Citizen Brand

Ethical musings

 

We all want to act ethically. Well, at least most of us do. When an ethical collapse the size of the Bernie Madoff scandal occurs, we all hope that it will prevent another one in the future.  But a year or two or five from now, someone else will be doing the perp walk.  The transparency of the world today via the internet should help to keep a brighter light on business, government and the nonprofit arenas.  Here are some thoughts from Seth Godin.

Good guys finish...

I got a note yesterday that said, "I'll be curious to know if it's possible to succeed and to stay clean as I see a lot of dirty "crooks" out there. I am trying to work with good ethics, but I see a lot of successful people talking/teaching "black Hats" strategies that scare me."

Spiritual business is an interesting concept. Is what you do all day at work part of who you are? Is it possible to be a deceitful crook all week but a good person on the weekend?

Can you succeed financially by acting in an ethical way?

I think the Net has opened both ends of the curve. On one hand, black hat tactics, scams, deceit and misdirection are far easier than ever to imagine and to scale. There are certainly people quietly banking millions of dollars as they lie and cheat their way to traffic and clicks.

On the other hand, there's far bigger growth associated with transparency. When your Facebook profile shows years of real connections and outreach and help for your friends, it's a lot more likely you'll get that great job.

When your customer service policies delight rather than enrage, word of mouth more than pays your costs. When past investors blog about how successful and ethical you were, it's a lot easier to attract new investors.

The Net enlarges the public sphere and shrinks the private one. And black hats require the private sphere to exist and thrive. More light = more success for the ethical players.

In a competitive world, then, one with increasing light, the way to win is not to shave more corners or hide more behavior, because you're going against the grain, fighting the tide of increasing light. In fact, the opposite is true. Individuals and organizations that can compete on generosity and fairness repeatedly defeat those that only do it grudgingly.

Voting made easy

Today is election day across America.  It isn't a big election day in most places but there are a few governors being elected and a slew of local issues being decided.  In some states, some people have already voted since early voting is becoming more in vogue these days.  Some states are also becoming more lenient in allowing voters to register right up until election day.  But most still close down registration a few weeks before.

And why do we still have this patchwork quilt of voting laws in 2007?  We know why.  Because it has taken decades and decades of blood, sweat and tears to even get to the point today where we have made it possible for everyone over the age of 18 to have the right to vote, much less a uniform approach to how we actually vote in the individual 50 states.

That should be next on our voting rights agenda.  We need uniform laws across the nation that says we can register to vote year around, including on election day itself; that allows for us to vote early starting four weeks before election day; and that says everyone in a voting line at the time of polls closing in any state of the union will be given the right to cast their vote.  Should we consider allowing people to vote from home on the Internet?  It should be studied, but call me old fashioned because it seems to me we should have enough desire to participate in the electoral process that we can get out of our house or place of business to go join our fellow citizens and vote in our polling place.

One other issue that should be considered is the day we choose to vote.  Federal law in 1845 mandated elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  Tuesday was generally considered the best day of the week for a country that was then dominated by agriculture.  Obviously, things have changed a bit.  So, lets move elections to Saturday.  Some states do that now.  It might be worth a try to reflect where our country is today.

Regardless, we should all vote whenever we have the opportunity.

Fair and Balanced

Just when you think you have seen or heard it all, along comes a government agency to give us some great, new material.  In their effort to make sure we all knew they were doing everything they could to help put out the California fires, FEMA - the Federal Emergency Management Agency - decided to call a news conference last week, only no reporters showed up.  It didn't stop them though.  CNN  tells the rest of the story.

Of course, there is always a fall guy in a situation like this.  A hard lesson for sure.

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.

Personal foul in the Red Zone

I understand the need for companies to protect their brands and proprietary products but I think the Heinz Company is offsides in asking the Red Gold  Company of Indiana to stop a charity program because of trademark infringement.  The brouhaha started a week ago or so - The Indianapolis Star tells the story for us.

"The H.J. Heinz Co. of Pittsburgh has filed a complaint with the Colts over the NFL team's partnership with ketchup and tomato products manufacturer Red Gold of Elwood, Ind., over some informal naming rights.

Red Gold says in a statement today that Heinz filed a cease-and-desist order with the Colts objecting to Red Gold being a sponsor of the Colts' "red zone" during team's time on offense. "Red zone" is a nickname for the defensive team's area of a football field inside the 20-yard-line.

For the past four seasons, Red Gold, which is an official Colts sponsor, has donated 136 tons of canned tomato products to Indianapolis area food pantries each time that the Colts have scored a touchdown from the “Red Gold Red Zone” during home games.

Red Gold officials today say Heinz filed a legal challenge claiming ownership of the term “red zone.”

Details of that legal complaint were not immediately available. The news release says that the “red zone” is not trademarked but became accepted vernacular of the game 22 years ago.

Heinz sponsors the “Heinz Red Zone” at Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers."

So Heinz says it's  a trademark infringement.  Red Gold and the Colts say no way.  The Red Gold Red Zone program in Indy has filled local food pantries with 136 tons of food over the last four years.  The Heinz effort appears just to be a branding program for themselves.

It always amazes me when these kind of David and Goliath scenarios crop up.  And they seem to do so with regularity.  Goliath just never seems to learn his lesson.  Heinz looks like the big bully and Red Gold, a regional brand, gets tons of awareness and good will they would never have paid to get.

Another reason to cheer for the Colts in the Super Bowl.

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.

More on 100 Best Corporate Citizens

Andrea has a great follow up to my recent post on Business Ethics magazine's Top 100 Best Corporate Citizens.

One thing she talks about is the need for corporate social responsibility courses to become standard operating procedure in business schools at the university level.  What about it college and university presidents and business school deans?  Who wants to be a real leader?

For that matter, why don't journalism schools offer the same thing as part of a truly comprehensive marketing communications education.  This is the wave of the future.  Which university will be the one to recognize it and take action?

100 Best Corporate Citizens

It may not yet carry the weight of the Fortune 500, but it should.  Business Ethics magazine just released its seventh edition of its list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens.  The magazine declares this list a celebration of "companies that excel at serving a variety of stakeholders well."

It simply is not a matter of how well public companies serve their stockholders today, but whether or not they provide good jobs for employees; contribute to a cleaner environment; relate well to their communities; have good governance practices; and, produce reliable products for their customers.  All that in addition to being able to provide a return on their shareholders' investments.

The companies that live on the list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens are great examples of what we mean by Citizen Brands.  This is the list we all should be striving to be on in the future.  These are the companies that understand the new realities of being truly engaged with their stakeholders and not simply doing business as usual.

Two questions to consider.  Could your company or client make this list today?  What would have to happen to make your company or client eligible to be one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens?

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.

Take the Pledge

Thanks to Jack Yan for telling us about the pledge.  I read it, signed it and plan to talk about it here from time to time.  In a way, it's unfortunate that this effort even has to be undertaken.  Acting in an ethical and socially responsible way is what companies should be doing.  We know that's not the case with some however.

Regardless, I support this because it will allow thousands of us in business to be on record as to how we want to act and how we want those companies we do business with to act.  So a tip of the hat to Shel Horowitz for kicking it off even if, as Jack pointed out that once you have signed the pledge, it does lead you to a page to buy a book.  Isn't free enterprise great?