Brandjack News

News and commentary around the concept of brandjacking

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  • Economist covers Facebook data center; Greenpeace brandjack not mentioned

    By Quentin Langley


    The Economist carries a detailed article on Facebook’s Oregon data center which looks at the whole range of reasons for choosing the location. The main one is energy efficiency. The servers can be cooled by the desert air. The article also covers the fact that the electricity the center does need is mostly generated by coal. Some 63% of Oregon’s electricity comes from coal, against an American average of 45%.


    The article seems to touch all the green bases. But there is one thing missing. Greenpeace launched a major campaign against Facebook, calling on it to ‘unfriend coal’. Like most Greenpeace campaigns it has been heavily based in social media including, of course, a Facebook page. Incidentally, this is an interesting departure that social media brings to campaigning. It is difficult to imagine a newspaper accepting advertisements which criticise the business policy.


    That the Economist passed by the Greenpeace brandjack is remarkable, not because the Economist is demonstrating a rare journalistic lapse, but because Greenpeace has lodged a rare failure in its brandjacking campaigns. The Greenpeace #fail probably reflect the social media savvy of its target in this case, but also the fact that Facebook was willing and able to hit back. Greenpeace’s own US data center also uses coal.


    You can find the full Babbage article in the Economist here.

  • “Hoax” study brandjacks Microsoft IE

    By Quentin Langley

    The media has been full of stories suggesting that users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have lower IQs than users of other browsers such as Google Chrome. (Full disclosure, this writer tends to use Chrome). It has been big in computer media, but has been picked up in the general media, including the Daily Telegraph and the BBC.


    The only problem is, the story may be a hoax. The study was attributed to Canadian company AptiQuant. However, huge sections of Atpiquant’s website appear to be identical to that of another psychometric testing company, Central Test. Mashable is reporting that CBR (presumably Computer Business Review, rather than the Central Board of Revenue) has managed to get a statement from Central Test denying that the company has any links with AptiQuant.


    But the AptiQuant website is extensive and detailed. Much of it has, apparently, been lifted wholesale from Central Test.


    But if the whole AptiQuant website is an elaborate hoax, just to plant this single story – plus a follow up that IE users are trying to sue the company – who could be behind this?


    Google has been the target of a brandjack recently, and Microsoft is not denying that it was responsible. Could this be Google’s revenge?


    Link to the Mashable article is here.

  • The importance of names in political branding

    By Quentin Langley

    A politician in New Jersey, Louis Magazzu has been sexting – sending lewd photos of himself to young women. We can guarantee that this story will not run as as strongly as the the Anthony Weiner (pronounced "weener") story. There are perfectly valid reasons for this. Weiner was a Congressman, and aspiring Mayor of New York. He was recently married to a glamorous and powerful wife.Solid news reasons. Then, there is the headline factor. Some names cry out for particular headlines.

    British cabinet minister, Stephen Byers, was probably no more dishonest than most politicians, but the headline "Liar Byers" was irresistable. The wife of Northern Ireland First Minister, Peter Robinson, was probably unwise to have an affair with a man decades younger than her, but her name undoubtedly made it worse. Coo coo c'choo. 

    Former British Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, got away with a love of foreign trips, or junkets. His colleague, David Blunkett, would have been crucified for the same offence. 

    So, it matters what your name is. What you can get away with depends, a lot, on how much fun headline writers can have with your name. 

    Turned out to be a real pity for Anthony Weiner.

  • Gmail brandjack ad – Microsoft says “no comment”; get off the fence

    By Quentin Langley


    An ad attacking Gmail’s advertising driven business model – and contrasting it with Office 365 – has been trending on YouTube. Speaking to Mark Ragan’s PR Daily, Microsoft refused to comment


    Negative advertising is not new, nor unethical. In a market, as in an election (and negative ads are very common in politics) people make choices. Choices are not made in a vacuum. You choose A or B. The point is not whether A is any good or even whether B is bad. The point is which is better. A simple contrasting of the features or business model of two product offerings is perfectly reasonable.


    But why is this attack ad (semi)-anonymous? That the ad is partisan for Microsoft’s Office 365 is obvious. Microsoft should not have refused to comment. If the company is responsible for it, it should have said “Yes, we did it. We are proud of it. People should know about Gmail’s assault on their privacy”. If Microsoft is not responsible, it should have said “No, it wasn’t us. But we love it. Great ad”.


    In social media, people value authenticity and engagement. Tell us what you really think.


