Top of the Tortoises

 

There's a whole new area developing in assessing how good companies are performing on the triple bottom line. The latest new Index looking at how good companies actually are (in every sense of the word) is from Tortoise Media - The Tortoise Media Responsibility 100 Index

This index takes the FTSE 100 and rates these on indices relating to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, across the two broad areas People and Planet. There's a full detailed transparent methodology link included on the website for those interested in the nitty gritty and yes, of course, there is a degree of judgement in terms of how the indices are derived and weighted. 

Always worth bearing in mind.

Looking at the results, Top of the Tortoises this year are:

1. Unilever

2. Severn Trent

3. Diageo

4. AstraZeneca

5. BT Group

There are several things I like about this index - first of all, there's the "talk" and "walk" division - what the companies are committing to, and what they are actually doing. And I believe both are vital. Companies that simply donate a bucketload of cash to a trendy cause on the spur of the moment aren't in it for the long-haul, usually. 

It's good to see the top five from a complete mix of sectors - retail & consumer, engineering, pharma and services are all represented. And yes, it is the FTSE Top 100 which is generally about established companies, but it's encouraging to see all the Top 5 were established in the last century (with roots going much further back, in some cases) - these are certainly not "new kids on the block" who have social and environmental responsibility baked-in from the beginnings.

What I'd really like to see accompanying this is a "Hare Index" of growth to see if the third part of the triple bottom line really does go hand-in-hand with the other two to the finishing line.

#ISeeWallpaper

Apologies if I start sounding like a broken record (maybe 4 Non-Blondes?) as I've recently blogged about this subject. But with International Women's Day fast approaching (on March 8th), there has been a splurge of yet more brands and companies desperate to show just how determined they are to lead the fight against inequality.

International Women's Day celebrates women's social, economic, cultural and political achievements (although I don't think Marine Le Pen's or Frauke Petry's 'achievements' come high on the list to be celebrated). This is important, as there are many countries in the world where women do not have equal opportunities and it's vital to raise awareness and prompt action to change.

But I can't help thinking that when brands and companies start leaping on this rather over-loaded band waggon, that the people involved in creating the communications are either naive or cynical.

Take P&G's new commercial #WeSeeEqual. This 'shows men, women, boys and girls defying gender stereotypes.'

OK. I looked carefully, and unless the baby is a boy, there are no boys to be seen. Could this be because P&G don't make any products specifically for boys? Or am I being cynical now? And are these people really defying gender stereotypes? What century are we in? I'm afraid the only stereotypes I can see are a load of advertising cliches: the tattooed beefy dad changing a nappy (not very competently), the bungee-jumping granny, the brainy women in glasses. All accompanied by the rather tired 'What's Up' soundtrack.

I appreciate that P&G have made some positive steps forward in terms of women in their senior management, which is good to see. But I have a feeling that this film falls into the category of protesting too much. Maybe decades of advertising featuring housewives obsessing about stains and smells leaves a guilty corporate conscience.

And it's only a few years ago that the same company were busy 'thanking moms' in their communication.

I'd love to see a company the size of P&G really use their clout to change something in the world, instead of producing wallpaper.

Getting sentimental over you

I read an interesting article from The Book of Life recently, entitled Sentimentality in Art - and Business.  In it, the author makes the observation that sentimentality has moved from the art arena to the business arena. I assume it's meant that sentimentality hasn't completely decamped from the art arena, as I see it as alive and kicking, especially when it comes to popular art and entertainment - from the moody photos of hunky man holding vulnerable baby to the paintings of Thomas Kinkade - and a large percentage of what's shared on Facebook, if you can class that as art.

The article includes Oscar Wilde's definition of sentimentality from De Profundis: 'the desire to feed off an emotion without paying for it' - so all of the positive elements with none of the shadow side.

