for the brand equity they manage and the emotions associated with their brands. They cannot selectively impose territorial N/As or hope to deflect responsibility for ownership from those parts of their organisation that no longer suit them by gloriously proclaiming and highlighting their participation in another event half a world away.

A wrap is not a gag – no matter how much it costs. Nor can it be a cover-up.

And time does not diminish moral responsibility – especially for a brand.

Brands are living memories. As long as the memories live, they are a responsibility of the brand owner.

What Dow have missed here in my view, dating all the way back to the date of purchase, was an opportunity to step up and take control of correcting the situation they had inherited. This could and should have been a showcase example of the chemicals industry leading the great global clean-up – working with the community to change the future for all those innocent people caught up in these horrendous events. Once again, what I can only assume was risk aversion has seen a brand back away from an opportunity that should have generated them massive goodwill. As a result, they now find themselves in damage control, looking to distance themselves from the fall-out of an asset that is undeniably part of their global brand.

Perhaps they thought no-one would question their involvement with the Olympics after so many years. (Why has it taken this long incidentally?)

Welcome to a world where scrutiny never dies.

What also seems to be missing from events in London is a very clear and assertive principle for involvement by the IOC. IOC President Jacques Rogge simply says in the Brandchannel article that they were “aware” of the Bhopal tragedy. What exactly does “aware” mean? And what influence did “aware” have on their decision? How long have they been “aware”? And have they ever done anything about their awareness?

I’m disquieted by what I read. In the newspaper article Rogge is quoted as saying that the IOC only enters into partnerships with organizations which the IOC believes work in accordance with the values of the Olympic movement.

“Dow is a global leader in its field of business and is committed to good corporate citizenship,” he is quoted as writing to the Indian Olympic Committee. “The company has supported the Olympic Movement for over 30 years, providing support and bringing industry-leading expertise and innovation to the Games.”

Spot the subjectivity in both these statements. Once again, it is a cautionary tale for all brand owners and managers. I interpret Mr Rogge’s statement as saying that as long as the IOC believes an organisation aligns with its own values, it will work with them. And while Dow may be committed to “good corporate citizenship”, it seems to be Dow who decides on the calibre of their own citizenship.

Unfortunately, for both organisations, you don’t get to referee your own corporate reputation. So while both Dow and the IOC may be satisfied with their actions, that does not mean they are exempt from criticism. Meeting your own criteria for comfort is not enough in a world where everyone gets to form and post an opinion.

Then there’s the reference in his letter to the long-running nature of the relationship between the IOC and Dow, and the fact that, according to the newspaper article, Dow only became involved after Olympic officials had scrapped plans for the wrap because its price had been deemed too expensive at a time of economic austerity.

How do you read all that?

For all these reasons, and despite talk of standards and values and legal justification, I have to question the brand case for Dow’s high profile involvement. What are they hoping to achieve?

More particularly, where is their involvement in the debate raging around them? If they believe they are right, why are they not more engaged socially in this discussion? I would have thought that the questions being asked now, by the Indian Olympic Committee, by Amnesty International and by others, are working to undermine the very “good corporate citizenship” status that Dow must have set, surely, as one of its objectives. They have a right – maybe even an obligation – to defend that. Yes, they’re paying for something that might not have been affordable otherwise, but the cost to their own brand and to their own reputation could be very high indeed if this matter continues to escalate.

Leaving it to others to speak on their behalf is not a strategy I would have recommended. It implies they don’t have answers – or, at the very least, that they are not prepared to answer the concerns of their critics. That’s a vacuum. And vacuums will always be filled. By you, or by those who will speak over you or in your stead if you do not respond.

As for the IOC, why are they supporting Dow? I hope the sponsorship selectors did indeed carefully and objectively assess Dow’s involvement against their values, as they say they do with each partner, and that they didn’t just take the money because of a funding shortfall. I hope they can prove that if required, for the sake of the five rings brand as much as anything else. Sorry to be so frank. But if that were not the case, it would be a serious blow to the integrity, and therefore the likeability, of the Olympic brand.

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Great brands unearth

By Mark Di Somma
English: Howard Carter (kneeling), an Egyptian...

Image via Wikipedia

In his recent post on imputing, Tom Asacker used a single word that for me clinched the mystery and the power of great marketing, and explained why so much money is spent on communication that just inspires a change of channel.

That word: unearth.

