Down the List

I was reading an article on the CBS New York affiliate’s web page about the baggage theft problems at JFK International Airport, and reflecting that there are so many ways that this is bad that the average person probably won’t make it all of the way down the list before he or she gives up and moves on to the next story. Every experienced traveler already knows that sometimes your bags don’t make it to your final destination, and that if there is anything you absolutely can’t replace you shouldn’t put it in your checked baggage; in extreme cases this has resulting in airlines “losing” things (like dogs and cats) that are unique or irreplaceable. This is particularly upsetting considering the massive increases in security and taxpayer expense since 9/11, and the corresponding increases in discomfort, delay and invasive searches associated with air travel, but what’s even more upsetting is that this isn’t the worst part of the situation…

The potential for future terrorist incursions (as referenced in the linked story) is actually considerably worse; the authors are correct in pointing out that if dozens of random thieves can make off with items stolen from checked baggage in secure areas then the same thieves could easily introduce items (bombs, for example) into airline checked baggage in the same fashion. If there really are 200 such thefts a day at JFK, and heaven only knows how many more occurring at the nation’s other airports then an enemy could completely destroy the U.S. air network with just a handful of teams; one dirty bomb in each airport (or just one large conventional bomb under each terminal) would make it impossible for that airport to function at all for months, and the repairs needed to resume safe passenger service would take even longer…

Now, compared with all of these problems and their attendant financial, legal, civil rights and law enforcement complications, the welfare of the individual companies involved seems like a very small concern indeed – unless you employed by or heavily invested in one of the companies involved. If a single airplane or building is destroyed because one of your employees smuggled something explosive onto the airport grounds the Federal law enforcement officials will take a lot of heat, but there’s no doubt that any of your customers (or their heirs) who where harmed in the attack will sue you as well, and there’s certainly a good chance that the FAA or the FBI will bring criminal charges against anyone in your company who could have prevented such an outrage and failed to do so. You might be able to fend some of it off, considering that having one of your employees involved in a mass-murder plot isn’t something most business people have to worry about, but that defense will most likely crumble when the court hears that many of the thefts were going on in the cargo holds of your own aircraft and you couldn’t be bothered to stop it – or even bother to put security cameras in the hold…

As bad as that is, the next point might be even worse, at least from a business standpoint. It is very difficult to convince people who have just seen your employees commit mass murder (or be tricked into doing so because they were too greedy, credulous or stupid to figure out what was going on) to trust you or your employees with their lives in the future. Even if you company isn’t destroyed by criminal convictions, Federal fines, or damage awards, it may not be possible for you to break even in the future since nobody will want to do business with you again. In that case, it’s entirely possible that your failure to provide adequate security for your customers will end up destroying your entire company…

I don’t mean to suggest that the damages sustained by the airlines in the event of such an outrage would compare to the human suffering of the victims, the destruction of the U.S. economy, the loss of airport facilities in major cities that couldn’t possibly afford to replace them, or the collateral damage that would be suffered by the people of whatever country ends up being associated with the attack. I’m just saying that the business aspects are the only ones that could probably be eliminated with a handful of hidden cameras – and a corporate security division that was willing to monitor them properly…

The Ethics of Shock Value

I was originally going to post a discussion later next week about the fracas surrounding the Belvedere Vodka ad, but I’m really not sure what I could say that the folks at the Atlantic website haven’t already. There’s no question that the picture they created and ran on Face Book and Twitter was absurdly bad advertising, or that the decision to post the image where the public could see it was bad management, and I don’t see how any of my readers (assuming I have readers) would be likely to try anything similar. The company was clearly going for a unique (and possibly shocking) picture that would cut through the clutter of advertising produced by competitors selling other premium vodkas, as well as other products that could be used for the same purpose as vodka, and be remembered by the customer at the time a purchase decision was made. Just as clearly, an image that would widely be interpreted as a scene of sexual assault was a bad choice. The real question isn’t whether this ad crossed the line (it clearly did), but where the line is in the first place…

We’ve spoken in this space about the concept of “noise” in the communications sense, and how hard it is for any product advertising to cut through the noise generated by ads for competitors and substitute products. Just in the case of alcohol, the casual surfer will encounter dozens of ads just walking around, driving around, watching television or reading print media before they ever log into their web browser. If we’re going to convince potential customers to drink out product we will have to find some way to make them remember us when they are picking out a bottle, and being associated with something funny and different would be an excellent way to do that. Unfortunately, what constitutes funny, let along memorable, isn’t a universal value – and clearly, what some advertising people think is funny represents an offensive or horrifying image to other people…

