True thought leaders don’t just make noise: They drive change

We all know and recognise them. Dial-a-quote CEOs and business leaders who love to be on TV and offer an opinion on every issue-of-the-day. Problem is they often mistake being provocative and controversial for making a thoughtful contribution to advancing strategic public issues.

Issue management means proactively working on issues that matter to you or your organisation, and real thought leaders can play a significant role.

However, thought leaders need to have original thoughts, not simply churn out corporate messaging and industry clichés.

We certainly know what thought leadership isn’t. It’s not the CEO talking endlessly about their own organisation and making the front cover of a trade magazine – aided by strategically placed advertising – which is purchased in bulk and placed on the coffee table in reception.

Nor is it the “thought leadership package” launched by an Australian PR agency to help advertising and marketing companies pitch for business. Nor is it, as a recent American business survey suggested, mainly about increasing sales and retaining customers.

The Institute for Thought Leadership even says the “secret sauce” is teaching experts to write stories which will appeal to journalists.

And forget paying a ghost writer for mediocre articles or white papers that nobody reads, just to get the CEO’s or someone else’s name in print.

Compare that with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, father of the concept of Black Swan events, which are high-impact but rare and unpredictable. His 2007 book spent 36 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was published in 32 languages. That’s genuine recognition which is earned, not paid for.

Moreover, as Bruce Kasanoff once quipped: “The #1 rule of the Association of International Thought Leaders is ‘Never call yourself a thought leader’.” That would be like a certain former US President calling himself a “stable genius”.

Of course, not every CEO can be a thought leader . . . and that’s OK. But it’s essential to remember what thought leadership really is. A good definition comes from reputation experts Craig Badings and Dr Elizabeth Alexander: “Thought leaders are brave, explore areas other don’t, raise questions others won’t, and provide insights others can’t.” 

It’s beyond merely being an expert or having an opinion. A thought leader delivers insight which no one else has had before on a key issue, and shares those ideas openly through dialogue, not self-important monologue.

The key attributes to help drive influence were identified in global research from Edelman and LinkedIn – robust research and strong supporting data; provocative ideas that challenge people’s assumptions; concrete guidance on how to respond; and making it quick and easy to consume and absorb. 

In many ways this is closely aligned to issue management, which aims to influence issues in a planned way, in support of a strategy to achieve a positive objective. Importantly, the issue is sometimes bigger than just you or your organisation, and that’s where thought leadership emerges.

Consider Australian businessman Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, who masterminded the international Walk Free Foundation which set out to shame governments into action on modern slavery and persuade global corporations to ”slavery-proof” their supply chains.

Or Al Gore, who is not just an environmental activist but won an Oscar, a Grammy and a Nobel Peace Prize for driving climate change onto the public agenda.

For issue and crisis managers there can be no thought leader more influential than Howard Chase, who coined the term issue management in 1976 when aged in his sixties and worked to promote and develop the new management concept until his death in 2003 aged 93. Little wonder he was once named one of the top ten most influential PR professionals of all time.

How many of today’s self-promoting wannabe “thought leaders” and “influencers” can match that? For true thought leaders and for issue managers it’s not just about making a noise. It’s about making a genuine difference.

How best to sack the CEO after a crisis

With the operational and reputational crisis at Boeing continuing to escalate, CEO Dave Calhoun has finally announced he will step down, along with the Board chairman and the head of their passenger plane division.

While Calhoun is just the latest CEO to fall on his sword, it’s a reminder that the buck stops – or should stop – with the person at the top.

In the case of the Boeing CEO, it seems to have been little more than an inevitability, after his customers – some of the world’s biggest airlines – took the unprecedented step of speaking directly to the board to vent their frustration at the seemingly endless catalogue of safety issues with Boeing aircraft.

The airline’s shares plunged 25% since the beginning of the year after a door blew off an Alaska airlines plane in early January and wheels fell off another aircraft taking off from San Francisco. 

My American colleague Jeff Chatterton described Calhoun’s announcement as “The least shocking news since we discovered it’s cold in the Arctic.” He called it a classic example of “Jump or we’ll push.”

