Measuring Up

Put that in your pipe and chew it!

Yes, I realize that this headline is both foolish and a mixed metaphor. But, when I heard a Cleveland Cavaliers basketball player exclaim this line last night in an interview, I laughed so hard that I decided to write about it.

Professional athletes and their coaches (many of whom used to be professional athletes) are notorious for butchering metaphors, analogies and clichés in media interviews.  I’ll admit to flubbing a few of these well intentioned lines in my day, as well. But, some professional athletes are in an entirely different league when it comes to the succession of incongruous or ludicrous comparisons that come out of their mouths each and every day.  Here are a few of my favorites that I’ve recently heard:

-    “Left hand, right hand, it doesn’t matter. I’m amphibious” --  Professional basketball player
-    “Can’t let one bad apple spoil the whole ball of wax” – Professional baseball manager
-    “I don’t want to shoot my mouth in my foot, but those are games we can win” – Professional football player
-    “I can see the light at the end of the tightrope” – Former professional basketball player. Now team president.

What’s my point (you might be thinking)? I’ll tell you.

When athletes make the jump from amateur to professional levels these days, they have a thousand and one counselors/coaches/mentors available to them. These experts try to teach them everything  from how to save and invest their new found money (that is still a tricky one for many), to quickly become more mature and professional  in how they handle themselves in the public (off the field or court), to dealing with the mental and physical grind of long, tedious seasons that they’ve never experienced before. But, are they ever coached or provided any guidance on how to become better public speakers… especially during press interviews?

Probably not. And, this reality is a real mistake. When these celebrities come across so poorly in the public eye, it only reflects negatively on them. Sure, they might have high paying jobs now, but, on average, most will be looking for a new career in two to four years. Whether they want to use their notoriety to move into a public broadcasting job or something else, those who speak as if they are uneducated, will probably face much longer odds of ever landing that next job they really want. It also becomes problematic when that first “crisis” strikes and those naïve and often inarticulate athletes are now in a panic situation, but have never been properly trained on how to communicate beforehand.  Instead, irony hits hard after the crisis hits when dozens of “close confidants” come to their side, offering lots of advice on what to say and how to say it. Unfortunately at that point, it’s often too late.

This post keeps bringing me back to one of my favorite movies, Bull Durham. Remember when Kevin Costner’s character (Crash Davis) started to mentor “Meat” (the highly uncivilized pitching prodigy that Tim Robbins played). After Costner witnessed Meat’s horrendous interviewing skills, he said to him.”You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them. You’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down -- we gotta play it one day at a time.”

If only every professional athlete had his own Crash Davis, the sports world would be so much better off (at least better spoken).

Have you recently heard any mixed metaphors or just plain bad quotes that are hilarious? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Is any sponsor safe anymore?

As the Tiger fall out continues (I think it's something like day 17 or 18 now), the business stories have begun to focus on which of Tiger’s many multi-million dollar sponsors will terminate their relationship with him. Of course, now that the shock of his transgressions has worn off, this is the most natural issue to turn to. Today, Gillette announced that it will severely limit Tiger's involvement with company endorsements. No surprise, Accenture has removed him from its Web Site and pretty much every other sponsor has stopped promoting Tiger in any way.

That's all par for this course. Yet, I believe there is a larger, more significant issue that all marketers need to be thinking about:  If Tiger Woods, the ultimate gold standard role model for kids and adults alike can fall from grace like this, then is any athlete or celebrity sponsorship safe anymore? And, should the sponsorship industry make wholesale changes to its strategies now when it comes to focusing on singular celebrity endorsements to build brands?

My answer is no... and yes. Here's my deeper explanation.

