BrandSimple | BrandDigital: The Blog

It was about 25 years ago that Johnson & Johnson suffered one of the worst nightmares a consumer products company can face. Seven people died from ingesting Extra Strength Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. It was the first known case of death caused by deliberate product tampering. This incident recently came to mind after a number of people (too young to remember the Tylenol scare) asked me if brands suffer permanent damage when there’s a consumer product quality problem like the recent Mattel situation where it was discovered that many of its popular toy brands were manufactured with toxic components. My answer to their question is “no, not if.” Brands can actually come out stronger if they do two things very well.

The first thing a brand must do to save its good name is to react really, really fast – jump in and quickly address the situation frankly and honestly. Now, reacting really, really fast these days is really, really hard. Given the Internet and its finger-happy bloggers, the whole world knows what’s going on within seconds of its happening. To stay ahead of the busily pointing fingers, brand organizations have to be closely connected to what’s going on in the blogosphere. Good companies have teams in place to monitor and listen to the incessant online chatter about their brands. They have contingency plans in place and people empowered to act promptly and aggressively should the need arise. Seemingly nanoseconds after news of Mattel hit Wi-Fi networks, for example, its CEO issued a statement that the company would immediately recall millions of toys from retailers’ shelves along with put into place significant new manufacturing procedures. While this will cost the brand millions of dollars near term, these instantaneous actions should help mitigate brand fallout in the long term.

The second thing a brand should do in challenging times is to do more than consumers expect it to do. In the case of J&J’s Tylenol, this meant not only an instant recall of the product but the development of new tamper-resistant bottles along with the development of tamper-resistant caplets. While the company’s share price and its share of market took an immediate plunge right after the scare, its more-than-expected actions helped it regain its number one brand position by the end of the year. It remains the top-selling analgesic in the country.

Stuff happens. There are all sorts of potentially damaging situations a consumer product brand can face in its lifetime. Whether it allows itself to be defeated by the situation depends on how quickly the brand reacts and if it does more than people expect it to. While it may be an expensive proposition, saving a strong brand name - whatever the cost - is priceless.

In my book, BrandSimple, I talk about JetBlue. Over the past few days everyone has been talking about JetBlue, but not for any of the reasons I chose to talk about it. I used it as an example of a brand that succeeded as a result of identifying something meaningfully different to offer people who want or need to fly. Unlike the big, ambiguous airlines, JetBlue found a way to put the “humanity back into flying.” This phrase became the driving force behind everything the little brand did to make flying fun, from its airfares to its personnel, to its in-flight entertainment. Last week, as thousands of people were stranded at JFK and cancellation reports multiplied as quickly as news reports, flying JetBlue was anything but fun. It proved to be no different than any other airline – any other big airline that is.

CEO, David Neeleman, took on the immediate challenge by doing exactly what he should have done. He apologized and took the hit as the company’s most senior officer without any excuses. His business model was off course and he would do whatever necessary to fix it, no easy task now that the company has grown from a small team of mavericks to a sprawling organization. While this is all well and a very good start, it’s nowhere near the size of the challenge the airline has ahead of it as a brand. It wasn’t the fact that passengers were left on the tarmac that made it a newsworthy story. It was that JetBlue had broken its brand promise. To repair its promise, JetBlue has to figure out how to “put the humanity back into flying,” but this time as a larger company – something that will be very hard to do at its value price point. The proof of its newly repaired promise will require more than Mr. Neeleman spontaneously showing up to greet passengers. And while a noble gesture, it will take more than a passengers’ Bill of Rights which only serves to placate flyers if the experience gets too bad. While immediate crisis control will help JetBlue survive in the short term, it’s the longer term the airline must consider. It must find a meaningfully different way to make its original brand promise fly again, this time on a higher level. Don’t underestimate the JetBlue team. It’s in their company culture to make this happen. And I, for one, have full confidence they will.

Apple and Dell will have fires of a different sort to douse if they don’t want to lose their enviable brand equity. The recent laptop battery recalls due to potential fire hazards could prove equally hazardous to these two brand powerhouses. Announcements by three major airlines that they’ll stop passengers with Apple and Dell laptops from using batteries in flight has prompted many business travelers – the staunchest brand loyalists – to cry foul. Even though the batteries in question are manufactured by Sony, the Apple and Dell brands could get burnt far more seriously. While these laptops were well-considered purchases by the road warriors who carry them, these folks won’t consider dropping their loyalty for even a second if Apple and Dell can’t figure out how to make good on the issue. What should they do to extinguish the possibility of a devastating brand melt down?

The first priority should be to get out new batteries ASAP. A second priority should be to ship replacement batteries to airlines to provide, free of charge, to passengers who don’t leave work when they leave the office. When I’m en route to San Francisco with a presentation to edit, taking away my laptop is not an option. I’ll give up my original brand of choice, first. More than that, I’ll spread word of my ire. And in the world of business technology, where word-of- mouth is critical to branding, that’s really playing with fire. Apple and Dell are very smart brands. They know that business strategy – what they sell – must be inextricably aligned with brand strategy – what makes people buy. But, if they can’t come up with a way to resolve the battery problem, people won’t be buying excuses. In fact, it will strike at the core of what makes them good brands. Fix the problem fast and don’t make it a hassle for the user to comply. This is a potential five-alarm event in terms of brand loyalty. Be the brands we know you are and treat it as such.

Consumers pledge allegiance to brands. When a brand has problems, no matter what the root cause, the brand organization suffers financially. While a growing number of Americans have made a pledge to eat healthier, no single spinach grower is going to suffer unduly as a result of the recent outbreak of E. Coli. Why? Spinach is a vegetable, not a brand. Any allegiance we have to spinach is to the vitamins on the inside, not the name on the plastic bag outside. While spinach growers and distributors will definitely take a financial hit from this very unfortunate situation, no single brand will be held liable. It will cut across the industry, mitigating the effect. This is not like the Tylenol package tampering scare where a specific brand bore the brunt of the headache. In that case we were able to turn to other remedies for our own headaches. (In that case, Tylenol’s parent company, Johnson & Johnson, set the standard for appropriate brand behavior in a crisis. It took the company time to recover but, as a result of its actions, respect for and loyalty to the brand soared. For those too young to remember, check your brand management textbooks.) If you’re looking for an excuse not to eat your spinach, baby, you don’t have much time left. As soon as science gets to the root cause of the problem and the media gives us the okay, spinach will be back in the produce section. While we won’t necessarily look for any one brand, the industry will recover, as a whole. We’ll be free to sauté, toss, and make our spanikopita. And, in your case Popeye, you can just chug the stuff.