The authenticity imperative: Brand know thyself
‘Climate change is
an issue which raises fundamental questions about the relationship
between companies and society as a whole, and between one generation
and the next.’
Can you guess who
said that? A campaigner for Friends of the Earth? Wrong. That was Lord
John Brown speaking in 2001. At the time, he was the group chief
executive officer of BP, the world’s third largest energy company.
Under his watch, BP was the first oil major to admit a direct link
between global warming and greenhouse gases, which is still a taboo
subject among the Seven Sisters.
A year earlier, the
company had rolled out the most audacious campaign ever conceived by an
energy company. Developed by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, the global
advertising and PR agency, the $200 million paradigm bending campaign
would either change the mindset or set it up for a fall.
With two words,
‘beyond petroleum,’ BP effectively told the world, “We are a different
type of energy company and we care about the environment. Really.”
‘Good’ company
According to the
company, “Beyond petroleum’ sums up our brand in the most succinct and
focused way possible. It’s both what we stand for and a practical
description of what we do.’ What the campaign had done was to define BP
as a ‘good’ energy company in a very value-loaded type of way. The
others were ‘bad’ energy companies. In the public mind, that quality of
goodness covered more than BP’s investment in alternative energy
sources.
It extended to its
Safety & Health standards as well as progress with less
environmentally costly Exploration & Production techniques. For
better, for worse, henceforth, the company would be judged by those
standards.
When mishaps like
the March 2006 explosion at the company’s Texas City refinery happened
and later, the August 2006 oil spill in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska occurred,
public anger was directed as much at the jarring dichotomy between what
BP claimed to be in its campaigns and what it really was in its
operations as much as at the physical damage proper.
Last month’s
accident on its Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which has
caused severe destruction of sea life, may well be the straw that
breaks the camel’s back. Can BP still claim to be ‘beyond petroleum’? I
strongly doubt it.
Whatever BP says
about the errors of engineering or placing the blame on its
contractors, one thing is clear: BP’s ‘beyond petroleum’ tag has become
BP’s ‘big problem’ albatross. This time, it will take more than Ogilvy
& Mather to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
The limits of spin
Spin is a poor
adhesive for fixing cognitive dissonance cracks. John Kenney, an
ex-Ogilvy executive who played a key role in developing the campaign,
has openly questioned BP’s commitment to the ethos of ‘beyond
petroleum.’
He has called on the company to leave the hype and hypocrisy aside and go ‘beyond propaganda.’ Ouch!
I have used BP’s
‘beyond petroleum’ as a type for companies that choose to build their
brands around sympathetic signals. It can have a massive upside, but it
can also be a two edged-sword.
Companies need to
do an honest assessment about whether they can deliver on these
promises before trumpeting them. The challenge for BP is not about
rebuilding confidence in its brand. The crisis on the company’s hands
is about admitting that BP as BP will never be beyond petroleum. Energy
companies will be energy companies in the way boys will be boys.
Resigning itself to this humdrum fate will be the hardest part.
Greencleaning will not wipe the oily slick away.
Maybe this is why
many companies prefer to play it safe with impersonal taglines like
‘Nigeria’s biggest network’ and ‘Africa’s mightiest bank.’
Except for those
who find boasting attractive, these ego-thumping chest-drumming claims
mean little to most people. But change those to the personalised
‘Helping loved ones stay in touch’ or ‘The listening bank that cares’
and the dynamics change greatly. When the same network goes down on
Valentine’s Day or the bank deducts indiscriminate charges, customers
will take a very different view than if they had just stuck with the
prior descriptions.
Do no evil
Google’s ‘Do no
Evil’ and JP Morgan’s ‘At all times doing only first-class business,
and that in a first-class way,’ are two perfect examples of claims
people will scrutinise closely. From him who claims much, much is
expected.
So why should
companies care at all? Here are two reasons why they should. First, the
customer-investor divide has become blurred. The capital markets are
paying more attention to companies’ marketing messages and consumers
are becoming better attuned to what investors feel. The contagion of
distrust in one will contaminate the other.
Second, reputation is an increasingly important factor in investment decision-making.
Those
north-easterly pointing stock price charts are unsustainable if the
brand is living a lie. That should be a no-brainer. To thine own brand
be true.
The writer is the managing director of a full service investor relations firm based in Lagos.
