How do you build an indestructible brand in unprecedented times?
In the Era of Trump, when the President is acting like a competitor, how do you protect your brand?
In the era of [insert here]
Stiff competition and adulterous clients make advertising agencies race to keep ahead of change. Partly because they like shiny new things but also to show that they know what the next era of [insert here] will bring. Change is a constant topic in our industry; we’re experts at talking about it. Is this another new era of unprecedented times?
Facebook, Google, Netflix et al. took over the world via algorithm while normal telly was time-shifting quietly in the corner. No one watches our ads anymore. Newspapers folded, and Russian bots sent us into an echo bubble shame spiral. Agencies hired all the unemployed journalists and set up “content hubs” to monitor the news and respond in real-time to cultural moments. Creative briefs demanded work that was so newsworthy, it could write its own press release. Making it from the business section to the front page became the goal.
In the Era of Trump
The news is back, baby. Brands are afraid of backlash, boycotts, being attacked by trolls, or Trump on Twitter. They’re scared to say anything at all. Most toddlers are taught there’s a difference between good and bad attention. Many publicists would agree there isn’t. For brands, there’s a bigger risk if no one pays you any attention.
Strong brands eventually bounce back
Has an established, strong brand ever died (forever) by tweet? Not yet. Prof. Jenni Romaniuk’s analysis in the Journal of Advertising Research in 2013 found that “negative word of mouth is not only rare; it has the same impact as positive word of mouth.” Her opinion still stands:
Even when a company does something wrong, I don’t see much evidence of sustained backlash (…) people forget really quickly. But in the case of a ‘crisis,’ it does depend on how companies manage it too. Fighting the story rarely helps as this just gives the fire more oxygen. Also, remember there is still a big chunk of the population who are not on Twitter!” — Professor Jenni Romaniuk, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, via LinkedIn message, November 12, 2017
Strong brands can eventually bounce back once the media attention dies down. If they don’t, there may be other forces at play. If they do, swift and strong crisis management is usually the reason.
It may just seem like there’s more visible bad behaviour
Way before this so-called Era of Trump, top brands had been cleaning up their acts. Some corporations are probably more well-governed than the government. It may seem like there’s more visible bad behaviour, but all this consumer activism stuff happened to companies before “keep the bastards honest” social media. Savvy investors watch for stock scandals because they want a good deal on shares.
Preparing companies for corporate citizenship has been going on since Exxon Valdez, and Enron when, keeping clients out of the press was the remit. There’s an entire PR industry dedicated to spinning corporate embarrassments via the dark arts of reputation management and media relations.
Keep the lights on
Before authenticity, transparency, and the knee-jerk public apology was a thing, CEOs had media training to talk to the press about bad news. As companies dealt with disaster, their immediate reaction was to stop advertising entirely. In the long term, studies confirm going dark during a bad patch isn’t good for business.
Brand purpose politics
Brands are advised not to get involved in politics. A mention from Obama would have been like winning gold in the popularity Olympics. This President is different. He has a corporate scandal every day and ignores it. Trump contradicts every commonsensical thought. He’s a norm buster or, is he the best at branding, ever? To be famous, part of the conversation, a wavemaker, or “movement starter”, even the President needs the media to notice him. Now, one voice on a single platform gets amplified more than others.
Soft metrics, hard results
Reports suggest that Trump measures success with ratings, retweets, and he counts his followers like money. For context, by the end of 2016, neither @POTUS nor @realDonaldTrump made the celebrity Twitter rankings while Barack Obama had 80.1M (Katy Perry was in the lead with 94.5M). A year later, even with 44.6M followers, Trump has less than half Obama’s 97.9M (Katy Perry has 107M).
Trump will not stop tweeting; he hasn’t since he joined in 2009. Should we worry if a brand’s politics draws his ire? A 4A’s/SSRS survey about brands that get involved in politics revealed that “regardless of whether [Trump] tweeted a positive or negative endorsement, about three-quarters (74%) of respondents said it had no impact on their purchasing decisions.”
Possibly alienating half the voting population is understandably a risk but we do advise our clients not to go unnoticed. The @realdonaldjtrump knows this brand strategy better than anyone.
Madonna Deverson, madonna@contxture.com
Jenni Romaniuk, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, De-Clutter Your Mind: Seven Worries You Can Drop from Your Research Agenda, Journal of Advertising Research: Vol. 53, №2, 2013
Jenni Romaniuk, response to a LinkedIn message, November 12, 2017
“What We Know about Advertising in a Recession,” Warc.com, 2020, https://www.warc.com/content/paywall/article/bestprac/what-we-know-about-advertising-in-a-recession/110157.
Marketing Communications, “New 4A’s Survey Finds Majority of Consumers Dislike When Brands Get Political — 4A’s,” 4A’s, May 24, 2017, https://www.aaaa.org/new-4as-survey-finds-majority-consumers-dislike-brands-get-political/.
Raisa Bruner, “Katy Perry Reigns Supreme Still as Twitter’s Most-Followed Celebrity,” Time (Time, December 6, 2016), https://time.com/4591951/top-twitter-celebrities-2016/.