I would contest whether the move into the business arena is a new thing. Advertising has always been  escapist, larger than life, a utopia, escapism - right back to the impossibly cute Pears children and before. But, by and large, advertising plays by rules that people accept as part and parcel. No one is so naive as to believe that this is a representation of reality. Even if, these days, so many brands are trying to populate the same utopia - see Vignette Roulette for a cruel but amusing illustration of just how interchangeable these various brand worlds are.

But these days, as we know, the borders between brand and corporate, employee and customer, business and private are blurring in a social media fog that's actually far from transparent. Sentimental language and behaviour has crept into the boardroom - 'Lovemarks', 'embracing' this and that, 'reaching out' to all and sundry, 'passionate' about anything from loo rolls to insurance.

This has spawned all manner of sentimental company manifestos and employee brand statements about a better planet, about mother love, about future generations.

No longer confined to external advertising, the sentimentality is flowing through companies in a syrupy tide and no-one is looking at the shadow side.

And this is where it gets tricky, because no-one wants to pay.

Pseudo Choice

I'm reading a dystopian/speculative/sci-fi whatever-it's-called-these-days novel at the moment: Future Perfect by Katrina Mountfort. 150 years into the future, the human race live in CitiDomes rather reminiscent of Center Parcs, subscribe to a set of MindValues that wouldn't be out of place on a boardroom wall and have given up worshipping anything remotely spiritual. Instead, the idols are those that have BodyPerfect status and are the media darlings of the non-stop diet of reality shows. Needless to say, the BodyPerfect guys and girls look as if they have swooshed out of advertising stock photos.

It's fiction but it doesn't feel so far from the truth that we're seeing now. Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail is now 8 years old and while it's true that we do have endless choice, not only does Google make it difficult for us to find the end of the tail (or even the beginning of the end of the tail) - did you mean X? Show results for etc. etc. etc - but when it comes to it, most people are more comfortable not having to bother. Who goes beyond the first page of search engine results on a regular basis?

I wrote about conformity in my last post and I sometimes wonder in branding and advertising if we are seeing a mass-homogenisation, a group tending towards the mean. Although globalisation does have its benefits, it does mean that everyone is using those same corporate values, chasing the same perfect customer experience, latching onto the same cultural insights while believing they're creating something unique. It's not just the stock shots that we're all dipping into, but the strategic part, too.

I read a brilliant article in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, which mentioned Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School regarding "Pop Culture as an instrument of economic and political control, enforcing conformity behind a permissive screen."

Are we offering genuine choice with our brands and communication? Or, to quote Adorno, "Freedom to choose what is always the same?"

Agile constancy

Which team will win on Sunday? The two semi-finals couldn't have been more different - a glorious walkover and humiliating defeat, and a drawn-out stalemate finally decided on penalties. But in football, anything can happen - we will wait and see.

Success in any field - sport, business or personal life - depends on your definition of success, and how you approach reaching it. Jeff Bezos of amazon is quoted as saying:

"We are stubborn on vision, we are flexible on details."

As a small aside, you might comment that details such as dodgy tax practices, less than ideal conditions for employees and monopolistic bully behaviour may display too great a degree of flexibility. But as a general principle, he's right.

All too often, brands - or the people who manage them - are stubborn where they don't need to be: on details. They compile an exhaustive corporate identity rulebook. They set unrealistic goals on irrelevant parameters, just because these can be measured. They insist on documents being rewritten and rewritten again to reflect the brand tone of voice. And all the time, forgetting their vision.

In the end, you remember who won, but you don't necessarily remember in what formation they played.

Bad Brands

In the old days, you could spot a bad brand miles off. They spilled oil, or invested in countries with dodgy regimes, or tested cosmetics on baby kittens. And, if you felt strongly enough, you could quite easily boycott them.

But these days, rather like James Bond villains, the bad brands have evolved. Their villainy is less about a big event - it's more subtly ingrained in their way of operation. These brands are quietly instrusive. They insinuate their way into your life through the back door, bearing gifts, posing as a friend. They do a deal with you - your info for my added value. You may go hand in hand for years, singing their praises. But occasionally, they will breach your deal. It may be something small and insignificant, like automatically posting something on your Facebook feed without you having to tick a box. It will make you wonder for a second or two. But the value you get from that brand will probably outweigh the bother of closing the account.