Tying a brand (or company's) image so closely to one (or even two) celebrity endorsements(s) has always been a risky proposition. Over the last 20 years, I've heard many a client tell me that his/her worst fear is to receive that call (or email) from some reporter who has the scoop that their corporate sponsor has been caught using drugs, abusing his wife or living out some other illegal or unethical act that will surely create big customer/investor problems. Still, in the past, the reward has clearly outperformed the potential risk for some very smart marketers like Nike, Gatorade and Accenture (which have achieved major business gains through singular endorsements). I believe that part of the reason for their success is because they seem to be highly selective with whom they allow to represent their brand (one would think an accounting firm has a very sophisticated risk analysis process for vetting endorsement candidates). And, when their celebrities got themselves into real troubles (think Michael Jordan as Nike's face when he had serious gambling issues), this 24/7 digital landscape (which never allows for stories to die) either didn't exist, or wasn't nearly as powerful as it has become today.

The latter point is what marketers should really be concerned about. For the heck of it, I googled the words 'Tiger' and 'Nike' just now. Something to the tune of 1,700 stories, blogs, tweets and other discussions/articles came up. Many have threads of content which question Nike's decision making behind associating Tiger as the "face and ethics of its brand." Unlike what happened in the "old days" of Michael Jordan, Nike's stock and sales have now taken a real hit because it's so closely associated with Tiger. The power behind digital communications is that it allows for anyone to push out opinions (like me), create more gossip and in this case, initiate a continually growing "mob-like," virtual attack that has clearly played a major supporting role in hurting this sports apparel company's core business.

Tiger stood for all those wonderful qualities (commitment, professionalism, can do attitude, winning, pure and ethical, etc.) that its sponsors believed would never fail them. In many ways, Tiger was a no-brainer...the ultimate safe sponsorship.  So now, there is no one or nothing that truly is a safe bet.

Corporate marketers need to change their "bet everything on the farm" endorsement strategies now. They might want to take a page out of the pharmaceutical industry's drug development strategy play book instead. These giant companies invest billions of dollars on dozens of drugs with the hope that just one or two might eventually make it to market as a block buster seller. They have to hedge their bets across many drug investments because each one has such a low risk of ever baring real fruit. And, the risk is simply too great to place a company's future behind one miracle cure.

In this same vein, corporate marketers cannot look at one beloved athlete as its "miracle cure" anymore. Instead, they should create many, smaller, but equally focused endorsements which allow for brands to achieve more modest benefits from attributes that each celebrity brings to its products or company. And, they can bypass all the unavoidable risk and eventual disasters that one endorsement will probably bring someday. Remember, one face associated with a company or brand completely ties the two together in almost every way. On the flip side, any one of 15 or 30 faces which are far less promoted with said company or brand, can be extricated so much more painlessly should the need arise.

Not exactly "The Worlds Local Bank"

Does this line seem familiar? It should. HSBC Bank has been promoting this tagline in its long running advertising  campaign over the last 3-4 years.

I always thought that the positioning behind this advertising is both creative and compelling. And, the bank also takes an innovative approach to where the ads are seen. For example, some hit you right in the face in Newark, London, San Francisco and Hong Kong immediately after deboarding any Continental flight. The full-sized billboard ads are impossible to miss because they line the narrow runway that every passenger has to walk through to exit.

Think about what HSBC is trying to communicate about itself, for a moment. What small or mid-sized business and consumer wouldn't want to feel that their bank provides a plethora of sophisticated global benefits to them? Yet, at the same time, each customer is delightfully treated in a small town, warm and personalized “you matter to us," demeanor.

Sounds like a slice of heaven, right? Too bad (in my experience) the campaign doesn't ring true. And, for a variety of other reasons,  I believe HSBC should think seriously about dumping this very expensive marketing program because it only serves to damage the bank's image.

We spoke to HSBC about a year ago when my firm was looking at changing bankers. We wanted exactly what HSBC is advertising. Our first meeting went well -- we met with a nice team of bankers. Seemed bright. Told us we'd experience all that this campaign proudly promoted. Great.

Then, reality set in over the next few weeks as we poked and prodded HSBC and a variety of other big and small competitors to deliberate which one made sense for us.