Even worse, there exists a non-zero chance that an image like this one could be seen by someone has been sexually assaulted in the past, triggering a PTSD episode or other unpleasant experience – resulting in lawsuits, media outrage, being mocked by thousands of scruffy bloggers all over the Internet, and eventually a highly unfavorable image for the product. And while it is possible that any image selected for public display could be a trigger event, this is progressively less likely as the images become blander, less remarkable, or “safer” on some dimension. Unfortunately, as our advertising becomes safer and less remarkable, its effectiveness decreases and our ability to compete effectively lowers, possibly undermining our sales and threatening the survival of our company as a whole…

This leads me to ask whether the ethical responsibility of a company’s senior management team to offer good wages and benefits to its employees, purchases to its vendors, jobs and tax revenue to its community and returns on investments to its stockholders outweighs its responsibility to avoid causing psychological harm (and possibly unpleasant viewing experiences) for people who will be traumatized (or just disgusted) by using questionable advertising images? Clearly, there is a spectrum between the completely bland (a blue page with soothing white lettering?) and the offensive and completely insensitive (sexual assault used as a visual joke? Really?), but what point along that spectrum constitutes an acceptable choice?

Even in the most inoffensive and safe business unit that could possibly exist, a choice will sometimes come up between absolute safety that would destroy the company (and ruin the lives of all of its stakeholders) and absolute recklessness that would generate the highest profits (at the expense of innocent people), or some balance point in between – and that means that sooner or later, you will have to make such a decision regarding your own business. Where will you draw that line, when the moment comes?

It’s worth thinking about…

The King is Dead…

Okay, not really, but according to a story that ran today on CNN Money, Burger King is no longer the number two hamburger/fast food chain; Wendy’s has finally overtaken them. The numbers themselves shouldn’t worry any of the Burger King stockholders just yet – the company trails Wendy’s by $8.4 billion to $8.5 billion – which may be roughly $100 million in absolute terms, but is only 1.2% in relative terms. What is rather more disturbing (for the Burger King stockholders, at least) is that Wendy’s is getting this higher performance while operating 18% fewer restaurants – 5,900 units compared with Burger King’s 7,200. If I were one of the stockholders I’d definitely want to know why my company was making less money despite having 1,300 more outlets. But then, I’d also want to know who authorized some of the dumber marketing programs at Burger King – and why those individuals haven’t been fired yet…

We’ve spoken in this space about the “Freaky King” ads (television spots featuring a character with an oversize, strange-looking plastic head piece), the “Freaky King” pillowcases and tie-in merchandise, the occasionally obscene print ads, and the fact that the complete incompetence exhibited by some of the Burger King crews (including the one closest to our house) don’t appear to be helping the public perception of Burger King offering an inferior product. From a business standpoint, the most absurd factor of all has to be the outrageous treatment of the franchise holders by the parent company, considering that the success of those franchised locations – and the quality of their products and operations – is critical to the company’s overall success. Until now, however, it was only unfounded speculation on my part that all of this exceptional idiocy was going to bring down the company…

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that the decline of Burger King (and the rise of its competition) is due entirely to management shortcomings. The increasing influence of burger competitors, such as the Jimmy John’s sandwich chain, the upscale Chipotle and Qdoba Mexican-themed fast-food restaurants, and the unholy trinity of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut have all taken their toll on the hamburger sub-industry, and new entrants such as Five Guys have fragmented the market even further. And there’s no question that high fuel costs, increasing demands for food purity and ecologically responsible farming, and the general decline of the economy have all contributed to the company’s problems over the past few years. But all of these factors make it more important for Burger King to work with their franchise holders, build good relationships with their customers, and avoid advertising campaigns that offend (or creep out) huge sections of their potential customer base, rather than less – and the company does not seem to have grasped this fact…

The fact is, at the end of the day, no one is going to bail out a failing fast-food corporation. If Burger King continues to strong-arm franchise holders into selling double cheeseburgers for below cost, running “Freaky King” spots after the franchise holders (and the public) have begged them not to, and otherwise alienating the people they need to stay in business, they’re likely to vanish off of the American scene as if they were never here, and no one will notice because regional players like Jack-in-the-Box and Carl’s Jr. will take over their share of market, and we’ll all get to eat Jumbo Jacks, Ultimate Cheeseburgers, and Western Bacon Cheeseburgers instead…

You know what, forget I said anything…

Can Your Company Do That?