Unearthing is about discovering. It’s about seeing for the first time something that has been hidden for a very long time. It’s about revelation. It’s about something that inspires.

Great brands release emotions that people are not asked to feel most of the time. They uncover the irrational drivers that impel busy, pressed, distracted human beings to stop doing nothing or something else and instead make the time to take an action.

Because that action is worth it to them. And it’s worth that time because it feels worth that amount of time.

Most brands don’t work that hard to win our time. They are unsurprising, uninspiring, unprovoking. They unearth nothing. On the contrary, they monotonously state the obvious. They go over and over and over the same old ground. And in the process, they dig themselves into a hole that sees you, me and everyone else turning the page, changing the channel, looking away. Bored, frustrated, interrupted. Just wanting them to go away.

Tom Asacker suggests that “most brands haven’t a clue about how people actually feel, think and act.” He’s right of course. But I’m even more disturbed by the reasons why. You see, I think many marketers have lost the quintessential trait that should single them out from every other aspect of corporate function: a deep understanding of, and love for, people and the primal emotions that fundamentally motivate them.

They lean so heavily on research and focus groups and in the process, marketers have forgotten how to observe. Or more particularly, to perceive what is really going on. They can’t detect what moves people. Or motivates them. Or stirs them. Beyond the obvious.

The same obvious that everyone else sees. The same obvious that everyone relies on.

And because they have lost those traits, they do not trust their instincts. They cannot speculate. The need to explain and rationalise and prove and justify has killed their ability to divine – to find what moves people as people to the very core of their being. They struggle to find the unexpected value and the unexpected truth that separate likeable brands from also-brands.

And because they can’t do that, they cover their tracks with data, run another highly predictable, highly analysed, deeply comfortable campaign and hope somehow that it gets them the breakthrough and the results they crave.

According to Howard Carter’s diary, on the day that the tomb of Tutankhamun was finally revealed to the modern world, Carter peered into the darkness through a hole in the doorway, his eyes straining to make out shapes, a candle his only light.

“Can you see anything?”, Lord Carnarvon asked.

“Yes,” replied Carter, “it is wonderful.”

Most of us, sadly, will never get to feel what those explorers felt on that extraordinary day. But let me ask you this. When was the last time you unearthed a brand that provided even a tincture of amazement? In a world swimming in ads and noise, discovering such brands might indeed be as rare an encounter as an intact Pharoah’s tomb.

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Rethinking the response

By Mark Di Somma

There’s a simple, human reason why behaviours happen time and time again in my view.  We are creatures of habit and familiarity. It is much more comforting to keep hammering away at what we know than it is to stop, reappraise the problem and completely redesign the playbook.

Relentless speed and ubiquitous impatience have spawned an approach to strategy based on “not enough time”. The underpinning philosophy is that there’s either not enough minutes in the day to do the thinking, or even if these can be found, the strategy will be outmoded by the time the company gets to implement it.

Wrong. It will almost certainly take far less time to strategise the road ahead than it took to get into trouble. And it will cost a whole lot less than reacting to another bad snap decision.

However, those who hate change can always fall back on a simple tactic. If in doubt, raise more doubt …

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“But it’s not working now.”

“OK, what if it works even worse?”

We’ve all been in those meetings.

For the action-addicted, it is much better to tweak what you are doing based on precedent or aversion. “We’ll move when they move.” Or “let’s just wait and see shall we?”

And we’ve all been there when money and time have been spent acting out “answers” that simply don’t stand up to analysis. The answers fail, because they’re not real answers. They’re actions based on reaction, impatience and subjectivity.

Or they are inactions – initiatives that are so  cautious that they advance nowhere and therefore change nothing.

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The power of being purposeful

The power of being purposeful

By Mark Di Somma

In an age where products are increasingly similar and of equal quality, the opportunities to compete just on the basis of what you sell are disappearing. In fact, I’d go further than that and say, they’re as good as gone. Even if you know that your product has some sort of technical advantage over that of a rival, the chances of you continuing to hold that advantage or of that advantage being of such significance that consumers actually care are as good as nil. Read More

Sense and Serotonin

By Mark Di Somma

Recently in response to a post by David Meerman Scott about the need to apply left and right brain thinking to content creation, I suggested in the comments that brands should apply that same approach to most aspects of marketing. As I pointed out at the time, blending right and left brain signals is critical to how brands engage with prospects and buyers because it ensures that people remain fascinated and justified as they make their way through the sales funnel.