And PR Daily’s Allison Carter concluded: “There is a point at which trust can no longer be repaired with the same leadership. Boeing had reached that point.”

In many sporting codes, the coach is sacked when the team performance slumps or when there is a scandal, like turning a blind eye to drug-taking. It rarely even makes the headlines for more than a couple of days. 

Yet in the business world, we continue to see too many examples where CEO clings on to office after a succession of terrible financial results, or a crisis which could have been, and should have been, recognised in advance and steps taken to prevent it. After trust has been exhausted and the share price is tanking.

It’s never an easy decision when a CEO should go. But as the Australian executive recruitment company Blenheim Partners asked: “What happened to honour? . . . Why are CEOs not falling on their sword and exiting with as much respect and as little public reputation damage as can be achieved?”

There are some countries where the immediate response to a corporate crisis is to arrest the CEO and top management. And some where the consequences can be even more dire. Take the notorious Sanlu milk adulteration crisis in China, where the CEO was jailed for life, three other executives received between five and 15 years in prison, and two contractors found to be at fault were executed.

While that may be somewhat extreme, the departure of a CEO should be done professionally and in the best interests of the organisation.

Consider what happened at Boeing in late March. The Chair and the passenger plane boss left “with immediate effect”. The CEO also announced he would resign, yet will stay in place “until the end of the year”. That’s one of those “dead man walking” management scenarios which are barely sustainable and severely test the limits of good governance. 

Similarly, Tom Seymour at PwC Australia announced in May 2023 he was stepping down as CEO following a tax policy scandal which engulfed the company, then rather surprisingly said he would remain as a partner until he retired in September. But come July he was terminated, along with seven other partners.

A departing CEO might try to argue that they alone have the skills to see the company through the next phase (very unlikely and probably a reflection of ego rather than capability). Or that more time is needed to find a replacement (i.e. the Board has failed to put a management succession plan in place).

However, the reality is that if the CEO is to go in the wake of a crisis, a clean cut is most often the best way forward – for both the former CEO and the company. That should be pretty much Crisis Management 101.

Speaking out on Gaza: Stepping into Quicksand.

As war in Gaza drags on, more and more organisations find themselves facing the question: Should we make a statement? And what is the price if we say nothing?

It’s like taking the first step into quicksand, aware there may be no way across, and the more you struggle the deeper you are certain to be sucked in.

Many individuals have faced backlash for supporting one side or the other in the conflict. Like outspoken actress Susan Sarandon dumped by her talent agency; European footballers Anwar El Ghazi and Youcef Atal suspended for social media posts deemed unacceptable; and Australia Cricketer Usman Khawaja sanctioned for wearing a black armband on the field.

Even Playboy felt compelled to sack former porn actress Mia Khalifa for praising the 7 October Hamas attackers.

But for corporates and other organisations, speaking out is a much harder decision, with a great deal more at stake.

Support for companies and CEOs to take a stand on significant social or political issues has been strong in recent years, as demonstrated by the thousands of organisations around the world which took a stance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Yet, the war in Gaza has exposed a very different dynamic, with many organisations torn between proponents for either side, each demanding a statement, then arguing it wasn’t right or wasn’t enough. Or employees attacking management for not saying anything.

As New York crisis consultant Davia Temin told Bloomberg; “If you say something, it’s about what you say. But equally you are at risk if you say nothing, because silence is a statement, so silence is controversial as well.”

It may be a cliché, but this truly is a classic “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t”.

The challenge for big corporations is well illustrated by what happened to McDonald’s. When independent McDonald’s stores in Israel provided free food to IDF personnel, calls to boycott the fast-food giant spread across social media. Meantime, other McDonald’s franchisees in the Middle East and elsewhere disavowed the Israeli operation and pledged aid for Gaza.

McDonalds’s CEO Chris Kempczinski eventually issued a statement saying the company “firmly condemned violence and hate speech” and is “deeply disturbed by the acts of antisemitism and Islamophobia.” But his message didn’t specifically mention Israel or Hamas, or address tension between franchisees. Predictably, it didn’t satisfy anyone.

