The value paradox

I’m absolutely fascinated by the debate to re-brand the GOP.  Not that I have any vested interest in either political party. It’s the process and ideas that are eerily reminiscent of similar debates going on in many companies.  Now, here’s a political party that was all about values… social values, family values, core values… and more values.  You’d think that any value-rich party like that would be in power now and forever.  Jack Burkman of Politico.com nailed the GOP value problem in his article just prior to last year’s presidential elections: “The GOP is crumbling. With no leadership and no discernible values, principles or direction, congressional Republicans seem all but certain to be steamrolled by President Barack Obama, whose early approval numbers top 75 percent.” (Italics are mine.)

Let me tackle the value paradox first. Many companies talk about values as in “we don’t discriminate in the workplace.” Sorry, but that’s not a value, at least not in Canada. It’s the law.  It’s like saying “we don’t shoot our employees for poor performance.”  These are clearly not discernible values. I found a better definition of value on a website ranked #1 by Google called (I’m not kidding) “believes and values:” Values are about how we have learnt to think things ought to be or people ought to behave, especially in terms of qualities such as honesty, integrity and openness.

Now, let me take this a little further. I suspect that somewhere, somehow, over time, the whole concept of “value” got de-valued.  It may have something to do with our perverse quest to assign quantitative values to qualitative attributes because, in business, we have to measure everything.  Honesty, integrity and openness are priceless but hard to quantify in the same way as your daily widget output. In fact, these attributes have more to do with morality than the (now) wishy-washy concept of values. It’s unfortunate that “morality” has almost a pejorative meaning, perhaps helped by a few ministers from moral majority circles cavorting with sexual workers.

Morality is defined as principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Morality is also defined by behavior or qualities judged to be good. And here’s the rub.  Morality in the workplace forces us to take a stand, to judge all people by the same yardstick as they are going to judge us.  Morality is moral excellence based on the code of ethical conduct and it starts at the executive suite.

The code of ethical conduct, practiced, is something that may have saved us from the housing bubble, or prevented senior executives from spending $10 million on office renovations while taxpayers were trying to save their company.  And, let us not forget these values, written in 2001: “We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely.”  Yes, that’s Enron.

Strong brand = “what-the-hell” decision

Don’t know if you feel the same way, but it seems the word “brand” has now been used for just about everything under the sun.  And I’m getting sick of it.  For example, Gawker’s piece on Desire Rogers, Obama’s Socialite-in-Chief (SIC) Determined to Ruin His Image, quotes her interview with the WSJ: “We have the best brand on earth – the Obama brand. Our possibilities are endless,” she tells WSJ’s Amy Chozick.  She likens her approach to that of Dove in expanding beyond a bar of soap.  I find it hard to think of President Obama as a bar of soap, but if his SIC thinks so, maybe we had been too harsh on Hillary back in the primaries.  Ms. Rogers has an MBA from the same university as the previous president.  And, as it happens, she donated $2,000 to Mr. Bush in 2004, according to Gawker.

I Googled “what is brand” and some pretty strange definitions came back.  Most authors describe what brand is not.  OK, let’s start there.  Brand recognition on its own doesn’t mean you have a strong brand. Most people in North America recognize GM, but that alone means next to nothing as far as consumers’ preferences go.  Let me give you an example from my own family.  Sam, my father-in-law, who is now 86 years old, said three years ago that he was going to trade his Buick, the brand he’s been loyal to for 30 years, for a used (!) Mercedes. That’s when I knew GM was toast:  if its old, loyal customers felt this way, this company was bound to disappear. RIP Buick.

I’m writing this post on my MacBook and I’m not dumb enough to think I couldn’t have done it on my Dell laptop.  But I like the feel of my Mac, the same way I like my iPod.  My Dell costs about half what I paid for my Mac, but it’s one of those “what-the-hell” decisions.  Could this be the definition of a real brand?  Something that gets you to make an irrational buying decision even though it makes no economic sense?  

This is Not Funny Anymore

Jon Stewart’s rant about CNBC last night must have been his funniest show ever.  But when the laughter died, it left me with an uneasy feeling about the future of the financial network.

In less than ten minutes, Mr. Stewart took CNBC apart and also confirmed our worst fears – there is something not right with some mainstream media.  They’ve changed their focus from information to infotainment and are now becoming micro-infotainment as each “talent” (they’re not journalists in the traditional sense) becomes his or her own commentator/stand-up comic.  Or, as one of my print journalist friends calls them, bingo caller.

The micro-infotainment may be taking the whole concept of personal brand to an extreme, but that’s exactly what is expected of TV talent these days.  Perhaps the micro-infotainment is a symptom of our consumerism.  Viewers want their news packaged in small, cute pieces, funny or outrageous, and, above all, colorful.  Media are desperate to retain audiences and are therefore only too happy to keep the customer satisfied.  Unfortunately, the product isn’t ultimately satisfying, so that programs that deliver it may become irrelevant. Or, as happened to CNNfn less than five years ago, gone entirely.

This presents an interesting dilemma for media relations: where are the stakeholders we’re trying to reach?  How do we reach them? Which media are still relevant and credible?  I know that trying to book your CEO on the Jon Stewart show may sound like a lunatic proposition, unless he/she wrote an amazing book and can tell a joke without looking like a funeral director doing pole dance.

Social media consultants like to think that blogging and twittering is the answer.  But only a miniscule number of bloggers reach large audiences and, if you know of a CEO’s blog that is read by the same size audience as the Economist, please let me know.  We need extended media relations, capable of maximizing every media channel. (And please, don’t call it Media Relations 2.0, or some other dumb number.)  We need to make well-performing senior executives relevant again and that may take more creativity and brains than a year ago.

In the meantime, let’s hope that CNBC can get its act together and make itself relevant again.  We need a decent business program, because The Daily Show cannot replace it.