Brandjack News

News and commentary around the concept of brandjacking

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  • The Private Sector is doing fine

    By Quentin Langley

    Can a single phrase, taken out of context, derail a $1 billion election campaign?

    It depends. And one of the things on which it depends is how consistently and how cleverly it is used by the the opposing campaign. There seems little doubt that if John Kerry could phone his 2003 self he would warn him about the "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" line. John McCain must daily regret saying that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong". But these lines could be used against those candidates is because they tapped into existing impressions of the them: Kerry as lacking in core principles and McCain as being someone more interested in national security issues than in the economy.

    Could the Obama campaign have convinced America that McCain was unprincipled and unpatriotic? Could Bush have persuaded voters that Kerry was stupid? These were not the concerns that voters had about those candidates.

    The question is does Obama's slip of the tongue reinforce or run counter to America's doubts about him? Does it make him seem elitist and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans? Maybe – though perhaps not in contrast to Mitt Romney. One way the Obama campaign could counter this is to talk more about his work as a 'community organizer' in Chicago. I am not actually sure what a community organizer does, but it sounds as though it might have involved understanding the concerns of ordinary people.

    Does this slip make the President seem out of touch with the private sector – where most Americans make their career? It certainly could, and this one is definitely not an area in which he would want to contrast his background to Mitt Romney's. The Obama campaign has already tried to make an issue of Romney's business experience. It fell flat with voters, who see this as one of Romney's strengths, and was condemned by Democrats at every level of the party, with even President Clinton distancing himself from the remark. 

    Barack Obama must be regretting the remark, but it is doubtful that a single slip will be the decider in this election. 

  • Starbucks asks Ireland what makes it proud to be British

    By Quentin langley

    Asking people what makes them proud of their country is a good thing. Accidentally asking them what makes them proud of a neighbouring country is not such a good thing. This is particularly the case when you are mistaking people from a small country for their neighbours in a much larger country. Canadians hate being taken for Americans. New Zealanders resent any assumption that they are Australian. And given the fractious nature of relations between Ireland and the UK, that one could be the biggest faux pas of all.

    With the UK celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, asking people what makes them proud to be British was a great way for the American owned multinational to join in the four day weekend. If only they had sent the tweet from their UK account, and not from @StarbucksIE

    Starbucks was quick to apologise, explaining that the tweet was meant to be sent only from their UK account, but the initial damage had been done. Ireland was more like Queen Victoria than Elizabeth: not amused.

     

  • Branding atrocities as ‘Polish’

    By Quentin Langley 

    It is generally considered diplomatic to refer to the holocaust as a Nazi phenomenon, not a German phenomenon. Twenty first century Germans, rather understandably, don't like being associated with the Nazis. It would have to be admitted, though, that the Nazi Party did arise out of Germany and Austria and that some members of that generation are still alive.

    To brand the holocaust as Polish seems not just tactless, but historically ignorant. While the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp – the largest of the Nazi concentration camps – was in Poland, and there were, of course, some Polish collaborators, Poland can more accurately be thought of as a victim of the Holocaust than a villain. 

    American historical perspectives on the Second World War are, naturally, rather different, from those in Britain, or any other country. Americans tend to date WWII from the seventh of December 1941. The British and French would tend to say third of September 1939. For the Poles, it was the first of September. But talking about "Polish death camps" is not just ignorant, but diplomatically maladroit. 

    Just imagine if George W Bush had, ever, said something so stupid. The media reaction would have been enormous. But this is Barack Obama, so it is being treated as comparatively minor.

  • Social media are not new

    By Quentin Langley

    Douglas Adams has pointed out that there three types of technology in the world:

    1. Technology that already existed when you were born. This is not really technology at all, it is just part of the natural order of things.

    2. Technology invented between your birth and your 30th birthday. This is cool, and wacky, and maybe you can make a career out of it.

    3. Technology invented after you turned thirty. This is dangerous, evil and WRONG!

    We all fall into those traps, but it is the first trap I want to talk about today. You might call  it the Amish trap, and do so fairly safe from provoking a Twitterstorm, as hardly any Amish people are on Twitter. In their determination to resist 'technology' the Amish simply ignored ploughs, scythes and axes, not seeming to regard them as technology at all. 

    We make the same mistake when we assume that social media are new. Taking the long view, mass media are new. One hundred years ago there was no TV and no radio. There were movies – black and white and silent – and there were newspapers, mostly serving a single town and with Letters to the Editor as a major component. All other media were interactive and social.

    We were all born in the age of TV, so we think it is normal, but it is just a phase, already coming to an end. The most popular regularly broadcast show in the UK – ie part of a serial, not a one off like a sports event or a royal wedding – was the last episode of To the Manor Born. In the US the top show was the last episode of M*A*S*H*. All the top ten shows in both countries were broadcast in the late 70s or early 80s. As I tell my students: "you were born in the age of TV, but it peaked before you were born". 

    My father, as it happens, was born before the age of TV, and has lived well into its declining years. 

    In 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson wanted to get Americans to take an interest in the war in Europe, he trained people to deliver four minute speeches in their local communities. Four minutes was the length of time it took to change the reels at a movie theatre. They were therefore taking advantage of the very early stages of mass media to interact directly with their audience. These "Four Minute Men" were all respected figures in their local communities: doctors, teachers or religious ministers. This was a social media campaign. What we think of as new – identifying influencers and through them, their communities, was once the normal way of communicating.

    The age of mass media was a diversion in the course of human history. The command and control model of media – and thus of marketing, PR and political communications – is remarkably recent, and it is already dying. Broadcast technologies – including advertising and propaganda – dehumanise us. They enabled the rise of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and Gaddaffi. But as Gaddaffi came to realise and Assad must be realising now, the command and control model of media does not work any more. Human scale communication is reasserting itself. Government control of the media is over.