Logic and magic.

I think most of us accept that consumers generally buy emotively and explain logically, so the ability to provide them with experiences that they enjoy and talk about, and at the same time to arm them with reasons that help them explain, to themselves and to others, what they are doing is critical.

It’s easy and tempting though to treat each hemisphere as separate: to apportion logical arguments for those who think that way or for times when they are needing to rationalise; and to ramp up the emotions and associatives for those who are more inclined to follow their hearts. We’ve tended to see them, in other words, as ideas that sit alongside each other, that co-exist, and that are accessed separately at different times, rather than as ways of thinking that are integrated.

Personally I think such a divide is too simplistic. I think the dichotomy is a construct that is convenient for marketers to believe because it allows us to build left and right-column strategies but it doesn’t actually address honestly how consumers make decisions.

Every marketer should thrive to inspire consumers to like their brand, rather than battering them with facts. At the same time, they need to qualify that emotive drive with this filter: Does it make sense for consumers to feel what the brand is asking them to feel?

The facts should exist as proof for the emotions – on the consumer’s terms. Because while the data may speak for itself to those who made the product, it cannot feel for others.

Increasingly I’m using two very simple questions to try and bridge what I’ve memed as Sense and Serotonin – and the way those questions are sequenced is critical.

The first question is one that regular readers wil know:

1. What is the most wonderful thing we want people to feel (that they don’t feel already from any of our competitors)?

It’s focused on finding what I often refer as the “unexpected value” – the thrill that the brand provides that takes people by surprise and has them coming back for more.

The second question is new – but just as interesting:

2. Where is the deepest proof that they should feel that (that they haven’t heard already from any of our competitors)?

That’s a hard one. It is about finding the “unexpected truth”, so it’s about formulating the sequence of fresh and compelling arguments that rationalises why consumers should allow themselves to feel the specific way the brand is asking them to feel.

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“What are we going to do?”

By Mark Di Somma

It’s been said on too many occasions that actions speak louder than words. Said so often in fact, that many brands today seem to have a disregard that borders on disdain for taking the time to really think through what could make them outstandingly competitive.

In today’s manic, results-driven world, fewer and fewer people, it seems, feel they have time to strategise where their company and their brand needs be heading, and how to retain their edge. It’s better instead, they believe, to just get on with the business at hand.

Everything happens now. And as a result, considered is an idea that seems to have passed its use-by date.

Execution is the mot du jour. The best way to solve any problem is to do something. In fact, not just something, lots of things. Kevin Roberts calls this, “ready, fire, aim”. I call it stupid. Looking to reaction and sheer activity to get you out of trouble relies on the fallacy that doing something has got to be better than doing nothing. In fact, they strike me as equally dumb, because chances are that if indeed you are in trouble, you are where you are because of what you have been busy doing up until now. Indulging in more of the same action parallels having another drink to try and cure alcoholism. It’s just as likely to deepen the problem as fix it.

Remember that lovely moment in the TV series Blackadder when the General says they’re going to throw more men over the top at the enemy and take them completely by surprise. Captain Blackadder queries the surprise element of repeating an action that the British undertook “last time … and the time before that … and the time before that .. and so on” Precisely, says the General, and that’s why it’s so clever. Because doing what we’ve always done is the last thing that the enemy will expect us to do again.

As Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The philosophy of act and adapt as necessary only works if you do actually adapt. (Even the British High Command came to realise that.) And the key reason why adaption is so hard is because action is easier. People can concentrate on doing what they know, what they have within their frame of reference, what they’ve been doing for some time. Action. And reaction. Getting through workloads. Getting things done. Following the other guy. Or not following the other guy.

Some decision makers seem to believe that if they act, they will get better at what they have been doing (which, incidentally, is often not that dissimilar to what everyone else is doing). That will also satisfy their KPIs – which often are built around actions not competitive effectiveness. Do more. Be more effective.

Polaroid did that. They made a great product. And that’s what they focused on. They were on a roll until digital came along and took the wind out of their sails. Suddenly they were becalmed. They’d got very good at being Polaroid – the problem was that the world had moved on, and now the thing they were so good at wasn’t noteworthy anymore. Polaroid, it seems to me, never had a winning strategy for the digital age. But, like I said, they were very good at what they did. I call this redundant excellence.