Starbucks was another big global chain exposed by the war, when its worker union – not the company – posted pro-Palestine messages. The result was some Jewish leaders calling for a boycott of Starbucks as a whole, and vandalism at a number of stores. The company said protesters has been “influenced by misrepresentation on social media”, but of course the damage had already been done, with sales and share price starting to fall.

It’s not just corporations that get caught in the middle. When University of Sydney banned a pro-Palestine meeting, organisers argued they were being censored, while supporters of Israel claimed the university was not doing enough to protect them from antisemitism.

Then there was the notorious Senate hearing in the US where the Presidents of three prestigious universities tried to argue that antisemitic demonstrations and threats on campus might not be considered harassment, “depending on the circumstances”. Unsurprisingly, two lost their jobs.

There is no winning strategy here, but there are some key questions to consider before taking a stance.

• Which stakeholders will respond most strongly, and which ones matter most?
• Does the proposed stance align with your organisation’s strategy and values?
• How will this play out for your customers and employees?
• Do the Board/major shareholders/sponsors support your decision?
• Will speaking out serve any real purpose, or is it purely performative?
• Are you willing to accept the consequences of speaking out (or keeping silent)?

And finally, remember that once you first step into the quicksand there is no turning back.

When should the CEO NOT appear on television?

As the dust settles after the train wreck TV appearance by Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci, it’s time to step back and ask: “Should the CEO agree to participate in what is certain to be a negative interview?”

The CEOs of Australia’s two supermarket giants both agreed to appear on a programme about grocery price-gouging and duopoly bullying for ABC Four Corners, an investigative TV show celebrated for its combative, take-no-prisoners style. Neither CEO came out well.

Coles boss Leah Weckert appeared to have been media-trained to the point where she came across terse, unsympathetic and robot-like.

Brad Banducci, CEO of Woolworths fared even worse when he forgot the most basic rules of a TV interview, walking out over a seemingly trivial response which the reporter wouldn’t agree to delete. His PR advisor – on camera – persuaded him to return, but the damage was done, providing the programme with a shock promo on a silver platter and guaranteeing a record audience

Just days later Mr Banducci announced he would retire. He strongly denied his train wreck interview was a factor in his decision to leave, but it surely cannot have enhanced his opportunity to stay.

As my colleague Gerry McCusker commented on Linkedin: “True crisis preparedness is as much about knowing how not to create a crisis as it is about how to lead the response to one you didn’t actually start by yourself.”

With the advantage of hindsight, did this debacle have to happen at all? There was the usual line-up of PR professionals keen to offer their opinions about what went wrong and what the company should do next, for example here and here. Most made the self-evident point that the two CEOs should have been properly prepared, but none apparently considered whether the two CEOs should have agreed to be part of what was certain to be a confrontational program with a very clear editorial purpose.

There is no doubt that when a real crisis strikes, the leader needs to be seen and needs to speak publicly, especially about issues of policy and governance. But this was no immediate crisis, and the CEOs had no need to agree to a TV grilling at this stage. With six separate government and regulator inquiries launched into supermarket pricing and profit, the two sector giants will have plenty of much more controlled opportunities to present their position.

They could have politely declined, or they could have delegated to a well-trained operational manager to keep the focus on technical issues. 

McCusker agrees that to decline is right in some circumstances, especially when there is a clear negative agenda. But he told me refusing this particular interview was not really a choice, simply because the issue-in-play was the transparency of duopolistic pricing policy. “To refuse a reasonable request for interview would have missed an opportunity to frame the issue, and could have been turned into ammo in the upcoming government inquiry. So in effect, both CEOs were on a hiding to nothing with nowhere to hide.” 

Although the CEOs were certainly on a hiding to nothing, you have to ask whether it still would have been better in the long run to decline to appear and accept that criticism. It is primarily a question of strategic risk management, not just media management.