  • $100 billion – the cost being BP

    By Quentin Langley

     

    A year on from the Gulf of Mexico crisis, BP is still in trouble. JPMorgan Cazenove reckons that BP’s assets are worth $245 billion. The market capitalisation of the group is only $145 billion. BP’s reputation is currently a $100 billion drag on the value of the company. In principle a takeover could be launched offering substantial premium on the current share price and still make a very healthy profit.


    Of course, a takeover bid might not succeed. The share price is set by the willingness of a relatively small number of shareholders to sell. Imagine it as a Dutch auction, in which you keep raising your bid until someone sells. The price you pay, therefore, is set by the shareholder most willing to sell – the one who values the company the least. Any takeover therefore requires a premium price, and only the market can tell how high the premium would need to be to get 51% of the shareholders to sell.


    A takeover bid for BP could work in a number of ways. It could be simply be another management team believing it could run largely the same company better, perhaps with a different name.


    It could be a major competitor – such as Shell or Exxon – looking to take over the bulk of BP’s business. To clear regulatory hurdles, such a bid would have to involve some asset disposal in some markets where the combined market share would be higher than regulators would allow.


    A third option would be an express breakup bid. This would involve someone buying the company with a view to selling off the assets fairly promptly. The ‘downstream’ assets – refining and retail – would have to be sold with some deference to competition laws around the world. The ‘upstream’ – exploration and production – is already part of a widely fractured and highly competitive market, with huge nationalised businesses and many smaller public companies, all of which are largely anonymous. The well known downstream companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon are significant players in the upstream market, but they are not the largest.


    There are inevitable controversies and risks in the upstream market, and not just the environmental risks that BP encountered in the Gulf. Shell was, for many years, criticised for its relationship with the Nigerian military dictatorship. While Nigeria is now a democracy there remain many oil rich countries with appalling human rights records. Upstream companies that also have a retail presence are subject to retail boycotts if they make strategic errors in their upstream business.


    But in the days of brandjacking, upstream only companies are no longer immune from consumer or environmental campaign. The Greenpeace campaigns against Sinar Mas and APP have focussed on picking off major customers with high profile downstream brands, such as Nestlé, Burger King, Unilever and Mattel. The current Ken & Barbie campaign is really aimed at a largely anonymous Indonesian pulp and paper company.


    So any break up between the upstream and downstream arms of BP might not secure the benefits some commentators imagine.


    BP’s mishandling of the Gulf of Mexico crisis combined with the twin brandjackings from Greenpeace and Josh Simpson has left the BP name very badly damaged. The current management is going to have to articulate a plan for dealing with this, or a takeover bid is likely to follow.

  • BBC broadcasts White House propaganda, pretends it’s news

    By Quentin Langley

    This morning, BBC Radio Four's Today Programme led off its news with a report that a vote to prevent the US defaulting on its debt had been postponed. Appropriate choice of lead item. Important news. But the way the BBC described the news was tendentious at best, and flat out false at worst. The vote is not to prevent default. It is to raise the ceiling on US debt.

    It may be that the consequence of not having this vote would be default. That is what President Obama claims. But to make that news, rather than comment, depends on 1.accepting his analysis and 2. believing that he isn't bluffing. For default is not the inevitable consequence of not raising the debt ceiling. It is President Obama's chosen response, assuming he is not bluffing.

    The consequence of not raising the debt ceiling is that the US federal government will have to cut back on some of its expenditure. The President could choose to make those cuts anywhere. He says he will default on the debt. There are two parts to his negotiating strategy. First he says "if you don't do as I say, I will default on the debt". Second he says "you are irresponsible for even contemplating a default on the debt". In other words, his response is very similar to a kidnapper saying "do as I say or the hostage gets it. Don't make me do this. It will be your fault if I do".

    Now someone ideologically aligned with the President, a blogger say, has every right to repeat the President's talking points as though they were fact. But the BBC is not supposed to be ideologically aligned with the President.The BBC is supposed to be neutral. A blogger would be free to reject of my characterisation of the President's policy, and suggest a parent yelling "don't make me come up there" would be a closer fit. But the BBC is not supposed to have a view on this. It is supposed to report the facts. The Corporation should stick to that.

    You see, it would be perfectly reasonable to look at this vote the other way round. Since there is no plan for the US to get its fiscal crisis sorted, borrowing even more money probably makes default in the medium term more likely, not less. And whose fault is it that there is no plan in place? President Obama's, of course, and only his. There were two bipartisan commissions, one set up by the President, which produced plans, but the President decided to ignore them. There is also a plan from Republican Congressman, Paul Ryan. But the President is opposed to that. Opposing specifc plans is reasonable, but where is the President's plan? Not being published this side of the election, I am sure.

