AMi eNewsletter Supporting Marketing with Impact april 2017 |
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“Social” marketing isn’t limited to what your organization posts to Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn. Being socially active and responsible is a cultural thing that affects your organization from the inside out. The decisions your company makes—or has made—can influence consumer perception and drastically change the face of your company, whether you like it or not. Need an example? Just ask Jumbo. |
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An Elephant’s Tale: The Power of the People In less than a week, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus will load up its train cars and pull out of Baltimore for the last time. The “Out of This World” tour will make final stops in Charleston, WV, and Uniondale, NY, while the “Circus Extreme” tour makes final stops in Hartford, CT, and Providence, RI. Then, after 146 years of entertaining the country with its human and animal acts, the entire group—the circus as millions of fans have known it—will pack up its gear for good. Whether you’re a fan of the circus or not, you can’t deny the sadness of its ending. One hundred and forty-six years is a long time. How many companies do you know have lasted that long? How many companies don’t survive the first or even second year of business? How can a business that survived the Great Depression, the Great Recession, inflation, and the evolution of dozens of alternate forms of entertainment suddenly fold up its tent and be gone? |
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Your Social Responsibility: More Than Just Facebook The answer, in part, starts in 1882. In 1882, P.T. Barnum, the successful businessman and promoter who created “The greatest show on earth” 11 years earlier, introduced an Asian elephant named Jumbo to his circus. The elephant was so well received that the pachyderm became a symbol of the entire production. People flocked to the big top to see the big star. But not everyone loved the idea of elephants at the circus. For years, Feld Entertainment—the current owners of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus—has fought allegations that its elephants are mistreated. The company ultimately ended a 14-year legal battle with a number of animal rights groups in 2014—winning $25.2 million in settlements in the process—but the damage was already done. So many cities and counties had, in protest of the circus’s perceived treatment of animals, passed “anti-circus” and “anti-elephant” ordinances that it became difficult for the group to schedule its usual tours to 115 cities each year. Despite its assurances that the animals weren’t mistreated, Ringling announced in 2015, just a year after winning its legal battle, that it would be removing all elephants from its tours by 2018. Ticket sales had already been on the decline (no surprise to anyone, we’re sure, with all the “modern” entertainment options available these days), but the decline in sales that came after the elephant announcement hurt the circus giant even more than it predicted. And so, a year before just the elephants were to make their last appearance (which was actually earlier than expected: May 2016), the entire circus itself will be gone. |
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Your Business Ethics: No Private Matter When Ringling Brothers announced that it would phase out its use of elephants, many people rejoiced. After all, in the years since P.T. Barnum first introduced Jumbo to the circus, research had revealed the depth and nature of an elephant’s intellect and social habits, and the confinement and physicality of the circus life didn’t bode well for the giant performers. Others, however, despaired. For them, elephants were synonymous with the circus. The circus just couldn’t be the same without them. It’s hard to imagine letting go of an essential part of your business. It’s hard to imagine that something so crucial to your daily efforts—a star performer, a key founder, an essential process or service—could become the downfall of your brand. But it does happen. Remember the mess BP found itself in in 2010, after the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded? The company—virtually unrecognizable in 2000, with just a four percent brand awareness ranking—had managed to increase its brand awareness by 63 percent over seven years, thanks to a $200 million global public relations and ad campaign launched in 2000. But then, disaster struck. The rig exploded, killing 11 people, releasing more than three million barrels of crude oil into the ocean, and causing untold damage to surrounding wildlife, fishing industry, and tourism. Despite the volumes of money the company spent on recovery and cleanup and its multimillion dollar ad campaign to reconnect with consumers, 43% of Americans still had an unfavorable view of BP three years after the disaster. How about Sea World? Remember the 2013 documentary about the animals there and the trainer who died because of their captivity and confinement? The amusement park still suffers lower attendance rates today as a result. Our point? No business or organization, no matter how old or successful, is beyond the critical, watchful eye of the consumer and the public. If your practices aren’t ethical, legal, or moral, people will find out and they will voice their displeasure. If you make a mistake, people will notice. One bad experience, one scandal, one social campaign against you can destroy everything, or at least keep your public relations department very busy for many years. |
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Your Future Self: Bouncing Back from a Social Setback Could your business survive a social setback? How can you recover from bad press? The easiest answer is to not have a setback to recover from. To do that, you need to make good decisions from the start. Hire honest, reliable people. Treat your employees, clients, and partners with respect and dignity. Value quality over quantity. Think in terms of long-term success instead of short-term profits. If disaster does strike, if an accident does happen, if your organization does come under fire for something it has done or the public perceives it has done, take heart and take action. Barb Jones, Senior Director of Communications at Ground Floor Media, a public relations and crisis communication firm, suggests in her December 6, 2011, blog, “Perception vs. Reality: How to Rebuild a Reputation,” including these three steps in your efforts: - Acknowledge and Accept Responsibility: Identify what the root causes are of the damage and acknowledge them. This is the time that your company or organization needs to admit the mistakes and be transparent.
- Plan and Implement Changes: Put a plan in motion to fix whatever the issues were that led to the crisis in the first place. Actions speak louder than words, so depending on what the crisis was, rebuilding reputations could take months or years.
- Engage with target audiences/key stakeholders: Be proactive with target audiences by sharing the details of what your company or organization has done and how the changes will help to ensure that mistakes aren’t repeated. By involving stakeholders in the rebuilding process, this can help to rebuild trust and repair damaged relationships.
Rebuilding public trust takes times and patience. Some companies will succeed in restoring their reputations. Some will not. For them, the effects of the damage are just too great to overcome. Even with 146 years of history on their side. |
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Will Your Company Make History? Think your business has what it takes to stand the test of time? Check out these companies that have outlasted the circus: - Caswell-Massey, a perfume and soap company (1752)
- The Hartford Courant, a Connecticut-based newspaper, whose slogan is “older than the nation” (1764)
- Baker's Chocolate (1765)
- Ames, a tool company (1774)
- King Arthur Flour (1790)
- Cigna, the nation’s oldest stockholder-owned insurer (1792)
- Dixon Ticonderoga, maker of No. 2 pencils (1795)
- DuPont (1802)
- Colgate, the toothpaste company (1806)
- Pfaltzgraff, dinnerware (1811)
- Citigroup (1812)
- Brooks Brothers, the oldest clothing retailer in America (1818)
Very truly yours, Milt |
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