Citizen Brand

Say it ain't so Joe

We are watching the disintegration of a reputation right before our very eyes. Joe Paterno, the molder of young men and the shaper of great football teams, is the latest example of someone who turned away from responsibility instead of turning in someone to the authorities. 

There is no excuse for any of us who witness a wrongdoing making it worse by doing nothing about it. Simply moving the problem up the food chain as Paterno did is not enough. In this case, wrongdoing is not near a strong enough description of what is unraveling at Penn State. The extent of the cover-up that occurred in the PSU situation rivals Watergate. Simply put, no one with any authority took any responsibility for what was happening to those innocent children. It's difficult to believe this could happen. But it did.

When we talk with clients about crisis management, one of the cardinal rules we discuss is the necessity to take responsibility when things go wrong. Good things happen when we take responsibility for our actions or for the actions of others in our companies or organizations. The problem will be resolved faster and the hit to the organization's reputation is minimized.

Neither of these will happen in that place now inappropriately named Happy Valley. And Joe Paterno becomes the latest person to vividly demonstrate why taking responsibility is all that matters when it comes to having a great reputation. 

The peanut monster

Stewart Parnell is a monster. He is the owner of the Peanut Corporation of America. It's the company that has been distributing peanut products causing salmonella poisoning nationwide. Hundreds of people have become seriously ill. And today we find out he knew all the time.

A U.S. House committee today released emails from the company that reveal Parnell ordered his employees to send tainted shipments of product because he was concerned about lost sales. From MSNBC.com:

"At one point, Parnell said his workers "desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money," and at another point told his plant manager to "turn them loose" after learning some peanuts were contaminated with salmonella."

"In a June 6, 2008 e-mail from the company owner responding to being notified that some of Peanut Corp. of America's products that tested positive for salmonella had been shipped, Parnell wrote, "I go through this about once a week. I will hold my breath again."

It is absolutely impossible to get your head around thinking and actions that are this inhuman. Imagine being a parent of a child sickened in the past months from these products.

From a business standpoint, a second plant was shut down yesterday.  More than 1,500 products have been recalled thus far. This company will be out of business soon. And now we know it is all because of one man's concern for the bottom line. And there is a domino impact on other, better known brands who use products from Peanut Corp in their products.

Let's hope some good can come of this. We should identify those companies who are ethical in all their actions and celebrate them. And we should hold up people like Stewart Parnell and punish them.

There endeth the lesson.

A simple apology

Twice in less than a week, two public figures at the top of their respective professions, told us they made a mistake. How refreshing is that. It shouldn't be news, but unfortunately it is news. We have become so immune to public figures lying, cheating, stealing and blaming others that when someone actually takes responsibility, we notice.

First it was President Obama telling us "I screwed up" last week while taking full responsibility for the Tom Daschle debacle. Then today, Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez goes in front of the public and says he's sorry that he made the mistake of taking steroids in 2003. Our CEO at Barkley emailed me immediately and said how he instantly thought more of A-Rod after his apology compared to how he felt about Roger "I never took steroids" Clemens. That is the reaction A-Rod deserves.

One of the first rules of crisis management is to take responsibility for the problem. Taking responsibility gives you instant credibility with everyone. It frees you up to move on and begin to fix the problem. It avoids the blame game that wastes time and energy. In short, taking responsibility is the only way that the crisis can begin to come to an end.

Let's hope the President and the ballplayer are only the first of a wave of authenticity and transparency that washes over a few others.

(A-Rod photo courtesy Sports Illustrated.com)

Odds and ends

A few things that caught my attention traveling around the 'net.

Our friends over at Audeamus discuss the three trends in social entrepreneurship we can expect to see this year.

Triple Pundit starts a three part series on the continuing evolution of cause marketing. Are we really beginning to make mainstream the needed move from transactional cause marketing to something much more sustainable and transparent. Great interview with Sarah Endline who started a company that is already there called sweetriot.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Rice over at Fruitful shows us some more evidence that we consumers really will pay more for ethically produced products.

As usual, Seth Godin has a bit of wisdom he calls "Solving a different problem."

And over at Adrants you will find an Australian PSA on child abuse that is so different, it cannot help but be controversial. If it gets people talking about the problem, a PSA is doing its job.

One news cycle

Back to the keyboard after a summer hiatus and it took just 45 minutes with Tuesday's New York Times  to make it happen.  Whatever page I turned to there was example after example of questionable, even unethical decisions by people and organizations.  One news cycle produced some of the worst examples of bad citizen brands I've ever seen.  Consider just a few of them:

In 2005, corporate America received huge tax breaks to bring home their offshore profits and create jobs in America.  Drug makers were the biggest winners bringing home $100 billion while paying only six percent taxes instead of the 35 percent they would have paid prior to the '05 legislation.  Any new jobs created?  Hardly.  Instead tens of thousands of people have been laid off by drug companies in the past two years.

Without even leaving the front page, we see that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has himself in a bit of a sticky wicket.  The man who used to make Wall Street titans tremble finds himself on the defense after a couple of long time aides decided to use the New York State Police for a little political tomfoolery.  Seems the Governor's nemesis - State Senator Joe Bruno used some police helicopters for trips from Albany to New York City.  Turned out not to be a problem, but the Governor's helpers saw an opportunity and solicited the acting Superintendent of the State Police to help them make a case against Bruno.  By the way, the acting Superintendent is vying for a permanent appointment so he did what any good public servant should do - he helped try to make the case.  Anyway, given Spitzer came into office seven months ago pledging to clean up New York state government, it seems apparent he will need to start with his own staff.