    So the President, by ignoring his own commission's plan for putting the US on a sustainable fiscal path, has done a lot to create the immediate fiscal crisis. But he now says it is entirely the fault of one half of Congress. And the BBC reports that, not as an attributed opinion, but simply as fact.

    This is nothing other than a decision to take a partisan alignment in US politics. I am allowed to do that. The BBC is not. Has anyone at the Beeb ever read the Charter? 

  • Vlog – NotW, Rupert Murdoch, David Cameron, oratory in PR and politics

    By Quentin Langley


  • Interview on China National Radio

    By Quentin Langley 

    I was interviewed on China National Radio last week. The clip is below, mostly in Chinese, but you can hear me in the background over the interpreter from about 2/3 of the way through. 

    Commentary is on the News of the World hacking scandal and the future of Rupert Murdoch. 

     

     

    China radio

     

  • The rhetorical resurgence in Public Relations and politics

    By Quentin Langley

    I touched in an article a couple of days ago on the lost art of oratory in a comment about how David Cameron had changed the terms of political debate, again, with his speech in the House of Commons earlier this week. It is a theme worth exploring for its impact in politics and PR.

    You could say it started in 2004, with Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic Convention. I am not so sure. For a politician to make his reputation with a speech is not uncommon.To parlay a skill for public speaking into leadership is much rarer and, of course, it was another four years before Obama did that. I think the key change was the invention of YouTube in 2005. 

    YouTube changed the way people consumed speeches. In the Nineteenth Century there was only one to consume speeches – you had to be there. If you weren't there, the next best thing was reading a transcript, and that is not the same thing at all.

    The mass franchise, cinema newsreeels and radio all played a role in undermining oratory as a key political skill. With a mass franchise, you simply cannot hope that a significant fraction of the electorate will ever hear you speak live. Radio and cinema newsreels created media for building national reputations. In the UK, where political careers are traditionally built in the House of Commons, oratory remained important, but its importance in the US, with its presidential system, began to decline.

    Television seemed to spell the end of political rhetoric. Speeches were now principally consumed as sounbites. The short clip that would drop into a story a journalist wrote required something rather different. The majestic crescendo would be lost on all but the handful actually present at the meeting.

    The nadir of political rehtoric in the UK came when William Hague was the Leader of the Opposition. A man genuinely gifted in the art of oratory was able to make almost no dent in Tony Blair's political supremacy. Speeches didn't matter any more.

    But then came YouTube. While clips from Barack Obama's 2004 speech were certainly sent virally by fans using e-mail, YouTube's technology changed everything. Suddenly we were not dependent on the editing of speeches by journalists any more. Now we can extract our own clips and post them on our websites, or e-mail them to each other.

    Perhaps the first person to benefit was David Cameron. Largely unkown even in Conservative circles before the 2005 general election, he was Michael Howard's choice of successor. Howard cleverly delayed his resignation long enough to allow a hustings at the 2005 Conservative Conference. Howard knew this decision would benefit Cameron. David Cameron walked onto the stage an anonymous figure, running third, at best, behind David Davis and Ken Clarke. He left the stage a new Conservative hero and frontrunner in the election. An election he duly won.

    In 2007 Cameron faced the most critical point of his leadership. Long accustomed to poll leads over the government, he found that the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was temporarily popular, and considering an early election. The date of the election had been chosen. Labour's special advisers had been told not to go to work the Monday after the party conference season ended, but to report to Labour HQ instead. Then Cameron spoke to the Conservative Conference. After a day or two's dithering, Gordon Brown cancelled the election.

    The following year, Barack Obama was able to exploit his own rhetorical skills to win first the Democratic nomination for President, and then the Presidential election. Like Cameron, he met every crisis – such as the one over his appalling pastor's racist views – with a speech.

    Last Wednesday was the third time that Cameron changed British politics with a speech. Ed Miliband, who had hitherto done rather well out of the News of the World scandal, proved he was not up to the challenge of meeting David Cameron in a debate.

    But what is the meaning of this rhetorical resurgence in politics? How does it affect wider public relations and the commercial world?

    The implications are significant. Aspiring leaders in commerce with have to be inspiring speakers. Social media will make their speeches relevant. This will be particularly true in organisations with consensual leadership structures, such as partnerships. Senior partners will need to learn to spell out strategy in speeches. Other people in the firm will then become advocates and evangelists. People will post clips of the speech on their websites and via Twitter or on their Facebook pages. LinkedIn does not let its users embed video. This is a major weakness, and one the site will have to address soon. Embedding video of your CEO will become a major weapon in the war for talent. Organisations which can post the sort of speech that will leave people in competitor firms thinkg "that's the guy I want to work for" will recruit the most able people.

