Citizen Brand

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.

ReNu update

Bausch & Lomb is pulling their product.  It's a good move and I don't think it is too late.  Considering there is still no third party proof that their product is the cause of the 109 diagnosed cases of  Fusarium keratitis, a rare infection of the eye, it says they finally understand the hit to their reputation this week.

109

That is how many people have been diagnosed with Fusarium keratitis, a rare infection of the eye.  And the Center for Disease Control has only talked with 30 of those 109.  But that is all it has taken for Sears, Wal-Mart and Walgreens to pull Bausch & Lomb's ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens cleaner off all their shelves.

It is a most frustrating time for the company.  It is a classic case of how a crisis situation can be triggered by a small pebble that rolls down the mountain and turns into a landslide.  Retailers are running the other way as are shareholders and stock analysts.  While the stock ticked up today after losing 21 percent this week, several analysts are still making negative comments.  And now talk of a lawsuit has surfaced.

The company has maintained there is no direct link between their product and the infection, but the situation began because the 109 all had one thing in common:  they all apparently used the ReNu product.  Bausch & Lomb is working hard to communicate with their customers.  The problem right now is they have to wait on a third party to ultimately determine their fate.  In the meantime, it is a bit like twisting in the wind.

Is your company ready for its crisis?

Reputations under fire

I have crisis on the brain tonight.  I spoke to classes at Central Missouri State University on the topic Monday and we are preparing to conduct one of our crisis management workshops for a client this week.  In perusing the news tonight, it's obvious there are plenty of reputations under fire out there.  In just a few minutes I found these stories:

College testing is under fire as students received wrong test scores and two organizations that conduct the tests are now being sued.

Bausch & Lomb is halting shipment of a contact lens solution in Asia that may be linked to a rare fungus that can cause blindness.

And Tom Peters tells us tonight he is giving up.  The reason: yet another CEO of a company is getting highly compensated even though the stock is heading the wrong way fast.

I found those in five minutes.  Meanwhile Major League Baseball continues to flounder around on the steroid issue and Dan Gillmor reminds us the entire country is suffering from bad infrastructure.

Plenty of crisis management work to go around it would seem.  But of course nothing bad will ever happen to "us."

Lessons learned

This story from my favorite weekly news magazine, The Week, tells us that someone in the world paid attention to the lessons of Katrina:

"Innisfail, Australia
How to brace for a storm
A Category 5 hurricane flattened part of Queensland, Australia, last week, but not a single person was killed. Tropical Cyclone Larry slammed into the coastal town of Innisfail, ripping roofs from half the homes and destroying sugar and banana plantations. “It looks like an atomic bomb hit the place,” said Mayor Neil Clarke. Officials, though, were pleased with the emergency response. Just hours after the storm hit, state and federal agencies were in place and helicopters began arriving to pick up the stranded. “Everyone here studied Katrina and took a lot of messages away, a lot of lessons,” said Queensland State Emergency Service spokesman Ben Creagh. “There was absolutely no complacency at the planning level at all.”

Hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere is not far away.  We can only hope that governments at all levels are ready this time.