I was reading a very funny interview on the Huffington Post today with the founders of J&D’s Foods – the people directly responsible not only for the huge numbers of bacon-flavored food products now hitting the U.S. market, but also for the explosion of what we might call “bacon awareness” among consumers in most of the Western World. You’ve probably seen at least a few of their products advertised by now – they’re the people responsible for Bacon Salt, Baconaise, bacon croutons, bacon air freshener, bacon-flavored popcorn, bacon-flavored personal lubricant, bacon-flavored lip balm, bacon-flavored envelopes, and dozens of other bacon-flavored, bacon-shaped or bacon-oriented products…

Yes, I did say bacon-flavored personal lubricant. No, they’re not kidding…

The company’s story is worth reading for anyone with an interest in small business development or entrepreneurship, in the sense that the founders appear to have started with a good idea and a lot of chutzpah (or cojones, for our Spanish-speaking readers) and nothing else; they got their initial capital off an “America’s Funniest Home Videos” prize and had to get some food scientists to help them out of pure kindness (and probably because it was an interesting application of biochemical research) to get their formulations down. It’s also worth considering because despite the name, none of these products contain any bacon – or any animal products whatsoever; the Bacon Salt is vegetarian and kosher, in fact. But from a promotional standard, it’s still the personal lubricant at which an aspiring entrepreneur ought to take a closer look…

As previously noted, this completely outrageous product really exists, and has sold very well for the company – but it started as a stunt that was as much a practical joke as an advertising gimmick. J&D’s was launching one of their primary-line products, the Bacon Crouton; a perfectly sound and very tasty consumer product (at least, if you like bacon and croutons), but not one that was likely to draw any particular media or public attention. Purely as a joke, the company announced that they would also be releasing a bacon-flavored personal lubricant product at the same time, figuring that a small number of people would be amused by the fake product launch promotion, and it might attract a little more attention to the croutons. Instead, they got over 5,000 volunteers signing up just to beta-test the lubricant. This is essentially what had happened with their development of bacon-flavored lip-balm (which wasn’t supposed to be a serious product offering either), but the personal lubricant seems to have caught more people’s imaginations…

Now, I’m not suggesting that your business can get away with anything as outrageous as repurposing some of its ingredients (or products) as personal lubricant, or even that you would want to try. I’m not even suggesting that you should try anything as off-the-wall as trying to raise capital for your new venture on a game show, let alone trying to explain to a rabbi that a product called “Bacon Salt” is actually kosher (or vegetarian). I am calling this story to your attention because it demonstrates what can happen when you stop assuming that something can’t possibly work and start asking what would happen if it did work. Because while it is certainly true that marketing, chemistry, product development and capital acquisition all require massive amounts of hard work, the critical factor is always going to be your ability to come up with a new product (or service) concept, and your willingness to try to make it happen…

The Ethics of Mockery

We’ve talked about the ethics of free speech in this space before – and as far as I can tell, the issue remains unsettled. On the one hand, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees all Americans the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which by extension includes things written on websites and posted on Twitter and shared with the world. But, on the other hand, some kinds of speech are not protected under the First Amendment (notably hate speech, inciting people to violently overthrow the government, and certain other criminal acts), and it probably isn’t reasonable to expect a company to continue employing someone who is deliberately mocking them on various Internet channels. All other points aside, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who is that dedicated to making the company look bad is really putting forth his or her best efforts on the job. However, all of those discussions only consider the company’s side of the issue; I also have to ask about the ethics of mocking your employer in the first place…

In the recent American Airlines case, the company fired an employee who not only mocked them online, but was actually recording You Tube videos making fun of company policy, internal communications, and possibly senior personnel. American says he was publishing confidential information such as passenger itineraries and their ex-employee says he wasn’t, but the basic issue in the case is whether the company has the right to fire this flight attendant for refusing to stop his electronic mockery. The employee claims that his attacks were a response to patronizing internal communications from senior management, and were influenced directly by the absurdly bad morale created by the current management team, although it is not clear if the campaign had any impact on either the morale issues or the failures in management. And even assuming that such messages made the employees feel better and cut down on poor communications (or bad judgment) on the part of senior management, there’s no indication that these attacks provided any benefit to either party…

On the other side of the issue, it seems likely that the damage to the company’s public relations (the You Tube videos have each had tens of thousands of views; collectively they could have been seen by hundreds of thousands of potential customers) will have a negative impact on the company’s profits, which has the potential to eliminate jobs, prevent wage increases or improvements in benefits, lower stockholder value, and negatively impact all of the vendors who supply the airline and their stakeholders as well. If the value being lost by American Airlines was being recovered by the employees we could argue that it represented compensation for the insults and/or injuries being inflicted by senior management, but it’s hard to see how anyone is benefitting from this arrangement…