Too often, going on TV can simply be a massively unwise choice. Think no further than Prince Andrew’s ill-fated decision to give a TV interview to “settle once and for all” about his relationship with sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. Instead it cost him his royal position, and his newly-appointed media advisor resigned when his advice not to do it was rejected. In fact this disastrous interview has become so notorious it is the subject of a Netflix movie, due out in April.

While every circumstance is different, a useful first step when asked for an interview should not be “What shall we say?” but “Shall we say anything?”  That key question just could save a lot of pain.

Can a corporate rebrand really remedy a troubled image?

When the unpredictable Elon Musk decided to jettison more than a decade of brand-equity and change from Twitter to X, abandoning the globally recognised blue bird, he tried to explain that it wasn’t just a name change but part of a plan to create an “everything app”.

Yet the rest of the world remains unconvinced, and a recent survey of 5,000 Australians found only 20% viewed the rebrand positively. The truth is that rebranding is too often seen as an easy issue management strategy to move on from a dubious past or unwelcome associations.

For example, there is no doubt as to why Kentucky Fried Chicken chose to officially become KFC in 1991. The company frankly admitted it was to distance itself from the connotations of fried food in an increasingly health-conscious market. 

Similarly, Weightwatchers changed its name in 2018 to WW, apparently to reduce the emphasis on weight and fat-shaming and focus more on wellness. Though as the BBC commented, “People don’t go to Weight Watchers because they want to feel well. They go because they want to lose weight.” 

Unlike the reborn KFC, their name-change is much less sure-footed. The CEO of the newly-named WW Incorporated was unable at the time to explain what the letters stood for. Even five years later the company still uses the internet domain weightwatchers.com, and their web homepage and TV ads still have both the WW and Weightwatchers names.

Apart from responding to such emerging social issues, a name change is also a popular way to mask controversial products. Like the fossil fuel industry, where British Petroleum repositioned itself as BP; Norwegian state-owned Statoil became Equinor; Danish Oil and Natural Gas became Orsted; and Indian-Australian coalminer Adani became Bravus. Or the tobacco industry, where American giant Philip Morris changed its name to the deliberately characterless Altria, and Britain’s Imperial Tobacco Group renamed itself Imperial Brands. 

A name change can also be applied as a crisis management recovery strategy. This happened after ValuJet Airlines DC-9 Flight 592 caught fire mid-flight and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people aboard. In what Time magazine called a “corporate disappearing act” the troubled airline shed its questionable reputation and cheap-sounding name by buying a smaller rival and adopting its name, then resumed operations as AirTran Airways. AirTran later had the best safety record among U.S. carriers and was purchased by Southwest Airlines.

Yet a name change to project a new image is not always so effective. For example, when Britain’s Royal Mail decided to rename itself Consignia in the hope it might convey a more modern, efficient organisation. Unfortunately, the public were simply confused and within a year they reverted to the old name.

Similarly, the public (and even his ex-wife) have largely ignored the confusing fact that Kanye West officially changed his name to Ye.

Big tech organisations like to choose original names for their holding companies – with Facebook now part of Meta and Google now part of Alphabet.

Which may help explain why Elon Musk decided to ditch the massive global brand Twitter in favour of X, to match the name of the parent organisation (though the platform’s URL remains as Twitter.com). His CEO Linda Yaccarino cited X as “the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities” . . . whatever that word salad means. More than six months later, the media are still almost invariably referring to “X, formerly known as Twitter”.

Perhaps Musk should have looked to the recent history of a similar corporate name. The private military contractor Blackwater had to rebrand after being caught up in shocking human rights violations and unlawful killings during the war in Iraq. After four Blackwater mercenaries were convicted and sentenced to prison, the company re-named itself Xe, which was said to be intentionally chosen to be meaningless. However, no-one knew how to pronounce it, and when the company was later acquired by a group of private investors the name was changed again, to Academi.

Given the short-lived fate of Xe, only time will tell how long Twitter remains as X.

No Ned, Reputational risk is not “pseudoscientific nonsense”.

Why would anyone argue that “reputation risk is rot” or assert that “reputational crises rarely have an impact on the bottom-line”?