Of course the sports pages these days read more like bad reality television shows.  From Michael Vick and fighting dogs to the critical question of whether or not baseball Commissioner Bud Selig will be in the stands for Barry Bonds' record home run it's amazing that sports writers still find time to report scores of games.

The perfect sports commissioner, David Stern of the National Basketball Association , has a small gambling problem.  He doesn't wager himself, but seems he has a referee who got in over his head with some betting debts and began to make some interesting calls that turned a game or two or ten.  A good betting scandal is needed every ten years or so just to purge the rookie gamblers out of the system.

And then there is poor Sergio Garcia .  I love golf and I truly love the Open Championship.  It looked like Sergio was finally going to win his first major.  He was 0 for 35 coming into the British Open.  He is now 0 for 36.  Unfortunately his major drought is apparently starting to eat away at him.  He was not the shining example of a gracious loser in the press room at Carnoustie on Sunday.  He blamed bad breaks and other golfers in front of him for losing a four stroke lead in the last 14 holes in the final round.  Golf is one sport where no one else has anything to do with the way you play the game.

A handful of news stories in one newspaper in one news cycle.  All examples of either a lack of common sense, common decency or ethical behavior.  And proof that it's time to crank up Citizen Brand again and look for some good examples.  I know they are out there.

Good to be back.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

There is nothing more exhilarating or frustrating than being a true and faithful fan of your collegiate alma mater.  And in the interest of full and fair disclosure, I have to acknowledge here at Citizen Brand that my beloved Kansas Jayhawks have fallen to the dastardly Bruins of UCLA on this very evening during the Elite Eight of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

I have used this space to applaud and celebrate the Jayhawks' successes these past few weeks.  I do believe that the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament - aka March Madness - is the single greatest sporting event in America.  And the University of Kansas has had more than its share of success over the years.  But now we are finished for 2007.  But not before this great, young team has been recognized here at CB for their accomplishments:

33 - 5 win/loss record

Big 12 Conference regular season championship

Big 12 Tournament championship

Number one seed in the NCAA Tournament

3 - 1 record in the NCAA Tournament ending in the round of the Elite Eight

All of this was accomplished without a senior on the team.  It is likely this entire team will return in 2007-2008 along with at least two of the best freshman recruits available.  And one of the finest coaches in the land will be back to lead them -- Bill Self.

  I cannot wait for basketball practice to start in October.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

Walter Reed

If there has been a more compelling case of the need for real crisis management than what has been happening with the deplorable conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I do not know what it could be.  And as is usually the case, government at any level provides us with the epitome of too little and too late.

Instead of trying to add to the chorus of what is wrong and what needs to be done now to take care of the young Americans who deserve to be cared for in the best of conditions, it made me curious to learn more about the man for whom this famous hospital is named.

Major Walter Reed, as you can read in this link, did nothing less than help to make the connection between mosquitos and diseases such as yellow fever.  That one sentence barely scratches the surface of what Walter Reed and others had to go through to convince a host of skeptics that they had indeed found the cause of a disease that had cost the lives of many soldiers during the Spanish-American War.

As I read about what he had accomplished, it made me even more disgusted with what those in charge of the hospital named after him have done.  This is a case of a man whose name is being damaged and he has absolutely no control over it.

Please pass on the real story of Walter Reed.  He deserves to be remembered for what he accomplished, not for what others have failed to do with an institution named after him.

Mounting Evidence

The rest of the world is waking up to the facts.  We are doing harm to this planet that we live on.  The question is have we gone beyond a tipping point of no return.

Audeamus points us to a report released today by the British government written by a respected economist.  It states the cost of beginning the process to turn the tide of global warming now underway will be one percent of global wealth - if we begin today.

The cost of waiting, according to Sir Nicholas Stern - formerly the chief economist at the World Bank - will be anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of all global wealth.  Read this article at Forbes.com.

Global warming is a sad example of an issue that has been clouded by political rhetoric instead of being made clear through reasoned research and science.  This is not a partisan political issue.  But it is clearly a vital economic issue that is already having an impact.  And as this report points out, the worst is on the horizon unless we put our best minds to work to solve it.

The technology exists.  The ideas are abundant.  The question now is do we have the will to put politics on the shelf and apply ourselves to identifying the extent of this problem and developing a plan to fix it.

We all can make small contributions toward a solution.  Let's all make an effort.  It is going to require the world working together to solve this one.  Can we do it?

Goodwill or not?

No doubt I will return with some thoughts about my weekend in Utah at the Public Innovators Summit, but I need to digress right now and let you in on an evolving case study going on with Goodwill Industries in Virginia.

Andrea over at New Millenium PR reported this weekend about a situation  that raises all kinds of ethical and reputational issues for Goodwill.  I urge you to read it and either comment here or join the growing discussion going on over at Andrea's place.

Bird Flu Fear

It's May, so there must be television ratings sweeps in the air.  Nothing else can explain what ABC is up to with their airing on May 9 of "Fatal Contact:  Bird Flu in America."   The title sounds more like a documentary than a fictionalized account of the worst of what might happen if a pandemic hit the USA.

On the other hand, I couldn't agree more with Steve that once again, companies seem to be unwilling to make crisis management planning a priority.  At Barkley Evergreen, we constantly preach to our clients that crisis management needs to be part of their ongoing operations, not something they keep in a closet and bring out to use only when bad things happen.

The problem with the ABC movie is it will either drive people to be frantic about what might happen or it will be dismissed as simply sensationalized drivel meant to drive up ratings.  What we need are the facts and rational thinking to make sure we understand what can really happen.  Then we need to work together so that all companies and organizations are working ahead of time to be fully prepared to handle any situation.  That is the definition of real crisis management.