Ultimately, senior management at American might elect to rectify the errors being mocked online, and if it does so then it is also possible that the company’s operations will improve (by means of improved employee morale, if nothing else) and profitability may rise. But unless the management team is both willing and able to find the lessons in these online references and implement meaningful changes, then all that has happened is that lot of otherwise innocent people will have lost their jobs, their quality of living, or their investments, for no benefit to anyone. All of which leads me to an obvious question: does a disgruntled employee have any responsibility to his or her coworkers, stockholders, vendors of the company, or anyone else to try to maintain a good company image? Or do they have the right to trash the organization, even though this is far more likely to damage these stakeholders than it is to inconvenience the company executives whom they are mocking in the first place?

It’s worth thinking about…

Bad at Math

Some years ago, someone told me that my deficiency in mathematics (their words, not mine) would prevent me from obtaining an MBA, let alone a MS in Business Research, a position as a management consultant, a position as a business teacher, or indeed most of the things I have done for a living over the ensuing twenty years. When I asked why, he informed me that a manager who has poor math skills will be prone to making erroneous statements and actual operational errors which, no matter how earnest or well intentioned he or she might be, would doom his or her operations as well as making him or her look like a complete idiot. Having just viewed the most recent gaff made by the Republican presidential frontrunner, I believe I may owe that long-forgotten adviser an apology…

If you haven’t seen it, you can view the basic clip here; I’ve watched the longer segment from which this clip was taken, but regrettably this does not appear to have been taken out of context. Governor Romney really is discussing “getting rid of” Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organization over which he has no control, and of which some 69% of all Americans approve and want to continue funding. This may be considered pandering to the nation’s conservatives, many of whom make occasional efforts to de-fund the agency, but can’t be considered a realistic goal for any Federal official (even the President), given that not only does two-thirds of the agency’s funding come from private and foundation sources, but also considering that Planned Parenthood provides any number of services that the Federal government would otherwise have to provide…

Now, I realize that I don’t usually discuss political issues in this space; none of my degrees are in law, political science, public policy, or even finance (much less medicine), and I try to leave such topics to those better equipped to discuss them intelligently. In this case, however, Mr. Romney is trying to represent himself as a successful businessman, and arguing that this factor makes him the superior choice for President – and this is, clearly, nonsense. While the former governor may, in fact, be a competent manager (I can’t tell without auditing his books, and neither can you), he seems to be unclear on the basic math of the situation – that 69% is larger than 31%, for example, or that defunding 32% of a non-profit agency will not force it out of operations, or even that the majority of the voting population of the United States is female…

Even worse, in my opinion, is Mr. Romney’s apparent lack of understanding regarding Law or Government. Short of passing a Federal statute that outlaws everything Planned Parenthood does – not just abortions, but contraception, family planning, education, basic health services, the works – there is no way the Federal government can do anything to “get rid of” the agency. And the President can’t even do that; the Executive Branch does not pass laws, and attempting something so wide-ranging by Executive Order would be problematic at best. This isn’t a math issue, of course; it’s more a matter for Civics class or perhaps American History. Unfortunately, both of these subjects are also taught in elementary school, and any reasonably bright ten-year-old in America would realize that this is just as idiotic from a Government point of view as it is from a Mathematics standpoint…

This doesn’t even consider the cost-benefit analysis of a government action that would anger and offend more than 70% of the population, or the probable cost to one’s political campaign of coming out in favor of such an action, but I think you take my point. Anybody who can’t grasp that for every person you’re pandering to with a specific promise you’re offending two others would have difficulty running a lemonade stand, let alone a country. And I certainly wouldn’t want him serving as the CEO of any company in which I’ve invested money…

Watch That Computer!

There was a story on the UPI website this week about an incident at a Radio Shack in Maryland last week, where the salesman wrote an unflattering description of the customer onto her receipt after they exchanged words regarding the 5-cent “plastic bag” tax implemented in the community around the store. If you’ve ever been to a Radio Shack you’re probably already familiar with their in-store Point-of-Sale computer system (which is called a POS for a reason), and the annoying way the clerk has to input your contact information every time they sell you anything. What you may not have realized is that the system also requires all of the same information for refunds, even if the customer is angry and wants his or her money back because a local ordinance is adding five cents to her total charge…