But if it gets more serious? What if a series of articles and documentaries about dodgy practices combined with bad personal experiences pushes you to want to boycott that brand? Unfortunately, these days, it is almost impossible to extricate yourself. I used to love amazon - as someone living abroad, they were a godsend. I started giving something back by writing reviews and, of course, when the time came, Kindle was the obvious choice for my ebook reader.

Amazon, I see, are currently looking for a European agency to help them with their image problem. I expect I could delete all my reviews and my account, and buy another e-reader and all the books I have on my Kindle but, well, life's too short. So I grudgingly continue with amazon, and feel a pang of conscience when I read yet another article about how they treat their staff.

Would it be possible to boycott Google? I doubt it. Even if you did, as from today, your traces remain. Once it's out, it's out.

Privacy is one of the biggest issues for brands today. There's a good report from Flamingo research here which shows how privacy is a pact.

I just hope that privacy, as the new luxury, will not end up being something that can be bought at a price.

You are what you lead?

The hullabaloo in the last week over Brendan Eich, the ex-CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, has got me thinking about the role that senior executives play when shaping a company's public perception.

I don't want to get into Mr Eich's views, especially those that lost him his job, but I believe there is a strong need in these days of transparency for senior executives - and maybe other employees - to give careful thought as to whether their personal views and opinions are compatible with the values of the company they work for.

Brendan Eich has been called everything from "horribly bullied" to an "obnoxious homophobe" recently but I wonder if he would have been under similar pressure to step down if he had worked in a more conservative industry - arms manufacture to take a silly example, or the automobile industry to take a more realistic one.

Back in the last century, you had your Mission Statement and Brand Values on the wall of the boardroom and no-one paid them much attention. Only rare exceptions when it came to CEOs could really be said to be living the values of the company - Anita Roddick, or Richard Branson for example. Or Ingvar Kamprad (above) - an interesting case, who certainly makes a point of living a low cost life but came on very shaky ground for a company that believes in democracy and diversity when certain aspects of his early life were revealed.

These days it's difficult to hide and companies must ensure that their senior representatives fit culturally with what the company is about. And the onus is also on the executive him/her self. If you're used to a luxury lifestyle, IKEA probably isn't the place for you. Nor is Procter & Gamble if you're an animal rights activist in your spare time.

The Eich case isn't that simple, as Brendan Eich founded Mozilla himself.

Even so, he should never been offered the position of CEO, or accepted it.

Me, us and the world

Where does a brand stop and a company start? Or vice versa? This is one of the tricky questions we have to ask when positioning a brand that is the company - or a company that is the brand. Take Google, for instance. Do most people out there think of it as a company or a brand?

The truth is that people simply don't think in a convenient boxes type of way. It used to be easy to think of the commercial side of a brand and set down a "desired consumer response" - and then to switch over to the corporate side and envision what we'd like "the opinion leader audience" to think. Just as brands play many roles these days, so do people in relation to a brand. Those opinion leader people may be leading opinions here there and everywhere during the day, but when they go home in the evening, they could be using your product, or helping their daughter with a work experience application to a local branch of your company.

And conversely, on the other side of the street, that once docile "consumer" could be ranting off with his own opinions of the poor service he got via the internet.

You don't have to be a consumer, or even a customer. There are plenty of brands and companies whose products may not be relevant to me, but that doesn't stop me expressing my opinion if I admire or loathe them or what they are doing.

The context in which we think about a brand or company is important. Is it personal or collective? Me, us or the world? Me - my own personal experience, specific and most likely product- or service-related. Us - my family and friends, my neighbourhood, bricks and mortar, or on social media. And The World - the broader implications of how the company is acting.