It’s a question worth asking after the latest issue of the conservative online magazine The Critic, where regular columnist “Ned” went even further and described reputational risk as “pseudoscientific nonsense”.

It might be easy to dismiss this as satire, or a weak attempt at contrarian humour, except these bold assertions appear in the context of a seemingly serious analysis of how Coutts in London (and its parent NatWest) horribly mismanaged their response after shutting down the accounts of political gadlfy Nigel Farage, supposedly because his “gamey opinions” did not align with the values of the 330-year-old private bank.

On the basis that deposits at Natwest actually went up quarter on quarter after the Farage debacle, and that “vanishingly few customers closed their accounts in protest”, Columnist Ned concluded that “reputation is a much more resilient commodity that generally appreciated”.

It’s true that sometimes a strong reputation can help weather a storm. The problem, of course is that profitability is a very dubious measure of reputation.

Think no further than big oil, big tobacco, big pharma, big finance and others continuing to make massive profits despite persistent reputational shame. Or consider Qantas, which slowly squandered a stellar reputation, or PWC which almost overnight “went from untouchable to pariah”, or Boeing shares floundering after repeated operational disasters.

Ned’s article compared the Coutts Bank case with the so-called “dieselgate” crisis at Volkswagen in 2015 which, as he points out, generated “ocean of media outrage” over deliberate efforts to conceal exhaust emissions. Nevertheless, after heavy fines and a brief decline in sales, VW is today still the world’s second biggest auto-maker. And he could have added that Toyota also suffered heavy losses and falling share value after a series of quality issues in 2009-2010, yet soon regained its place at world number one.

But these two well-known cases don’t demonstrate that “reputational risk is rot” or that “that “reputational crises rarely have an impact on the bottom-line”. Quite the opposite. They demonstrate that the two auto giants were able to call upon massive international reserves  of customer loyalty and product reputation built up over many years . . . unlike just about any bank in any country.

Crucially, the fact that some cases of corporate wrongdoing do not damage long-term reputation should not be taken to suggest that reputation is somehow unimportant. Or indicates a guide for other organisations.

The truth is that reputation is a core business asset which any executive ignores at their peril. There is hardly a better example that the infamous case of British high street jeweller Gerald Ratner, cited by Ned, who told a business lunch that some of his own products were “crap”, which led to the complete destruction of his chain of stores.

Ned’s column described Ratner’s astonishingly ill-judged speech as “self-deprecating and witty” and suggested the ensuing financial disaster may have resulted from “more than a whiff of anti-Semitism”.

However, even mentioning (and mischaracterising) such a notorious case would seem to demolish his basic argument about the supposed unimportance of reputation risk. Just ask some real experts. For example, one international survey of more than 2,000 business leaders attributed 63 per cent of a company’s market value to reputation. In fact 40 to 60 percent, depending on business sector, is a commonly accepted range for reputation as a share of market value. That’s a massive amount to put at risk.

Ned concluded with this unhelpful (and maybe ironic) advice: “Free yourselves from the reputational risk committees and fire your whining PR men. Trust me, you will never be more happy — or more prosperous”.

Perhaps he should look at Elon Musk dumping his entire PR team. And how well that turned out for his reputation.

Crisis lessons from the Adidas-Kanye debacle

New revelations – variously described as shocking, jaw-dropping and bombshell – brutally expose how a company ignored long-standing warning signs in pursuit of profit, leading to a costly financial and reputational crisis.

Although it’s more than 12 months since Adidas parted ways with Kanye West, a fresh New York Times investigation late last year documented how the German footwear company tolerated years of bad behaviour and anti-Semitism from West (now officially known as Ye) when other sponsors severed links with the troubled rapper. 

While it’s a tale of high finance and the challenge of working with a problematic celebrity, it’s also a stark lesson about balancing sales against reputation risk, which the New York Times called “the price of appeasement”.

In October 2022, following a tweet calling for “death-con 3 on Jewish people”, the singer and fashion designer was dropped by Adidas after a viral public campaign, leaving the shoemaker with more than £1bn of unsold Yeezy stock.