It’s easy to imagine the scene, isn’t it? The clerk, who couldn’t do anything about local taxes and charges if he wanted to; the customer who has had one too many things go wrong today; the increasingly unpleasant exchange, and finally the demand to just refund the whole transaction – and the refusal to repeat any of the contact information. It would undoubtedly have gone better if the clerk had entered something else into the contact information pages (even random keystrokes); the clerk should have realized that anyone who was already that irate was likely to blow up at him for such a prank, and that anyone who would demand a full refund over a 5-cent charge would probably make a huge stink out of his prank, writing to corporate headquarters and informing the media. Still, I can help reflecting that things could still be much worse…

I was transported back to an event that happened nearly 18 years ago now, when I was working in a drug store in Los Angeles. The company’s advertising slogan at the time was “[Company Name]: Count on People Who Care!” which was repeated on television ads, billboards, and at the bottom of all receipts. But one day a story turned up in the paper about someone (it later turned out to be a disgruntled employee) who had reprogrammed one of the stores’ computers to print “[Company Name]: Ask Us If We Care!” Corporate Headquarters in Chicago (and our regional HQ in Anaheim) went into overdrive trying to bury the story, but as our local paper had a circulation of a million and a half, that didn’t really work. And there wasn’t much they could do about spinning it…

Now, since that time I’ve seen a lot of unauthorized comments on receipts (and other documents), and there’s no question that our chain of drug stores got off easy in the 1994 episode – or that Radio Shack is likely to avoid any major bad outcomes from this incident, either. And it’s probably unrealistic to expect every employee down on the sharp end of customer service to behave like a perfect gentleman after some unbalanced customer has jumped all over him for a 5-cent municipal fee, especially when (as is often the case in retail) he’s only being paid minimum wage. I call this story to your attention because this customer is still out there, along with thousands (or millions) of others just like her, and sooner or later one of them is going to pick a fight with someone from your company, too…

Humanity versus Safety

There was a story that hit the news last week about a family being removed from a Jet Blue flight to Boston when they were unable to get their 2-year-old daughter to stop having a tantrum and sit down for takeoff. The parents insist that their toddler is a good kid who was just having a bad day – and a particularly bad meltdown –and claim that the airline should have showed them “a little bit of humanity” in letting them continue on board. Instead, the pilot decided to return to the gate and have the family taken off the plane, citing safety reasons. There’s no question that the airline was within its legal rights – FAA regulations leave safety decisions to the pilot, and if he or she feels that a given passenger needs to be taken off the aircraft, that’s what happens. But from a business standpoint, it does raise the question of what to do about these confrontations…

First off, it seems obvious that no one goes around trying to get their toddlers to misbehave in public. Even those delusional parents who apparently believe that everyone in the world finds their shrieking offspring as delightful as they do will, in general, want to avoid attracting attention and making a scene when they’re stuck in a small aluminum tube at 30,000 feet with a bunch of increasingly irritable strangers. By the same token, we should probably acknowledge that even the best behaved children in the world will occasionally perform less than perfectly, especially when under stress or outside of their comfort zone. However, none of that changes the fact that air travel is stressful for adults, too, and having to do it while someone else’s child is screaming his or her head off and running around the aircraft like a maniac is not going to help…

Second, however little the parents in our story might want to admit it, the pilot’s safety concerns are quite real. If the aircraft encounters any serious turbulence there’s a definite chance of a passenger being thrown into a wall or bulkhead and seriously injured, and if that passenger is a two-year-old who won’t sit down those injuries could be fatal. For that matter, if the plane loses cabin pressure and the parents can’t get an oxygen mask on the toddler because he or she is running around the cabin, the child and whichever parent tries to go and get her could both die of asphyxia before the flight crew can get the aircraft down under 15,000 feet, and if there’s an emergency landing a toddler running loose could easily be trampled to death by other passengers trying to flee from the wreck. And none of that even considers the risks inherent in the parents (and/or their offspring) being beaten to death by irate passengers who can’t stand another minute of having someone else’s child screaming his or her head off…

I kid, of course, but I’d be willing to bet you cash that at least some of the other passengers were applauding (or wanted to, at least) when the family in our story was taken off the airplane. It’s possible that the parents are correct, and the airline has a responsibility to them, in terms of humanity or sympathy. But we should remember that the company is also responsible for the safety and comfort of the other 150 or so people aboard that flight, not to mention their employees, stockholders, vendors, and other stakeholders, all of whom will be harmed in various ways if the airline is sued, grounded, or forced out of business. In the long run, if a customer has been asked to get their children to sit down and hold still for takeoff, and after a significant delay they’re still having to “hold them down” to keep one of the children from exploding off across the cabin (while still shrieking his or her head off), it’s probably unreasonable to expect the airline to put everyone else at risk…