Rather than recruiting different types of "stakeholders" from consumers to opinion leaders, perhaps it would make more sense for market research studies to look at the context of people's thoughts about a brand or company - me, us or the world?

The world's a big place, but it's getting increasingly impossible for brands to be discreet.

Innocence Regained?

Lloyds Bank is undergoing a divorce from TSB, imposed by the European Competition Authority. The bank was bailed out by the British government aka the taxpayers in 2009 and will now be operating as Lloyds Bank and TSB with the intention of making the market healthier and more competitive.

It's interesting to see how the rebranding of the two "new" banks is going. The head of marketing at Lloyds Bank has said that the "area of focus will be our heritage and our quality of service. We have a long history and customers are familiar with us."

So far, so good. It certainly makes sense to return to where you were before you were bad and dirty and maybe pick up from there. And the cover of the customer brochure I got the other day took me right back to the 70s when my parents opened an account for me at our local Lloyds Bank. Back to the caravanning holidays in Scotland that we had in those days.

But the letter that accompanied the brochure destroyed that first kindling of goodwill towards the "new" Lloyds Bank. Customers may well be familiar with the bank but just how familiar is the bank with its customers?

Not very, if the letter is anything to go by.

"Over the coming days you'll start to see changes on the High Street." Um ... if you look at my address, you'll see I live in Germany and the only changes I'll be seeing on my "High Street" are the graffiti on the election posters, not the kind of changes that you mean.

And then all this "new Lloyds Bank/becoming Lloyds Bank" stuff. I know it's 18 years ago, but I never could get used to Lloyds TSB. The campaign is obviously designed and written by people who were about 6 in 1995.

In the great scheme of things, none of this will annoy me enough to start looking around for a new bank. But for brands that revert, for whatever reason, to an old name have to be careful how this is managed.

It could be the difference between being welcomed as the prodigal son or suffering the fate of Thomas Wolfe's hero: "You can't go home again."

Weirdness at Work

I have been on Facebook since 2007 and, while I go through phases where either Facebook itself or one or two the users I'm connected to irritate the heck out of me, I do have to admit that this is a brand that's made a difference to my life - and can genuinely be described as a business phenomenon.

I was fascinated to read a blog in Marketing Magazine by Anil Pillai about his experiences in the Facebook HQ, and how the company philosophy is made apparent is the workplace. Things like Facebook being a permanent "work-in-progress", constantly in change, as witnessed by the lack of logos and corporate symbols cast in stone and by "walking meetings". Or hacking and fiddling as a way of life, not just tolerated but expected and encouraged.

Particularly appealing is the feeling of trust, of treating employees as adults (or maybe young student-type adults is the best description). No clocking in or out, as long as the work gets done. This feels similar to the Zappos culture, with its free lunches, nap room and co-created artwork on the walls. Tony Hsieh's Zappos ten core values include "deliver WOW through service" and "create fun and a little weirdness".

I do hope that the everyday internal reality does match what's seen on a snapshot visit from an outsider. And that if someone does want to do a Powerpoint presentation to an audience sitting in a traditional conference room, it's allowed!

Bad reputation

With the horse meat scandal galloping through many of Europe's best known brands, corporate reputation will be in the spotlight in the coming weeks for many companies.

Corporate reputation used to be referred to as "Corporate Image", but in today's connected world, the idea of image, with the implication that it has nothing to do with reality, belongs to the past. It will be interesting to see which of the brands caught up in the purveying of horse meat will emerge with their reputations intact. I expect it will be those who have already given serious thought to their reputation before the scandal broke.

Femke de Man, from the agency Globescan, gives her predictions for developments in the area of reputation for 2013. She expects that we will be seeing more Chief Reputation Officers, in the same way that we are seeing Chief Sustainability Officers in more forward-looking companies and, related to this, a view of reputation less in the context of risk management and more in the context of an ongoing, integral part of company process and function.