The split contributed to a £350m drop in sales for Adidas in the first quarter of 2023, and now investors are suing Adidas in the US, alleging the company had long known about West’s offensive remarks and harmful behaviour and failed to take measures to limit financial losses.

After initially suggesting the designer shoes might be destroyed, Adidas eventually decided to sell them, with a percentage of the proceeds going to groups that combat hate speech (and a percentage to West). CEO Bjørn Gulden said at the time: “There is no place in sport or society for hate of any kind and we remain committed to fighting against it.”

However, the devastating New York Times investigation revealed that West’s questionable behaviour stretched back years, including allegedly showing pornography to employees “to spark creativity” and advising a Jewish Adidas executive to kiss a picture of Hitler every day “to practice unconditional love”.

To make the crisis even worse, just one week before the New York Times bombshell, Gulden seemed to excuse the singer’s anti-Semitism. He told a Norwegian podcast West made “some statements which weren’t that good” which caused Adidas to break the contract and withdraw the product.

“Very unfortunate, because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person – it just came across that way,” the CEO explained. “That meant we lost that business. One of the most successful collabs in history – very sad.” In fact, the company reportedly earned an estimated £1.5 billion a year from Yeezy shoes.

“But again,” he added, “when you work with third parties, that could happen. It’s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, it can happen with an entertainer. It’s part of the business.” 

It may well be “part of the business”, but it’s also a stark lesson for other companies about the reputational risk of managing controversial celebrities.

Regardless of the merits of the case, and regardless of individual opinions, the risk is very real and demands action. Like when Johnny Depp’s alleged behaviour towards his ex-wife led Warner Brothers to remove him from the next movie in the Fantastic Beasts franchise (even though they had to pay his full $10 million salary for filming only one scene).

Or when Jeep withdrew its costly Super Bowl advertisement after learning that singer Bruce Springsteen had been arrested months earlier for drink-driving (the charge was later dropped).

Or when Director Ridley Scott cut scandal-plagued star Kevin Spacey from his already completed movie All the Money in the World. The reshoot with replacement actor Christopher Plummer reportedly added $10 million to the budget.

Scott’s explanation could stand as good advice for the Adidas CEO and executives everywhere facing similar celebrity reputational crises. “Whatever you do in private is not my business. It only becomes my business if it infects the business that I’m in. Then it’s my duty to do something about it.” 

Footnote: In December 2023 West apologised for his 2022 anti-Semitic outbursts.

Hold the front page! 65-year-old pop singer takes commercial flight.

How far does click-bait celebrity trivia need to go before we say enough is enough? And how much does it diminish and distract from “real issues”?

Take the headline in Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper: “Passengers stunned as Madonna flies commercial on British Airways: Passengers on a red eye flight from New York to London were shocked to see a superstar on board.”

In breathless prose we learned that “one of the most famous stars on the globe, ecowarrior Madonna, opted to swerve her gas-guzzling private jet in favour of commercial flight”. 

The story then conceded the 65-year-old pop singer didn’t exactly slum it, travelling in First Class from New York to London.

Needless to say, there was no evidence – or even manufactured quotes – to suggest her fellow passengers in First Class were “stunned”, let alone knew who she was.

No-one can deny that today’s definition of “news” has changed dramatically. But it’s hard to see how this this publicity puff for a supposed “ecowarrior” had anything to do with a real environmental issue? 

The media’s fascination with the travel habits of celebrities seems to be endless. Just a few weeks earlier the tabloids had a field day over Prince William, President of the Football Association, deciding not to fly to Australia to support the British team at the Women’s World Cup, supposedly worried about his “carbon footprint”.

As the Daily Mail reported: “The Prince of Wales, a huge champion of the fight against climate change, is believed to be concerned by the impact of flying across the world for a very short period of time.” Ironically the same newspaper praised Queen Letizia of Spain for flying to Australia to support her country’s team.

While traditionalist grouches will bemoan what they see as declining standards of journalism, and what qualifies as legitimate news, the pursuit of celebrity has clearly embedded itself in mainstream media. 