The Ethics of Endorsements

We’ve spoken in this space before about celebrity endorsements – movie stars and professional athletes being paid huge amounts of money to publicly state that they use products they’ve never actually be in the same ZIP code with, let alone used. Some of these are vaguely plausible in nature – Michael Jordan really did wear the Nike shoes named in his honor, although we are justified in questioning whether he would have done so without the very lucrative contract he received in return – while others are completely absurd – Jennifer Lopez didn’t actually drive the new Fiat convertible, let alone drive it through the neighborhood in New York that she claims is the source of her spiritual energy. But while we can probably agree that such ads are annoying as an insult to our intelligence, it is still worth asking if the practice is unethical as well. I thought we should take a closer look…

On the one hand, it’s highly unlikely that anyone who has been exposed to electronic media all of his or her life actually believes that any given celebrity actually uses any specific product, regardless of whether that celebrity is featured in the advertising of the product. It is just barely possible that very young children or very simple-minded consumers might actually believe that they should purchase a product because the commercial implies that an individual of whom they think highly uses that product, but for the most part a paid endorsement will be seen as an advertising gimmick, just like any other. Unless we have some reason to believe that the use of the endorsement has an inherently negative effect on the end user (the company is paying so much for the endorsement that it has to raise the price of the product to a burdensome degree, for example), the use of such promotions can’t really be considered unethical in itself…

On the other hand, there is no question that the use of a celebrity spokesperson is an attempt to associate the qualities of that individual with the product being promoted, or that this association is sometimes without basis. Robert Wagner is not a certified financial advisor, and thus lends only charisma and gravitas to commercials about reverse mortgages, not any guarantee of fiscal soundness; Wilfred Brimley is not a medical doctor and can’t therefore actually attest to the health value of Quaker Oats, and so on. This will occasionally backfire on the advertisers – as in the case where James Garner had to have bypass surgery shortly after becoming the spokesman for the American Beef Council – but even when it doesn’t, it is an attempt to endow a product with qualities it would not otherwise have. The classic case is tobacco products, which have traditionally be associated with cool, rugged or sophisticated individuals (depending on the brand and the era) rather than lung cancer – an association which contributes to 400,000 deaths each year, and thus can’t be described as exactly ethical…

In the long run, of course, people are going to make whatever purchase decisions and lifestyle choices they want to make, based on whatever values they use for such decisions, and people who would purchase a product they do not need (or can’t survive using) because a beloved or respected celebrity told them to probably won’t have survived childhood (what with cartoon characters telling them to play with high explosives and such). The real question is whether we as businesspeople have an ethical responsibility to provide correct and complete product information and allow consumers to make their own decisions solely on the merits of the product, or if we have a responsibility to our stockholders, employees, vendors, and other stakeholders to achieve the highest possible volume of sales, even if that means implying that a famous celebrity routinely uses a product that he or she has actually never even seen…

It’s worth thinking about…

Squatters

Some time ago I wrote a post in this space about the practice of “typo squatting” – registering an Internet address that was one character off from a heavily-trafficked site in the hopes of catching large numbers of visitors who had typed the real address incorrectly. Probably the most famous (or infamous) case of this scheme was the site called Whitehouse.com – the actual site for the White House is Whitehouse.gov – which exposed huge numbers of otherwise innocent Surfers to hardcore porn advertising until it became an Internet legend. Most of these scams are at worst an annoying reminder to be careful about what you type – especially in a business context or while on the Internet – but there was a story about one example this week that was so egregious I felt that it bears repeating…

You can pick up the story off of the Consumerist web site (including the links to local television stations that have been reporting on this) if you want to, but the basic idea is that students attempting to reach the Federal government’s financial aid application at FAFSA.gov are instead ending up at FAFSA.com, the home of a private “service” that will offer to help them fill out their financial aid forms for the price of $80 or so. The site does say that it’s not associated with the U.S. Department of Education, and even offers a link to the free application site, but apparently it is sufficiently confusing to enough people that local television stations are getting complaints about it – and it’s not hard to see why…

Now, I suppose you could argue that if someone can’t tell the difference between a .com site and a .gov site they’re probably not college material in the first place, and the bogus site is actually doing them a favor. But given how bizarre and confusing a great many government and education sites are to begin with, this isn’t really anything more than a (possibly) amusing quip; even if we could accept that such an assessment is true, it’s still not the place of some random joker who runs a website to make it. More to the point, perhaps, such a policy would be outrageously unfair to foreign speakers, non-traditional students, people who can’t afford a computer or don’t have the leisure time to spend hours wandering around on the Internet, or anyone else who isn’t blessed with the wit and ‘net savvy of the people making such cracks. And even if none of these objections applied, there would still be the point that this website is scamming money off of people in return for a service that helps them to apply for FREE government assistance – and interferes with communications between applicants and the real FAFSA program…