For starters, HSBC wasn't competitive on price with other smaller ones because of huge, global overhead and risk concerns. I have no issue with higher costs if there is more value offered.  The problem is that because the bank was going through a world of hurt (bad subprime loans), every decision, on every loan deal had to be made from London. The result was that this "local" bank had underwriters (from a continent away) who didn't know us, making broad, cookie cutter decisions that clearly didn't fit our needs. And, they were so risk averse to any potential new loan that the cumbersome rules and terms being offered were downright valueless. On top of that, the time it took to actually receive a proposal was absurd. This was because of the lengthy bureaucratic red tape that existed in every single decision this behemoth had to make.

In the end, we received no local "care" or understanding of our needs and a whole lot of we "can't move on a dime" attitude. The experience was exactly the opposite of what HSBC promises in its ads. Needless to say, we passed on their offer.

The banking disaster that we all experienced over the last 15 months has made most customers feel very different about this industry. Even if there is an inkling of truth to HSBC's advertising, I have to question how credible it is to leave the same campaign running now, when so much big bank cynicism exists. Read the past headlines. HSBC was mired in the financial muck as much as the others. This bank suffered huge losses, shut down many operations and laid off thousands of people in local markets around the world.

Seems to me that it would have been much more credible for this bank to take a fresh, new look at its positioning after the financial destruction took place. After all, like the rest of them, it made some pretty bad decisions across the globe in so many of those individual markets where it is supposedly local.  More to the point, anyone can promote anything they want about their entity. But, if the messages being advertised don't fit the reality that customers experience, the communications isn't just worthless, it will actually serve to create negative feelings toward that company.

Would you like to know how I feel about HSBC?

The Foxes who live in this hen house

I really get nauseous every time I see another article and caption describing how Senator Chris Dodd and  Congressman Barney Frank are overhauling our financial system.

Weren't these two jokers part of the gang to blame for getting us into the housing mess in the first place? If memory serves, both men (who sat on banking/finance committees way back in the Clinton Administration days) pushed hard on opening up first home buying opportunities for those who never could afford to own before. They were quite successful because they forced Fannie Mae to significantly lessen its mortgage standards for who would be deemed credit worthy to buy a home. Their laws created opportunities for banks everywhere to drop any and all ethics they had left. The result was something called subprime mortgages. You can read about the rest in any good history book.

What's my point (you might be asking)?

I'll tell you. Our political system stinks. And, one big reason why is because guys like Dodd and Frank have become professional career politicians. Because of this, they can (and have) entrench themselves into committees that have absolute power. Incredibly, this allows them to remain in charge after they facilitated creating the biggest economic disaster in 80 years.

How are these jokers still in leadership roles charged with changing banking regulations now? It's just amazing. They continue to feast on power because our system allows it. And, that's just wrong.

I have a solution. And, I’ve said it (and written it) before. We, the people, should create a new law that prohibits any American from serving more than two terms in office. That would pertain to any public office.

Wasn't this the true concept that our founding fathers had over 200 years ago? Back then, Americans served their fellow man by taking public office for a brief period in their life. This ‘sacrifice’ away from their careers and/or livelihoods was deemed very important because it helped preserve (our ever so delicate) Constitution and these public servants created new laws that were needed to establish rule and order.

I know we live in a different world now. But, think about it. If politicians could only serve two terms, then they probably wouldn't need to spend all their time shoring up power and votes (i.e. always worrying about the next election). And just maybe, our system could simply focus on passing laws that a new breed of politicians actually think will do well for their fellow citizens versus what will keep them in office.

I think this new political system could also bring more ‘fresh blood’ and innovative thinking into our stale, corrupt pockets of government, as well.

Sure, I’ve thought about the negatives with my concept. We'd clearly lose lots of institutional knowledge on important issues within key committees (Military and Armed forces are two highly specialized ones that come to mind). Still, I'd  rather end this current system (and live with that sacrifice) when it allows two hatchet men like Dodd and Frank to remain in complete power, bumbling around the same issues that that they helped screw up more than a decade ago.