Building and managing reputation is no longer an optional luxury - and it's certainly a more demanding job that polishing up the corporate image from time to time.

Ozymandias

There's been something in the air over the last few weeks urging us to have a go at some of the biggest global brands. Stories about tax dodging, revelations about use of forced labour, Facebook postings about where NOT to do your Christmas shopping and a general disillusionment with the big boys.  The Havas CEO, David Jones, terms this "The age of damage" - these days, the people can rise against a corporation or authority that is not seen to be behaving responsibly via social media instantly and knock anything from 10-15% off your share price in a day.

The main victim in the UK seems to be Starbucks. I expect that there has been resentment against Starbucks brewing for a while and the recent tax revelations have brought it all to the fore. Starbucks is unlucky, in a way, as I suspect the brand has now become a symbol for the people to direct all their anti-global feeling towards.

It's got to the stage where Starbucks have had to release an Open Letter, where they admit that they have  "found making a profit in the UK to be difficult" and "not performed to our expectations."

But hang on. If I'd emerged from a ten year Rip Van Winkle-like sleep, I wouldn't believe how the mighty have fallen. Ten years ago, Starbucks was up there as the poster-boy of branding, along with Nike and Apple. I even have a book, published in 2002, by Scott Bedbury, called "A new brand world - 8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century". The gold standard example is Starbucks.

In the introduction, Scott Bedbury states "Given the near collapse of public trust in large institutions - from major corporations like Enron and Worldcom to organisations like the Catholic Church - there has never been a more important time to establish and strengthen brand trust." Plus ca change, it seems.

The books lays out 8 principles for brand-building, including "everything matters" and "big doesn't have to be bad". It's all good stuff, still valid today.

But the principle that got to me most was the final one: "Relevance, simplicity, and humanity - not technology - will distinguish brands in the future."

It's a shame that Bedbury's successors at Starbucks don't seem to have practised what he preached.

When parody becomes reality

I don't know how many readers of this blog have already smirked over Condescending Corporate Brand Page on Facebook - and, privately, cringed in a "there but for the grace of God go I" sort of way.

I discovered it a few weeks ago via a friend's share, instantly "liked" (note the quotation marks...) and was hugely entertained for the first couple of days by the silly monkeys, cute kittens, retro postcards, motivational quotes (plus dolphins), word games and all the begging to "share" and "like".

The page announces itself as "A big corporate brand using Facebook" and they've already clocked up nearly 25,000 likes.

Yes, I thought. A brilliant parody. Constantly amusing. A wonderful thing to show clients.

But...after the first week, I didn't find it so funny, somehow. The umpteenth silly monkey was getting right on my nerves. My newsfeed was blocked by CCBP's never-ending stream of kitsch and drivel. I looked closer at CCBP's description, where they state:

"It WILL get annoying, so "unlike" us if you can't handle it."

I'm almost at that stage now. The only thing I can't decide is - is it all terribly clever and this is their intention. That they'll run up some clever stats about the turnover of those 25,000 and put together a stunning case history.

Or has parody simply become reality?

The cuddly colossus

Who remembers the corporate advertising of twenty plus years ago? In the 1980s, corporate advertising on TV became de rigeur on the back of the many share offers arising from privatisation and deregulation. The classics of the genre were masterpieces in pomposity, with swirling clouds, rolling countryside backgrounds, classical soundtracks and sonorous voiceovers intoning "There is a company that..."

Working on the British Airways account at the time, our challenge was always to portray scale and humanity in one - our holy grail was "the cuddly colossus."

Times have changed, media have changed, film techniques have changed and people's relationships with corporate brands are very different. And this is reflected in the sort of brand films being made which could technically be termed corporate. Away with the pomposity, in with the human story - preferably that of the founder. The swirling clouds and rolling countryside scenes have been replaced with cute animation techniques.

Two examples come to mind - "The Lego Story" by Lani Pixels, a 17 minute film that has well over 2m views on YouTube, and the Adidas Adi Dassler animated film from a few years ago.