I’m not saying that the people running the FAFSA.com site are doing anything criminal – that’s for the appropriate law enforcement and U.S. Attorney’s office to figure out – and I’m not sure there is any way to prevent unscrupulous (or just extremely annoying) people from trying similar “typo-squatting” scams in the future anyway. It is entirely possible that this sort of Internet outrage (criminal or not) is just one of the facts of our new cyber world, like SPAM emails and pop-up ads, and we’re all just going to have to live with it. I’m just suggesting that the next time you visit an unfamiliar website and it starts doing something you weren’t expecting it to do, it might be worth checking the address before you proceed…

Gone Too Far?

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past couple of weeks you’ve probably already heard about the fracas going on between ultra-conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and his advertising sponsors – or his former sponsors, as an increasing number of them are becoming. I don’t intend to comment on the political aspects of the situation – I’ll leave that to those better qualified in political science, history or abnormal psychology (it depends on your point of view) – but I do find it interesting that the issue of healthcare benefits, which is usually a lot less interesting than watching paint dry, has now become a political hot-button topic contentious enough to impel major right-wing celebrities into making personal attacks on apparently innocent graduate students for expressing an opinion in front of a Congressional committee when asked to do so. It’s also somewhat intriguing watching the arguments over whether or not this sort of thing should be protected speech – and whether or not advertisers should be pulling their support for the program…

Regardless of how one feels about Limbaugh and his political positions, it seems clear that he has the right to voice them, and his radio network has the right to broadcast them. People who believe that health insurance benefits should include reproductive health and family planning services are not a protected class of citizens, and none of the radio broadcasts I’ve heard about advocated violence against them. These comments may be hateful, vitriolic, ignorant, and personally offensive; they may also be professionally incompetent, in the sense of driving support away from the speaker’s alleged political and social allies and making all right-wing pundits (and politicians) look like bigots and idiots (to the extent that there’s a difference). But there doesn’t seem to be any possibility of banning these broadcasts from a legal standpoint. Doing so as a business decision is another matter…

No organization that does business with (and therefore makes money on) customers from liberal or centrist ideologies would want to be associated with this type of broadcast, given the high probability of anger and disgust for Limbaugh transferring to their product or service (or worse yet, to the companies themselves). Thus, many of the companies that believe they have customers (or potential customers) in those demographic groups are abandoning their support for the program by refusing to pay for advertising time during those broadcasts. Normally, we would expect to see this type of avoidance (or outright flight) on the part of right-wing companies in reaction to things they consider too radical, liberal or risqué for public broadcast, but the principle applies just as well to offerings on either side of the spectrum, and I don’t think there can be any question that the advertisers are within their rights as well…

My point here is that from a business standpoint, none of the parties involved are doing anything questionable. Any radio station (or network of stations) is completely within its rights to broadcast programs that are offensive to millions of listeners, provided that they don’t violate any of the actual laws about hate speech, obscenity, and so on. By the same token, any company is completely within its rights to refuse to sponsor any of these programs, either because the material is reprehensible in its own right or because they are concerned that their customers’ displeasure with the program will translate to lower sales or any other unwanted business condition. Any intervention into the situation can only be seen as a violation of free speech and free enterprise – and we’ve seen plenty of historical examples that prove that neither of these things is a good idea…

A friend of mine once wrote that “The Constitution does not guarantee the right to be listened to,” and I’ve always felt he had a point. In the case of Limbaugh versus everyone with a conscience, I’d have to say that the system is working exactly the way it’s supposed to…

Are You Winning?

I was very amused to notice a story online last week about Charlie Sheen being signed to endorse the newest version of the Fiat 500 in the company’s next television commercial. Regular readers of this space (assuming that there are any) will recall my post some time ago regarding the Jennifer Lopez spot for this same vehicle, and the scandal that erupted when it came out that the star of the ad had never actually driven a Fiat 500, having filmed her part of the commercial on a soundstage in California while a look-alike drove the car in New York City. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to be a problem this time – according to the CNN Money site the Sheen ad was filmed on a set from the beginning, and doesn’t attempt to present the footage as anything other than an amusing bit of television – but even so, I have to wonder if this particular approach is actually a good idea…

