The control a brand has, or rather the lack of it, was evident in two examples I saw recently. Both became viral, one at a very small level, and the other, a huge global one. You must’ve guessed the second one easily enough. Meanwhile, the first was ‘Bros Icing Bros‘ and linked to the Smirnoff brand, unofficially. You can read the details here. The way the game worked – “a person presents a friend (err, “bro”) with a Smirnoff Ice which they must then and there – regardless of time, location or context – take on bended knee and chug the entire bottle. The exception is if that friend himself (or herself) is carrying a Smirnoff Ice – in that case, the original presenter must chug both “Ices”” A case of user generated brand buzz, which perhaps did good for the product and was relatively non-detrimental to the brand.
And there’s the first example, which is easily becoming THE example now, for bad PR. BP – if the spill wasn’t bad enough, there was the spillage – the fake PR account – advice on what/why BP should or should not do with it, the tweet billboards, an old (fake) ad, the ironic sign, the ghastly, ghastly images, the user created logos, a coffee parody, and the post from the man who created BPGlobalPR. BP’s losses as a brand (intangible?) is much more than the real $costs that have been speculated. Meanwhile, it has finally reached out to the @BPGlobalPR account. (While on the topic, do check out Rob Cottingham’s excellent take on the subject)
The only commonality I’m looking at is the user generated content (or discontent). I don’t think this is an area which can be gamed easily. Sure, you can try to manipulate events and people, and search engines, try some good old PR, but there are no guarantees that it won’t boomerang. And I think it holds true across the spectrum – the two cases are polar opposites in terms of magnitude of the event, what the crowd did to it, and what the brand tried to do.
Deviating a bit. I read “Arundhati Roy on ‘War of People‘”, where she took the scope of the Naxal issue into corporate boardrooms, and was immediately reminded of Umair Haque’s latest post titled “Ethical Capital is Capitalism’s new cornerstone“. He defines Ethical capital as “the stock of techniques, tools, and practices not just for creating value, but for defining and refining values, that an economy possesses”, and CSR, social investment, social entrepreneurship etc as the baby steps towards building it. But the corporate world still doesn’t understand the rewiring, as he himself notes. And here’s where we loop back, I don’t think this building of ethical capital can be gamed either.
I can spot an increasing number of efforts – Pepsi’s Refresh Project, their efforts for production sustainability, Nokia’s eco profile for new products, their bicycle charger kit, to name a few. While the cynic in me sometimes disses official CSR, I realise its perhaps a level that has to be crossed before we reach out for bigger things. I also see efforts from the consumer side – CarrotMob (via Surekha)
I see all of this as a trend where users are linking the brands they use, and their consumption, to the larger context of their lives and the even larger context of the world they inhabit, and the culture they consume and create. The ‘badges’ have changed, they’d like to associate themselves with brands that accommodate or at least work towards these badges. In the foreseeable future, I think that brands which understand this will not only align more people on their side, but also have inherent features and processes which would allow them to be transparent, reduce these costly mistakes, and admit to their mistakes without the PR approaches that are drawing flak now.
until next time, PR pressure?