Maybe you can argue that the cuddly, naive animation approach is more fitting to a child or youth orientated brand, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the former colossi scaling down to Wallace & Gromit size.

Mum's the word

In time for Mothering Sunday in the UK and to lead up to the London Olympics 2012, Procter & Gamble are about to unleash their first-ever corporate advertising for the general public. Interesting, because I've been involved in discussing the rights and wrongs of such an approach in the past. Interesting, because arch-rival Unilever has had its corporate logo on all its brand advertising since 2009.

Of course, newer companies don't have this headache. There aren't shadowy corporations lurking behind the brand names when it comes to the amazons, Googles and Virgins of this world. And even some of P&G's fellow-centenarians from Coca-Cola to many car brands have put their company name forward as brand name from the start.

You have to sympathise with P&G and their ilk to some extent. In the brave new internet age you can't hide. And if you don't take some kind of stance about who you are and what you stand for, someone else will do it for you. But however much I believe that P&G should have done something, I'm afraid that they've done the wrong thing.

Part of this comes out in the way both P&G and Unilever talk about why they've gone for the corporate-to-general public approach:

"(The Olympics)...is a great opportunity to talk to consumers about P&G and what we stand for." The phrase "talk to consumers" says it all. Isn't it about conversation these days? It's true enough that people these days want to know more about the companies that they buy products from - but they won't learn by being "talked to," like a naughty child standing in the corner.

Or this: "Our research says that consumers...are increasingly marketing-savvy and know that there are people who are behind brands." Well, I never!

While I'm sure that P&G have done their research, I'm a little uneasy that they appear to have done their usual version of copy & paste, which is known as "search and reapply". A successful campaign that ran for the Vancouver Olympics will be used in the UK - "Proud Sponsors of Mums."

I do find this a slightly patronising - and exclusive approach - after all, men and women without children have to clean their homes, wash their hair, use denture fixative, do the laundry and all the rest, too.

And when it comes to it, do I really want to be thinking about Pampers when I'm buying perfume? And talking of Pampers, what would be really fantastic is if P&G ditched the corporate budget when it comes to Germany and ploughed the money into an action-led campaign - from Pampers - that really did something to change the lot of mothers in Germany, as suggested here.

Corporate Playground

I have been spending rather a lot of time at airports recently and before I get onto this blog, I feel compelled to say that unlike the lady above, I never travel in a white suit. The probability of turbulence plus coffee has always been a touch too much on the high side for me.

One thing that always strikes me about airports is that they are the one public place where all the corporate ads can come out to play. Images rarely seen outside the Annual Report & Accounts or Trade Journals can present themselves to a captive audience of movers, shakers and decision-makers in all their glory. Unfortunately, they have all had the same idea.

The truth about air travel is still this: no-one in an airport is in a normal frame of mind, with the exception of the people who work there every day - and my guess is that these corporate ads aren't aimed at the girl that hands out see-through plastic bags or the guy that drives elderly passengers around on one of those buggies.

No, everyone is jet-lagged, disorientated, tense about the forthcoming meeting, annoyed that they'll be late home, miffed that they'll miss their connection, nervous about just how good the security controls are, insulted by being manhandled and demands that they remove yet more articles of clothing...and the sum total is that, however big a mover, however huge a shaker, however ginormous a decision-maker, nobody is in control.

And so, the gallery of corporate visual delights of a parallel world - of calm seas, endless skies, reflections of nature's glory, vast expanses of green, hopeful sunrises, satisfying sunsets, rowing teams pulling together in perfect harmony and the intricacies of a humming bird's wings seem to mock rather than inspire. They feel like the visual equivalent of the calming music played to cattle before the slaughter.

In combination with the contrived names that many of these companies sport - which give no clue as to whether they are in pharmaceuticals or insurance, engineering or financial consultancy - the net result is that they bypass the busy executive and float, unattended to, like the aluminum intricacies of the airport's roof structure.