Their competitor Kodak had the same issue. Brilliance in the analogue world of photography actively prohibited them from making the changes needed to stay competitive. I have no doubt that over the 15 years that Kodak slowly deteriorated, everybody there worked hard. I have no doubt either that many actions were taken. It’s just that they were the wrong actions in the end because they were based on old thinking about consumers’ wants around their photos.

The irony is that Kodak were a first mover in the very market that would later kill them. In 1975, a Kodak engineer created the first digital camera, but for whatever reason they never took advantage of being first-out-of-the-blocks.

There’s a good chance both companies confidently met many of their KPIs along the way. But key performance indicators are not necessarily success indicators. They recognise actions the company thinks is important. But if those markers are out of alignment with what is required to actually be competitive, then a company may well meet its own goals at the expense of securing its future.

The ironies of this can be intriguing. One set of numbers – the financials – can be showing that things are not as they should be. Another set of measurements can be showing that people are doing all that is expected of them. When a management team is so close to what’s happening, it can be very challenging for them to agree that the expectations they set were wrong.

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Market leadership: you can’t lead as a brand if you follow another brand.

By Mark Di Somma

Apple Inc.

Looks to me from this article like Samsung are going down the same competitive route as others before them in their battle with Apple. They’re looking to out-do them and to build a reputation and loyalty for themselves that replicates the following that Apple has.

Here’s the thing. As soon as any brand does this, there’s a very real risk that what it is actually doing is fighting with its perceived nemesis on their terms and therefore, subconciously or not, by their strengths. Because of the underlying references, Apple also becomes a focus and therefore, by implication, an authority. And all this within time and space that Samsung is paying for and looking to own. Unless they are very careful, there’s a real risk here that Apple could be allowed to Occupy Samsung’s marketing real estate – by Samsung itself.

After all, Apple is very good at being Apple. And their consumers love them for the brand they are.

It’s not smart brand strategy to address a strong brand competitor at their strongest points. If I were working for Samsung, in fact, I would be actively encouraging them to avoid any reference to their competitors. Rather, they need, in the words of Fleetwood Mac, to go their own way. The most powerful brand you can own and manage is one where you know and write the code – not one that takes its cues from where others are, or where you perceive them to be.

That’s not to say that any brand should ignore its competition. But rather, in my view, a brand like Samsung should use its competitive analysis to sort out things like the emotions that Apple and others don’t evoke and whether these represent opportunities for emotional equity.

The question is not, “what does Apple do well that we can do also?”. The question is “What can’t our competitors do that we can excel at?”

The real lesson that Samsung have taken and that they do need to pay attention to is that products are upgraded by repeat customers motivated as much by loyalty as technical introductions. Apple’s very good at that. But the way to beat them is not to look to emulate more of the same emotion.

In the tech world particularly, if Samsung is to have any hope of achieving its goal it will need to match technical innovation with emotional innovation.

Emotional innovation stems from finding what I term the “unexpected value”. It’s driven by this line of enquiry: “What is the most extraordinary feeling that people in this sector haven’t felt yet? And how will we deliver it to them?”

When you strategise and deliver a brand underpinned by unexpected value, you change the emotional landscape that you compete in and you sidestep the cluttered, increasingly emotive middle ground that your commoditising competitors are squabbling over. You also actively avoid reploughing the deeply owned and highly branded field of another. That’s how you build market leadership. That’s how you continue to lift brand equity. By owning and fuelling emotions that are increasingly and delightfully associated with you.

Thanks Todd for the heads-up.

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Participation versus differentiation

By Mark Di Somma

Right now, across the world, hundreds of different people are opening an office, a restaurant, a social media company … They’ve sunk everything they have into it. They’ve thrown their life at it. It’s what they’ve always wanted to do, and every one of them and the people who has supported them hopes and believes they’ll succeed. Most won’t.

Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is planning a business that will one day be bigger than every other brand in their sector. The next shipping magnate woke up somewhere in the world today, without a ship to their name. The property magnate of the future is eating lunch in a schoolyard somewhere. Tomorrow’s Madonna has a clothesbrush, a mirror and perhaps an i-Pod …

The contrast couldn’t be greater, and yet curiously, the two groups are interdependent. Because in order for someone to stand out in a market, the vast majority must fail to do so.

If every café that opened stayed open, the hospitality sector would collapse because no-one could succeed, no-one could expand. Same with fashion, hairdressing or education. Unless you’re working in a market that just continues to enjoy extraordinary organic growth, attrition is hard-wired into the functionalism of the capitalist system. People have to run out of money in order for the money to be made elsewhere. People have to stop booking one airline in order to consistently fly on another. Someone choosing your hotel didn’t choose another hotel. Most of the time, the dynamic is zero-gain. In many sectors, it’s shrinking.