Late last year, America’s biggest newspaper chain posted to its site two unusual job listings: a Taylor Swift reporter and a Beyoncé reporter.

Gannett, which owns more than 200 daily papers including the nationally circulating USA Today, said the chain was looking for “modern storytellers”, and reportedly received over 1,000 applications from journalists and non-journalists alike.

Predictably, critics of the newly advertised roles cited recent staff layoffs at Gannett, and the company’s failure to adequately invest in local newspapers. Furthermore, some journalists and experienced music-reporters criticised the job listings for presenting superfan behaviour as a full-time journalism job. (A male Swift fan was eventually appointed)

While it’s possible the US Today job advertisements may have been little more than a successful publicity stunt for a major newspaper chain, in truth it’s becoming harder to distinguish the trivial from the non-trivial. Or perhaps journalists think they need to package real news in a trivial way, or to provide a celebrity link to a serious issue, in order to be heard.

At the same time, celebrity reporting can be genuinely important when it is about the very real financial and social impact of legitimate stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé (as opposed to “instant celebrities” who were once on some reality TV show).

For example, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported that Swift’s Eras Tour helped boost travel and tourism in the region, and a market research firm estimated her tour could help add $5 billion to the worldwide economy. Plus Swift was just named 2023 Time “Person of the Year“, and six Australian universities are jointly sponsoring an international academic Swiftposium in Melbourne in February. Take THAT Madonna!

Of course, everyone enjoys reading about film stars and other celebrities and it’s been that way for a hundred years. However, even allowing for Taylor Swift, let’s not lose perspective when it comes to the critical issues of the day. 

Why marketers need to take more care with reputation

Reputation is a critical company asset, yet marketers too often create what gets to be called a “PR disaster”.

While that label makes for an easy headline, PR people usually aren’t responsible for a marketing blunder, though typically they get drafted in to clean up the reputational damage. Three recent incidents – and the contrasting ways they were handled – highlight the risk to organisations.

In the run up to Christmas, Kmart launched a drawstring bag designed to store a seasonal ham with the punning slogan ”Merry Ham-mas” on the front. 

Given that it was seen in store just weeks after Hamas invaded Israel, the Australian Jewish Association posted a picture online, describing it as “really not a good look”.

Within hours, management advised the bags were being withdrawn from stores and website. 

“We got it wrong on this occasion, and we apologise unreservedly. When designing this product we clearly didn’t think through all the implications and the product has been removed from sale.” AJA President David Adler praised the company for its speedy response, and the threat quickly passed.

Compare this with Zara copping backlash last week over a social media ad with a model holding a mannequin wrapped in white plastic, pictured in an artist’s studio against a background of damaged statues and broken plasterboard. Critics said it was similar to images emerging from Gaza following Israeli bombing and some called for a boycott.

Although this campaign too was planned long before the Hamas attack, the photoshoot was taken down. However, Zara’s online response had no apology and seemed to blame the critics.

“Unfortunately some customers felt offended by these images and saw in them something far from what was intended. Zara regrets that misunderstanding.” 

Then there was the debacle earlier in the year when transgender actor and influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted an Instagram video showing one-off Bud Light cans featuring her face, created by Anheuser-Busch brand marketers.

While VP of Marketing for Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid, said it was an effort to appeal to a younger and more diverse audience, conservative activists instigated a widespread a boycott campaign. The result was sales fell by up to 26%, the company’s shares lost more than $4 billion, and Bud Light lost its position as America’s top beer.

In an apparent effort to distance management from blame, Ms. Heinerscheid and her boss Daniel Blake were placed on indefinite leave, and North American CEO Brendan Whitworth asserted he hadn’t known about the promotion until after the backlash erupted. He emphasised the personalised can was “not a formal campaign or advertisement” and that they would revamp their process “so senior leaders are more involved in marketing decisions.” So much for taking responsibility and standing by your own staff.

