Brandjack News

News and commentary around the concept of brandjacking

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  • What the end of sanctions secured

    by Quentin Langley

    I am fed up with seeing professional diplomats making excuses for Blair's shoddy sucking up to Gaddafi by comparing it with the Bush administration's ending of sanctions. Let's look at some of the differences.

    In exchange for ending sanctions against Libya the Bush administration secured the verifiable end of Libya's WMD programme. Libya's nuclear materials and chemical weapons were all handed over to the US. In the aftermath of regime change in Iraq, and Libya's desire to do business with the US, the world secured significant benefits. Most particularly, Libya's people secured benefits. Gaddafi has been absolutely clear: he will fight to the last drop of other people's blood. We all know what would be happening now if Gaddafi still had chemical weapons. Just imagine if he had even one nuclear weapon.

    The contrast with the disgraceful Blair/Brown/Salmond deal could not be more sharp. Britain did not get anything from that deal. Libya did not give anything up for the right to do business with Britain. Britain ponied up the release of a terrorist for the right to be do business with Libya. Gaddafi got the release of the person convicted for the biggest mass murder on British soil.

    What does this say about the reputation of Britain, Libya and the US? Libya will pay for the right to do business with the US, but Britain must pay for the right to business with Libya.

    Blair and Brown sacrificed the dignity and honour of their country for opportunity to suck up to one of the most monstrous dictators in history.

  • Closing down the internet

    By Quentin Langley 

    It seems that in Egypt the internet and cell phone services have been down all day. It has affected the quality of reporting from Cairo, of course. The purpose was to stop people organising protests against the government. 

    It should have been obvious that there are two huge holes in this plan. Most people will have interpreted the absence of internet and cell phone services as a clear message that there is a protest under way. It will also have reminded them why they don't like Hosni Mubararak. 

    The second hole is that today is Friday, the Islamic Sabbath. People went to the mosque today. That was the opportunity to mobilise, and people took it. 

    Perhaps the idea was to stop secular people organising. Mubarak loves the fact that the main focus of opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood. Secular forces in Egypt and western governments have been wary of opposing Mubarak for fear that Islamists might replace him. Western support for authoritarian regimes is a mistake. I call it the Hillaire Belloc fallacy: 

    Always keep ahold of Nurse

    For fear of finding something worse.

    The only institutions outside the state in most of the Arab world are religious. Opposition to the awful governments tends to be Islamic. But if pluralism is allowed to flourish, there is no reason to think that it will not prove as popular as in the rest of the world. And technological changes mean that information flows much more freely, even in poorer countries. These governments are going to fall. All of them. Let's hope the change comes quickly, and without the dreadful Iranian detour into theocracy. But the detour is just that. It will slow the progress to pluralism. It won't stop it.

     

  • Taiwan TV explains Wikileaks

    By Quentin Langley


    The wonderful animators of Taiwan have explained the Wikileaks story.


  • Great customer fight back

    By Quentin Langley

    Ever been frustrated by a call centre? These guys know how to fight back. 

  • Hitler vs Michael O’Leary

    By Quentin Langley

    One of the best Hitler’s Downfall mashups I have yet seen shows the Fuehrer expressing his views on Ryanair. I believe the credit goes to ihateryanair.org.

    A beautiful attempt at brandjacking, but I doubt it will dislodge the association with low prices that O’Leary has been cultivating for years.


  • Outs and Ins for 2011

    By Quentin Langley


    Out: Brand In: Reputation


    The problem with the word ‘brand’ is that non-professionals think it means your logo, and marketing professionals use it to obscure what they are really talking about. ‘Brand’ is just another word for reputation, and ‘reputation’ is a better, clearer, word. To think of your brand as an object, which you own and which you can manage is out-dated, even insofar as it ever made sense in the first place.


    Out: Brand management In: Influence


    When Leroy Stick, of @bpglobalpr said “FORGET YOUR BRAND. You don’t own it, because it literally nothing” that must have seemed pretty scary, especially to people paid $200,000 a year or more to be ‘brand managers’. But, he was talking about your reputation. Of course you don’t own it, you never did. Your reputation is what other people think about you. You don’t own it, and you can’t manage it. What you can do is join in the conversation and exercise some influence.


    Click here to continue reading this article.

