by Jarvis Cromwell

Marketers have been handed their biggest opportunity in years. With public distrust – and in some cases disgust – in big brands and companies, the perception that customers, employees, regulators and others have right now is this:

“Big companies are not in it for me.”

So what happens when you show customers otherwise – demonstrating that you place them above other goals? Crank up the cash register, that’s what. How you signal your brand intent is more powerful than kryptonite right now.

To see the power of this idea in action, take a look at the video below.  Titled “Embrace Life” it’s a brilliant public information campaign on seat belt safety that ran only in the local area of Sussex England. But then it went viral.  In just a few weeks it’s been seen in 129 countries, and rated in the top five videos on YouTube with 6 million views and climbing. There’s no dialogue, the language is universal.

It might even make you cry. Why? Because it reminds us what we care about. Us. As the famed New York Times editor Ted Bernstein once said, “eternally basic is how people live.”

Marketers like to talk about building an emotional connection with the audience. To sustain a connection that matters, one that really “connects” to your company or brand – your intentions not only have to ring true, they have measure up to your actions and the customer’s experience.

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by STEPHANIE FIERMAN

There’s a real reputation-meets-commerce battle happening online.

Today, any advertiser with a Google AdWords account can buy virtually any keyword to advertise its own goods, regardless of whether the advertiser in question has the rights to use the word. This is particularly troublesome to companies that have spent decades burnishing brand franchises and consider the associated names and words to be reputational assets of great value.

If you go to Google right now and type in “LVMH” (the owner of numerous brands including Louis Vuitton and Hennessy), one of the sponsored ads shouts “Designer Handbags 70% off,” with a URL that includes the Louis Vuitton name. This has LVMH steamed, and the company sued Google in Europe for trademark infringement.

Well the ruling is in… and it’s a split decision. Advantage: Google. Continue Reading

by ANDREW JAFFE

Starbucks has had its ups and downs over the last couple of years. And now the market seems to be making a rough judgment on the company every day.

That’s the problem with taking a wonderful idea and building it to the point that you can launch an IPO and cash in on the goodwill you created.

But once you bite that IPO apple and allow your company to be publicly traded there are few secrets to be kept as you try to manage the brand over the shoals and storms of the world’s economies.

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STEPHANIE FIERMAN

A recession landmine is like a real landmine. It’s going to kill or maim whomever steps on it. The guilty, the innocent… it doesn’t matter. A landmine does not discriminate. You just explode.

And so it was with a recent Pepsi ad for G2 (low-calorie Gatorade).

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by STEPHANIE FIERMAN

Here at the Garage, we believe that a more measured approach to bank and investment advertising is probably a positive development.

After all, hadn’t all the ads begun to look the same? Could every company and every investment have possibly offered the best return, and the most Morningstar stars, and the biggest retirement homes in paradise? Unlikely. Outside of just a few stalwarts, such as Vanguard with its slow-and-steady point of view and Bogle-esque approach, many of the siren calls in the newspaper, on television and online had all taken on a surreal and undifferentiated patina. That’s not effective.

Now it appears that all the bulls have stampeded in the opposite direction.

Consider the list of firms advertising in one issue of The Wall Street Journal this past week, along with text pulled verbatim from their ads: Continue Reading

I was in Maryland last week speaking at the 30th Annual PRSA Chesapeake Conference. I had been asked to speak on the topic of how communicators can gain more influence at the c-level executive table.

This is not a question that lends itself to the typical conference diet of case studies or top ten lists. The stakes are higher than that. I tend to think of the times we live in as a kind of “triple witching hour” for both marketers and communicators. Trust in big companies has reached an historic 100-year low. Reputational risk is now seen as a top-ten worry among CEOs. And the new digital era has upended traditional one-way communications programs in favor of two-way dialogue, enabling the public to take more control of the conversational agenda.

These trends and others are making life especially challenging for corporate communicators. But we’re talking about gaining a strong seat at the C-table. So for now, let’s leave aside statistics that show as few as 13% of all Americans are placing their trust in big business, or that on primetime TV you are 21 times more likely to be kidnapped or murdered by a businessman than by the mob. We’ll also shelve for a moment the nettlesome fact that some three-quarters of folks out there feel companies don’t tell the truth in advertising. Or what about that KPMG study a few years ago that found 76% of employees in big companies observed violations of the law or company standards in a 12-month period.

Grim statistics all – but table them for now. Because the real question around the C-table typically comes down to this: how do you lead a company into strong performance?

Turns out that in recent years the low-trust headwinds that are negatively impacting so much of American life are also making leadership more difficult. A startling statistic comes from the Harris Poll, which in 1966 found that 55% of Americans had “a great deal of confidence” in the leaders of big companies. In 2007, only 16% of Americans expressed the same confidence. So imagine you are writing a speech for a company executive in 1966 to help achieve an important operating goal. Maybe you need to rally the troops around a new strategy, or convince customers of the quality of a new product, or persuade legislators that proposed regulation is unwise. Now imagine that same speech being given in 2007. It’s a pretty safe bet that the impact of the speech in the higher trust world of 1966 would have greater impact than those same words delivered in 2007.

The learning here for would-be “trustmeisters” is that our words are less believed today. That’s a big issue because leaders depend on effective communications to sell products, engage employees, and generally manage a business. That’s why communicators must become effective ambassadors of trust for their organizations. Executives who are not looking for ways to tackle the issue of distrust will find that they’ve inadvertently diluted their power as leaders. Communicators and marketers will find a ready seat at the executive table if they can help management take back the high ground.

Easy? Not at all. May the force be with you.