It’s no surprise that the long and ignoble history of misguided, ill-timed or just plain dumb marketing campaigns can lead to needless reputational damage, which the media love to portray as a “PR disaster”. For example:

•    When an online catalogue for H&M featured eight-year-old black boy Liam Mango in a hoodie marked “Coolest monkey in the jungle.” Facing international condemnation, H&M’s third attempt at an apology finally accepted responsibility after previous efforts relied on “we are sorry if you were offended”.

•    When QANTAS sparked an online firestorm after marketers launched a #Qantasluxury competition to win First Class pyjamas by describing “your dream luxury inflight experience” just when the airline had grounded its entire fleet in an industrial dispute. The resulting stream of abusive tweets was entirely predictable.

•    When Pepsi was slammed for its notorious commercial showing model Kendall Jenner apparently defusing a confrontation between police and Black Lives Matter protesters by handing a cop a can of sugary soft drink. As Martin Luther King’s daughter Bernice remarked; “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi”.

Of course, PR professionals and corporate communicators can make mistakes too. But, given their wide audience, marketers need to think more about how their next “bright idea” might potentially damage the organisation’s reputation.

How Government ‘spin’ backfired and blurred an important issue

‘Spin’ is one of the most unhelpful words when talking about issue and crisis management. 

It doesn’t accurately represent what we do; it seldom works in the long run; and has become an easy term of professional abuse by journalists and other critics.

But sometimes an egregious, supposedly clever use of words to spin the facts, breaks through into public consciousness and undermines the work of communication professionals.

Consider what just happened when the Australian Federal Government received a recommendation it didn’t want to implement.

In the wake of a Royal Commission into Robodebt – the automated welfare payment recovery process later declared illegal – the Government proudly announced it had “accepted fully or in principle” all 56 recommendations.

The Minister and his advisors were doubtless delighted when much of the news media dutifully reported the “all recommendations accepted” message. For example here, here, and here. 

Problem is the statement wasn’t really true. It appeared to be an exercise in political spin to obscure that the Royal Commission report had in fact listed 57 items, not 56 – the last being an unwelcome proposal to reform Freedom of Information Law to include Cabinet documents, which the government did not accept.

The Minister tried to assert this was a “closing observation” rather than a recommendation, and his office – in true bureaucratic fashion – attempted to pass the blame, arguing that this terminology matched that of the Commissioner herself.

Yet at least some of the media weren’t buying this explanation. For example, the ABC and Nine News highlighted the “missing” recommendation. And The Guardian online altered the headline for its report, pointing out it made the change to reflect the discrepancy created by the attempted cover-up.

So when is a recommendation not a recommendation?

The RMIT/ABC Fact Check newsletter Checkmate cited law reform expert Scott Prasser arguing the so-called “closing observation” used emphatic language that the contentious FOI proposal “SHOULD be implemented” rather than “MIGHT be considered”, and was therefore very clearly a recommendation.

Similarly, Michael Mintrom, a professor of public policy with Monash University, told Checkmate: “it strikes me that the 57th item is very much a recommendation, and I can’t see the rationale for not treating it as such.”

The apparent rationale was, of course, to allow the government to conveniently make the politically appealing – but misleading – assertion it had “fully accepted” the recommendations of the damning report, which heavily criticised the previous government. 

The issue here is not a semantic argument about the precise meaning of words. It’s about the Government attempting to spin an unwelcome proposal from its own Inquiry, which the government specifically opposed and had no intention of even considering. They could have used a more accommodating response, but chose instead what they presumably imagined was a clever strategy to blur the situation.

Needless to say, there is a long history of governments and others using the language of spin to promote a particular position. Look no further than the claim and counterclaim emerging from the Israel-Hamas war. Or Putin insisting the invasion of Ukraine is a “special military operation” and threatening to imprison anyone who dares to say otherwise. 

However, blatant spin should not be allowed to stand, because it contaminates debate, inhibits legitimate issue management, and undermines the work of honest communicators.

It’s an offence tersely described by American PR doyen Robert Dilenschneider: “Spin doctoring is to public relations what pornography is to art”. Well said, Mr Dilenschneider.