    Given the terrible consequences of command and control media, we should welcome this change. Brandjackers everywhere – from Jeff Jarvis, to Dave Carroll to Greenpeace – are helping to bury the age of advertising.

    So let us welcome back social media into our lives. Our grandparents would have recognised these principles, even if the specific platforms might have baffled them. 

    The times, they are a'changin' back. 

  • Aviva and the accidental firing of all its staff

    By Quentin Langley

    We have all done it – hit the wrong button when sending an email, that is, not fired 1300 people by accident.

    Replying to one person when you meant to reply to all is embarrassing. Replying to all with something confidential meant for one person is worse. I have watched email boxes clog when someone set 'absence manager' to reply to all. His computer replied to an all staff email with a message about his absence. Since that went to all staff, his computer replied to that too, and so on.

    In this case, a message sent to one person, who already knew he was leaving, was accidentally sent to everyone. It was a terse reminder about clearing his desk and handing in company property and passwords. It is not even clear that the intended recipient had been fired. He may have been leaving for another job. And, I hope we can presume, that if he was fired, the matter was handled rather more sensitively than by a pointed email. In the case of Aviva, the accidental email may have hit home rather more than it might in other circumstances because the company is undergoing a major reorganisation.

    This one fits into the same category as any number of other blunders. Digital channels make easier to send a message to everyone than it is to target it carefully. PR people who send press releases to every journalist they have ever heard of should know better. Facilities managers who tell the whole building about the mezzanine floor radiators need training. People who tweet "VodafoneUK is fed up with dirty homo's" deserve firing. I suppose that HR people who accidentally fire all the staff – even when a grovelling apology follows minutes later – probably need one of those written warnings that HR people love so much.

     

  • Heineken, dog-fighting, and the perils of rumours

    By Quentin Langley

    Heineken is having to deal with rumours that it has been sponsoring dog-fighting. Quite sensibly, Heineken has fallen short of an absolute denial. It is a large company operating in many, very different, markets. Heineken is investigating the charges and has condemned dog-fighting, but it is not easy for such a large company to ascertain that none of its managers has given money to such a cause.

    The right approach is to investigate, promise to report back and – critically in any social media driven crisis – respond individually to each person who comments on the issue. While the photographs could have been photoshopped, this is not as clear as in the #seriouslymcdonalds hoax, in which it was suggested that McDonalds was charging higher prices to African American customers. Heineken has promised to investigate, but has stopped responding individually to people who raise the issue on its website.

    This, obviously, raises wider issues. Heineken apparently does sponsor bull-fighting, a sport not only accepted in some parts of the world, but culturally dominant. Your correspondent has witnessed a town in southern France which was almost empty while the bull-fight was taking place, packed during the lunchtime break, and empty again when the fighting resumed. Incidentally, I observed not one person protesting the sport, when in Britain or the US protesters would have massively outnumbered spectators.

    The internet has brought into the open rumours which have, in some cases, persisted for years. Procter & Gamble has long been subject to the rumour that it is a company run by Satanists. While such a notion seems little short of insane, it continues to circulate, but it did not begin with digital channels. This rumour has long spread through social networks, including evangelical churches in West Africa and the southern United States. 

     

  • Rick Santorum and the Klout bomb

    By Quentin Langley

    Remember the Google bomb? That was when people linked websites to particular search terms. The top match for the term 'miserable failure' was the White House biography of George W Bush. Google tweaked the algorithm, and that doesn't work any more.

    But now we have the Klout bomb. This is when you link a person to a term on the social media influence measuring service, Klout. Rick Santorum is presently influential on subjects such as 'homophobia' and 'racism'.  He is also influential in the subject of 'diaper'.  

    Santorum is hardly the only person to be a victim of this. Barack Obama is influential on 'cheating' and 'fascism' and Newt Gingrich on 'cheating' and 'divorce'. 

    There is reason to doubt the relevance of this. I am generally rated as being influential on 'public relations' and 'business', which is nice. But I have also been known to be influential on 'Barack Obama' and 'the rapture', which does seem to imply that I am a phenomenally powerful blogger.

  • Borat brandjacks Kazakhstan national anthem

    By Quentin Langley

    It cannot be great that the first association most people have with Kazakhstan – the ninth largest country in the world by area, and heir to part of USSR’s space programme – is a comedy film written by a Cambridge-educated Jewish guy from Britain. 

    But when Kazakhstan’s shooting team won a medal at the Asian championships in Kuwait it was Sacha Baron-Cohen’s version of their national anthem that was played. Apparently, none of the organisers, who had downloaded the anthem from the internet, noticed that the lyrics were in English, and boasted that the country has “the cleanest prostitutes in the region”.

    Whoops!

  • The Twitter coup

    By Quentin Langley

    Richard Nixon famously declared "I am not a crook" when that, precise, allegation had never been made. Football club chairmen often declare full confidence in the manager or coach days or hours before forcing them out. Denying something that has not been alleged can often lead people to conclude the exact opposite of that which you, seemingly, want them to.

    So, when a President declares on Twitter that he has not been forced out in a coup, no-one was likely to interpret this as meaning that either the President or the country was doing well. Unsurprisingly, the President of Mali's announcement seems to have been only temporarily true, if it ever was. At the time of writing, the state broadcaster seems to be under the control of people described in the media as 'renegade soldiers'. While it is a little early to form a judgement about the organisers of the coup, Mali before the coup was rated by Freedom House as being a free country with a free press.

    However regrettable a military coup against an elected government, the story being officially denied on Twitter is a significant milestone in the growth of social media in politics.