The live streaming video of the oil spill turns my stomach, so I’ve been struggling with this question for weeks: “Can Responsible Marketing help restore BP?”
My gut says “never!” but my brain says “maybe.”
The fact is, trust requires both competence and character—two things BP lacks.
I know it’s early to ask, but if BP did the following things:
Successfully stopped the oil spill
Adequately cleaned up their mess
Proved they made their other rigs safe; and
Reinvested a large percentage of their profits into other renewable energy options
…would you be willing to give them a second chance?
I boycotted Exxon after the Valdez spill, so I’m on the fence on this one, folks. I’d have to see something pretty special from BP to get me to reconsider them.
The White House is calling on food makers to curb marketing of unhealthy foods to children, part of a broad assault against childhood obesity.
The recommendation is part of a 120-page report released Tuesday that outlines steps to fight the national epidemic. One in every three children ages 2-19 is overweight or obese, the report says. First Lady Michelle Obama has taken up childhood obesity as her signature cause.
The recommendations are for the food and beverage industry, media and entertainment companies and food retailers. Recommendations from the report urge these parties to:
Extend their self-regulatory program to cover all forms of marketing to children
Avoid in-store marketing that promotes unhealthy products to children
Limit the licensing of popular characters to food and beverage products that are healthy and consistent with science-based nutrition standards
Adopt meaningful, uniform nutrition standards for marketing food and beverages to children
Develop a uniform standard for what constitutes marketing to children
Set uniform guidelines to ensure that a higher proportion of advertisements shown on their networks and platforms are for healthy foods and beverages
Introduce an on-air labeling system that helps consumers easily distinguish between advertising for healthy and unhealthy foods
Develop and deploy technology to block unhealthy food and beverage advertising
And if the above doesn’t work, the FCC will be called in to revisit and modernize children’s programming rules.
This is a step in the right direction, but is it enough? Self-regulation hasn’t worked well on Wall Street. Will this be enough to rein-in Madison Avenue?
Just in time for Tiger Woods’ return to golf at The Masters, Nike has released the following ad featuring the voice of Tiger’s deceased father, Earl:
Here’s what Earl is saying:
Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?
On the surface it may seem like a bit of a head-scratcher for Nike: Woods’ father wasn’t faithful, either.
But consider this: Most of Tiger’s sponsors have bailed except Nike and it’s in their best interest to see him restored. This video shows a remorseful Woods looking his fans straight in the eye. By approving and participating in this ad, he’s showing he hasn’t forgotten his roots. That he knows his father wouldn’t approve. And that he’s learned something.
Opinions are polarized from the general public. Here are two from YouTube:
This is brilliant, Nike’s invested too much time and money into Tiger Woods to not do something like this. I give this a thumbs up with the reasoning that it isn’t often a sponsor will put money into saving a sports figure. And I think Tiger approving of it means he’s really showing the amount of change he’s willing to make to appear as an honourable sports figure again. I LIKE THIS. ~nboysis
Corporate damage control and a well-orchestrated PR campaign. And who really knows what Earl would say? He’s DEAD. Now? Tiger and Nike are bringing him back from the dead to pimp him out for greed. Poor taste Tiger….you would come across better by keeping a low profile in my opinion and working on your marriage to save your image, not your corporate whores. ~zenstate
So, is Nike’s new Tiger ad responsible or not? What say you?
When Coke and Pepsi start being judged by their social responsibility as much as their taste (and their ads), you’ll know Responsible Marketing has arrived, right? Well, that time has come.
The associated article does a great job laying out the differences between the campaigns, then left it up to readers to choose which campaign they preferred.
For marketers wanting to reach the younger generation, this makes sense:
This “conscious capitalism” has been a growing trend, and for good reason. A 2006 Millennial Cause Study by Cone Inc. and AMP Insights found that 69% of Millennials will consider a company’s social and environmental commitment when deciding where to shop, and a whopping 89% are likely to switch from one brand to another if the second brand is associated with a good cause. That’s powerful motivation for companies fighting for market share.
Seems we’ve been up to our eyeballs in positioning and message strategy work at Outsource Marketing lately. Of course, positioning should be the cornerstone of all your marketing communications—without meaningful differentiation, you’ve got nothin’, after all.
But your positioning has to be more than simply unique and matter to your prospects. It has to be true, too.
If you are selling “the world’s toughest phone” that’s “virtually unbreakable,” perhaps it should be.
While Sonim XP1 CEO Bob Plaschke handled this with an amazing amount of grace, the fact is it would appear to some that this is nothing more than another hollow marketing claim.
Persuasion, good.
Puffery, bad.
Not just because you might get caught. It’s because it doesn’t respect the people that ultimately pay the bills—your customers.
Is Sonim guilty of the age-old marketer’s practice of marketing puffery? Considering their “unbreakable” phone broke, does it really matter?
“The Ringtone from Hell” is video six in our series of seven Responsible Marketing web shorts, but you could argue it has nothing to do with Responsible Marketing at all.
Truth is, a few of our shorts are about character development and having fun with the angel and devil characters as they go through their days working at Outsource Marketing.
We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back on message with video seven in a week or so.
Want to know what Responsible Marketing is about but don’t have the time to read our white paper on the topic?
Well, here’s “The 7 Keys to Responsible Marketing in 2 Minutes,” featuring the characters you’ve grown to love (or hate) in our Responsible Marketing web shorts.
Ah, ah, I almost forgot…I’m also going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too. Mmmmmkay? Thaaaaaanks!
We here at Outsource Marketing like to think that our office culture doesn’t resemble that of our good friend Bill Lumbergh’s Initech. But we do relate.
Don’t know who Bill Lumbergh is? Never heard of Initech?
Then you haven’t seen Mike Judge’s 1999 cult masterpiece “Office Space.” You don’t know what you’re missing. Here’s the trailer:
A couple months back we took time out of our busy schedules to have a little fun and watch Office Space as a team. Somehow the movie is even funnier watched in a group.
But a movie packed full of classic, memorable quotes delivered with comic brilliance inspires imitators. Lot’s of them. Over and over and over again.
Yes, “We’re going to have to have you go ahead and come in on Saturday” is a brilliant line in the hands of Gary Cole but not in the hands of amateurs.