It’s your business against every other business in the market.

What never fails to amaze me is how so many businesses believe they have what it takes to beat the odds. Their formula for success? Participation. They’ll open the doors and chance it against the stupidity or inefficiency of their competitors. That’s it. They’re utterly dependent on passion, hope, hard work and perhaps the advertising budget to outshine the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others who will open their doors on the very same morning at the same time to tout for the same pool of business – the veterans, the emergents, the strugglers, the other newbies. And on every other morning from then on.

It’s a dynamic that every business faces, no matter how long they’ve been in business. If you’re new, you’re needing to make your mark often against very established players. If you’ve been in business for a while, statistically the odds are tilting against you even though, ironically, you may be feeling secure in the knowledge of your history.

The sad reality for many brands, if they have looked to face up to the brutal reality of competition, is that they’ve probably done it by confronting the wrong question.

This is the wrong question: “What will we do if we fail?”. It assumes participation.

This is the right question: “Why won’t we fail when so many others must?” It requires differentiation.

If you can’t answer the right question, you’re a casualty. The only question left is one of timing. If you stop asking the right question, you’re also going – no matter how long you may have been in the game.

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Likeable brands: Debating the true value of Likes.

By Mark Di Somma

If brand owners are buying Likes on Facebook, what are they actually worth?, asks Alexis Dormandy in this recent article in The Telegraph. “Can we really value a ‘Like’ or a ‘Follow’ when so many of them are bought rather than earned?”

Dormandy’s question goes to the heart of the marketing community’s ongoing fixation with volume and to the business world’s fascination with social metrics. With marketing managers under huge pressure to build and participate in scaled brand communities, perhaps it’s inevitable that fast-track approaches to ramp up fan bases have become more popular.

There’s good, bad and ironical news in this.

Let’s start with the good. Slowly a real value case for using social media seems to be emerging. In a recent post on the RICG blog, comScore’s Linda Abraham and Buddy Media’s Mike Lazerow reference research showing that a “share” on Facebook can lead to $2.10 in incremental sales, and drive up the average conversion rate to 10.2 percent per share.

A key reason Abraham and Lazerow give to factor social media into digital marketing programmes is that “social media is the No. 1 online activity today,” accounting for almost 20 percent of the time consumers spend online.

They go on to say that there are three steps in social media marketing:
1. Cut-through, or the brand messages that fans receive in their news feed;
2. Engagement, or what fans say about a brand or product’s news feed content; and
3. Amplification, where fans share the content they like with others in their network.

However, they also point out that “most brands skip over those “intermediary steps,” and instead think the process only involves getting fans and then seeing a marketing ROI”.

And when getting fans involves buying their loyalty through incentives, that’s when Dormandy seems to believe the illusions of success start. Yes incentives and giveaways work, but as his article points out, generating Likes and Follows through mechanisms like contests rather than through unprompted affinity must beg the question: how much do consumers truly see these marques as likeable brands and to what extent are they more interested in the likeable giveaways?

That in itself raises a wider concern. The bad news.

With the introduction of marketing moves like Sponsored Stories and the use of incentives to gain community memberships, reviews and WOM, there’s a very real danger that authentic endorsement – the sort members of the online community truly value and want to share – is under threat. As Dormandy puts it so well: “for products, services and brands, the Facebook Like provides little indication of what your friends want or would recommend. In the quest to be endorsed on Facebook, brands have devalued those very endorsements. Buying a Like doesn’t mean you’re liked.”

So Like could no longer mean ‘like’ in its defined sense. And Follow could easily mean Follow for Now, or until the competition ends. There’s a transience to that commitment that is disquieting because by extension endorsement no longer means endorsement either. It simply means participation.

If that’s the case, what are marketers buying beyond a momentary measure? What can they bank on?

And is the very fact that they continue to seek out Likes and Follows making Liked brands less reliable and Followed brands less charismatic?

Leading perhaps to this irony: the more consumers Like your brand online in the minute (because of the incentives you offer), the greater the risk that they might not actually value it over the longer term.

Not dissimilar in many ways to how consumers behave in sales – it isn’t the brand they are buying, it’s the discount. Only in this case, it’s not about the discount but rather the incentive.

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