  • Outs and Ins for 2011

    By Quentin Langley

     

    Out:   Brand         In:    Reputation

    The problem with the word ‘brand’ is that non-professionals think it means your logo, and marketing professionals use it to obscure what they are really talking about.  ‘Brand’ is just another word for reputation, and ‘reputation’ is a better, clearer, word.  To think of your brand as an object, which you own and which you can manage is out-dated, even insofar as it ever made sense in the first place.

     

    Out:     Brand management       In:     Influence

    When Leroy Stick, of @bpglobalpr said “FORGET YOUR BRAND.  You don’t own it, because it literally nothing” that must have seemed pretty scary, especially to people paid $200,000 a year or more to be ‘brand managers’.  But, he was talking about your reputation.  Of course you don’t own it, you never did.  Your reputation is what other people think about you.  You don’t own it, and you can’t manage it.  What you can do is join in the conversation and exercise some influence.

     

    Out:      Marketing         In:    Public Relations

    Marketing people have spent too long deceiving themselves about the nature of brands to be much use in the social media conversation.  They are hooked on stone age concepts like advertising.  They want to broadcast your message instead of engaging in conversation.  CIPR has always maintained that your reputation is the “result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you”.  Obviously, what you say is the least important of the three.  Now that individuals with a grievance against you, who would previously have been isolated, can now aggregate in social media, broadcasting a message just doesn’t work any more.  Marketing is also much too focussed on customer acquisition and retention.  While that is very important, it is also very transactional.  PR is about influencing your reputation with all your publics: customers, investors, staff, neighbours, business partners, and politicians & regulators.  It is no longer possible to have different messages for those different groups (if it ever was) so marketing needs to be integrated into PR.

     

    Out:     Control           In:    Credibility 

    You can’t have both.  You can make your employees say good things about you, but no-one will believe them.  You have to encourage honest engagement by your publics, but that is going to mean getting things right, and fostering a climate of trust, or the honest engagement will not reflect very well on you.

     

    Out:   Confidentiality      In:    Transparency

    Obviously some things need to be kept confidential for perfectly good, sometimes legally binding, reasons.  But the mood is increasingly going to be one of transparency.  Openness will be the default setting, and there will need to be good reasons and strict protocols for keeping things secret.  Even then, don’t count on it working.

     

    Out:    Thought Leadership       In:   Thought Followership

    Make what you can sell, don’t sell what you can make.  The cliché that we have two ears and one mouth, so we should use them in that proportion is very, very, dated.  In a conversation with a thousand people, or a million, you will come off as pushy and loud-mouthed if you do that.  In the social media conversation, organisations need to listen more and broadcast less.  It is not about lecturing, it is about learning.  Think of the social media conversation as being about market intelligence, not so much about sales.  Go to where your customers are, find out what they are talking about, and participate with humility.

     

    What did I miss?

  • Morgan Tsvangirai to face capital charges?

    By Quentin Langley


    Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister and, by common consent, the man who won the largest number of votes in Zimbabwe’s last Presidential election, is being investigated for High Treason, a crime which carries the death penalty in Zimbabwe. His ‘crime’ was to hold discussions with US diplomats about the possible impact of international sanctions against Zimbabwe.


    Tsvangirai, who was disgracefully passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize in favour of Barack Obama, is a hero to anyone who believes in democracy and human rights. He could be the first person to die as a result of Wikileaks exposing US State Department cables.


    It should be noted that the report linked below comes from The Guardian, one of Julian Assange’s media partners. Both Assange and The Guardian have assured us that they redacted anything which could put lives at risk. Apparently, they didn’t spot everything, and they should have known from the beginning that they could not.


    See the Guardian article here

  • Harrods xmas lights brandjacked

    By Quentin Langley

    Disgruntled employees can be a pain.  But messing with Santa is always risky.  This particular Santa – fired by Harrods at exactly the time of year at which Santas expect to be getting busy – had access to the Harrods xmas lights.  Oops.

    Fk off harrods

     

  • Has NUS been brandjacked?

    By Quentin Langley


    The protests organised by Britain’s National Union of Students have rather lost their way, with media coverage focussing on the violence rather than the purpose of the demonstrations. At the first, the Conservative Party’s HQ was attacked, and one thug threw a fire extinguisher at police from a high building. At the most recent, the bomb proof windows on the Treasury were smashed, and a car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall was attacked.


    Camilla_1782430b


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