    In commerce, as in politics, the lost art of oratory is making a comeback. It will be the skill that makes executives into leaders. 

    Is your firm ready?

  • How (not) to handle a crisis; the lost art of oratory

    By Quentin Langley

    It is not likely that the scandal of illegal phone hacking at the News of the World is over, but there is, for now, some breathing space. Fatuous attempts by the Labour Party and their allies to blame David Cameron for the whole thing are falling apart, as they were bound to do. Even the self-interested campaigns by the BBC and the New York Times are running into the ground, for the moment.

    To recap the issues, News of the World broke the law – just as the New York Times did, hacking Sarah Palin's e-mails, as the Telegraph did buying stolen documents to break the Parliamentary expenses scandal, and as the Washington Post did, blagging phone records to crack the Watergate case. What the News of the World did wrong – very, very, wrong – was to hack the phone of Milly Dowler, a teenage murder victim, as well as celebrities and politicians.

    This is the context into which the general public has always, rightly put it. The public has never cared about celebrity or politician hacking, that has been the obsession of celebrities and politicians. In that context calls for the Prime Minister's resignation have always been stupid. The PM at the time of the Milly Dowler hacking has already resigned. He resigned in 2007. He probably didn't know about the Dowler phone hacking, so it is almost certainly unconnected, though it seems his Attorney General did know that phone hacking was widespread. The PM at the time of the botched Met investigation into phone hacking has also resigned, following defeat in the general election last year.

    So, who has emerged from this with credit. Ed Miliband, unconstrained by the legal issues which bind the government, was able to jump on the Milly-bandwaon a few days earlier than the PM. He was able to say things about the News Corp takeover bid for BSkyB which would have got any blocking of the bid overturned, if the PM had said them. He started off with a good crisis.

    When Rupert and James Murdoch gave evidence at the House of Commons, James impressed me, though others were more doubtful. He answered most ofthe questions clearly and credibly. (Though, of course, I cannot testify to his honesty). When he didn't know, he said so, and promised to get back to the Committee quickly. He addressed all the MPs by name. His worst moment was fumbling Milly Dowler's name. I was left thinking he would be global CEO of News Corp by the end of the year.

    Rupert was different. He often seemed disengaged and confused. He did not have the relevant facts at his fingerips. While accepting his point that News of the World accounted for one percent of his business, he should have shown more respect for the House of Commons by arriving prepared. On the other hand, he had moments of extreme lucidity as well. By this performance it does not seem as if he is consistently lucid enough to be global CEO for much longer.

    Wendi Deng, of course, hugely impressed everyone. Count me in as President of her Fan Club. Perhaps she should be the Global CEO.

    Keith Vaz at the Home Affairs Select Committee seemed to me like a grandstanding buffoon, while John Whittingdale at Culture, Media and Sport seemed understated but completely in command. That said, I know that others, not instinctively aligned with Mr Vaz, took a very different view. John Whittingdale should not have allowed members to address Rupert Murdoch as "Mr Murdoch" while addressing his son simply as "James". I realise there is scope for confusion, but "Mr Rupert Murdoch" and "Mr James Murdoch" would have been polite and respectful.

    The House of Commons debate changed the political situation. David Cameron's performance was magnificent. This is what he does. He pulls it off when it is needed: his hustings speech in 2005; his conference speech in 2007; his performance in the third election debate in 2010. He is someone who can – remarkably – change the political climate with a speech. Oratory had been thought the lost – or largely irrelevant – art of politics. William Hague, Conservative Leader as recently as 1997 to 2001 – was an accomplished orator, who could not turn the skill to political advantage. YouTube has utterly changed the way people consume speeches, and the lost art now makes and breaks political careers. It continues to make David Cameron's.

    That Ed Miliband failed to rise to the most significant challenge so far in his, admittedly brief, political career does not reflect well on him. His performance is already being compared to the speech Neil Kinnock flubbed in the Westland debate. The mood has now shifted under him. Even the self-interested media empires are letting this story drop. The BBC, which last week devoted all sixty minutes of a lunchtime news bulletin to News International, has rediscovered the famine in Somalia. Last night the left wing Channel Four News led on this topic. Today the BBC ran a bulletin which did not even mention the hacking scandal. Unless something new comes out, the story has moved on. Miliband saw his moment and missed.