The problem with the Fiat 500 series is that very small cars have never sold that well in the United States, where our love affair with huge, gas-guzzling machines has been very well documented. You can attempt to sell these vehicles on the basis of fuel economy and its attendant savings of both money and the environment, or you can emphasize their convenience, engineering and manufacturing quality, and unexpected capacity and utility, but most of the Fiat’s competitors are already doing that. Fiat will therefore have to overcome the first-mover advantage Toyota has secured for the Prius and BMW has gotten for the Mini, while at the same time dealing with the company’s horrible reputation in the United States, where its product are widely believed to have the mechanical reliability of a two-dollar supercomputer. This is certainly possible – Toyota once had the same sort of reputation in the U.S., and they appear to have gotten over it – but it’s going to take more than just clever positioning of the product, as the people behind the Smart car could already tell them…

Fiat is trying to establish a new image for the tiny car by hiring a celebrity whom they hope will be considered “edgy” and “fun” by people in the car’s target demographic; the implication being both that the car will remind you of Charlie and also that if you drive it you too can be edgy and fun, just like Charlie. They’ve also been working on the old automobile marketing trick of getting the viewer to associate the car with an attractive woman – in this case by using a spot in which an actual woman turns into a Fiat. But even if you like the idea of your car turning into a celebrity (or being a celebrity), I’m not sure if this is the one you would choose. Personally, if I’m going to purchase a car on the basis of its resemblance to a celebrity, I’d be inclined to select a celebrity who is somewhat less likely to accidentally drive the car off of a cliff…

Of course, that’s kind of the point – unlike the previous ad spot, Fiat isn’t asking you to take the Charlie Sheen ad seriously. You already know that it’s somewhat unlikely that a well-known actor drives a subcompact car in the first place, and even if he did he probably wouldn’t be driving it around inside the house. I wouldn’t give much for this commercial’s chances as an endorsement, or as a standard advertising pitch to give the product (or its owner) the characteristics of the spokesman, but as comedy – as a spot that attempts to cut through the clutter of advertising noise through the use of humor – it has possibilities. Whether the product has a future in the U.S. market remains to be seen, however…

The Ethics of Titles

A few weeks back there was a story running around the news sites about the director of a major social service agency who had once served in a high national office, and how she was now requiring everyone who worked for the agency to address her by her former title, rather than as Ms (or by her first name). If you’ve spent any time on the non-profit side of business you already know that this is a bit eccentric; most non-profits are managed and operated by people who care about the cause they are working on, or at least about the constituency they are trying to serve, to the exclusion of money, fame, status or any other common motivation. They are unlikely to request any special title or form of address, and even less likely to tolerate being required to acknowledge someone’s status in any other organization. But just because such a requirement is eccentric, not to mention arrogant, does that mean it is also unethical?

There are any number of high-ranking posts that include a permanent title as one of the perks of the job. Someone who has previously served as the governor of a state, for example, is correctly addressed as Governor Whoever, even if their term ended decades ago and they have never returned to public life. One could certainly argue that anyone who has devoted the time and effort required to achieve high public office – and then served in that position with any degree of distinction – has earned the right to be accorded with a title of honor from then on. Where this convention becomes murky is when these honors are claimed by people who have never been elected to any post; who served in appointed positions at the pleasure of an executive who may have been merely returning an old favor or rewarding a trusted crony (with no particular virtues beyond loyalty to his or her patron). Continued use of the title is still legal, but requiring people to acknowledge your achievements when all you have accomplished is toadying, boot licking and the like seems a bit questionable…

On the other hand, most non-profit organizations require working ridiculous hours under impossible conditions in the pursuit of solutions to impossible problems for insultingly low compensation – and that’s just for the temps; most of the permanent staff have it even worse. Anyone who has given up a comfortable, high-paying, well-respected position offering perks like a permanent title in order to manage such an agency is probably entitled to anything that makes them feel better – assuming, of course, that it doesn’t undermine the agency or its mission. The problem is that all of the other employees of your average non-profit have also given up higher-paying jobs with more perks and better working conditions – sacrificed, in other words, just as the executives have, and frequently without the benefits of a fancy title to use or a staff of subordinates to feel superior to. Such people may be willing to accept the conditions they work under because the agency offers them a chance to participate in making a better world – but they’re unlikely to be impressed by anyone else’s sacrifices, given the ones they are already making…

In the long run, most of the people who are committed enough to a cause to work full time for an agency that works on that cause don’t really care what the people at the top want to be called, so long as they are good for the agency and ultimately for the cause itself. The question is, all else being equal, should the agency encourage the use of first names (or some other egalitarian form of address) in order to foster a collegial atmosphere, or use any available measures of respect (titles or otherwise) in order to express appreciation for people with experience, influence or connections who are willing to lend their credentials to the enterprise?

It’s worth thinking about…