Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for 2008

Our Elders Should Know Better

Embedded within the human race’s shared psyche there is one memory every child has: the wagging finger and stern expression of an elder scolding you for your latest transgression.

Along with it is one of those hallelujah moments which act as milestones on the path from child to adulthood: the realisation that elders aren’t actually supreme beings who are wholly infallible.

With this comes further understanding that rules can be broken with justification but that it’s all too easy to slip into hypocrisy, which in turn leads directly to a lack of credibility from which it is difficult to recover.

London Stock Exchange
Homepage

The London Stock Exchange is such an elder organisation, its remit being to police how company ownership is traded on all London’s stock markets.

However if London is to move forwards as a centre of sustainability it needs to examine its own performance in this area, lest its current failings lead companies to look elsewhere for a suitable base in the future.
[Read more…] about Our Elders Should Know Better

3 Steps to Generate Emotional Involvement in Your Brand

As a follow up to my post earlier this week about how emotional involvement in a brand drives brand loyalty, today I will provide three steps to generate emotional involvement in your brand.  I call these three steps the 3 S’s of Customer Loyalty.  It’s a concept I first introduced in my book that was just released in the U.K. (coming to the U.S. in August), Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon.  By ensuring your brand offers customers the 3 S’s of customer loyalty, customers will become emotionally involved in your brand.  Let’s take a closer look. [Read more…] about 3 Steps to Generate Emotional Involvement in Your Brand

Handling a crisis at Primark

Embarrassingly bad news across the broadsheets and on the BBC Panorama programme … how should you handle this?

Primark Ethics Site

Primark, a cut-price clothes retailer, have had some ongoing bad press about their suppliers over the last couple of years, but there has been more over the last week, with bad news about the use of child labour to produce their goods – and a major television programme tonight highlighting this issue.

According to Primark, they have cancelled orders from three factories in Southern India for failing to meet their ethical standards by subcontracting embroidery and sequin work to children working from a refugee camp. Primark have also withdrawn the garments from sale.

This is deeply embarrassing, and could just chip the gloss off the prediction that Primark will soon oust Marks & Spencer as Britain’s favourite clothes retailer, as it reaches over 10% volume share of the market.

So how have Primark handled this crisis online?

The main Primark site is not beautiful, but they have a large link from their home page to a separate website on Primark’s ethics. From here, you can:

  • watch a video explaining how they can sell things so cheaply
  • review their ethical strategy
  • read their code of conduct
  • read news about the action they plan to take on breaches of their ethical code
  • read a Q&A section
  • contact Primark with your comments.

The video is clearly purpose-made for this site, as it deals specifically with supplier relations, and isn’t a generic piece of corporate video. And the rest of the content is of a piece: on-topic and targeted. Impressively, some of the FAQ available from this page are directly related to this issue:

  • How can you assure me that I should still shop at Primark?
  • Do you regularly drop suppliers for ethical reasons, even if this potentially costs workers their jobs?
  • What have you done about this to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

As we all know, FAQ are often not updated very often, or even very relevant, so this is commendable.

Interestingly, the contact form offers the chance to opt out of having your views published at a later date on this website as part of a discussion. Perhaps Primark have plans for some form of onsite feedback? Perhaps a forum, or other means of user-generated content?

Whatever your views on the issue, this is a commendable way of dealing with the problem, both online and off.

It is upfront — no need to hunt around to find discussion of the issues — and up-to-date — the FAQ indicate that this is fresh content. Also, the ethicalprimark.co.uk domain name was only registered on 30 May 2008, so I suspect this site has been put up in direct response to this current crisis. In general, I think that experts would recommend that preparations are made for a crisis in advance, and kept dark until needed, but if this site has been put up in the last couple of weeks, Primark have done very well indeed in addressing this issue.

Primark is owned by Associated British Foods; there is no mention of the current furore affecting Primark on the ABF website.

The Best is Understated

The 1968 comedy caper “Hot Millions” is something of an unsung movie.

The plot is relatively straightforward. On his release from prison a convicted embezzler joins a huge multinational conglomerate, where he proceeds to hack the computer and embezzle still more money.

This makes it the first movie to feature computer hacking and to this day it remains one of the best. It also makes embezzlement pretty exciting to watch, no easy feat given the slow drip-drip process the crime usually involves.

However, no matter how much enjoyable it is to see an emotionless box of logic circuits being taken for a ride, the film’s real star is the embezzler himself: Peter Ustinov.

Here is a great British actor at the height of his talents, indulging himself shamelessly in the casual, almost careless throwaway understatement which remained his trademark throughout his career.

The website of Johnson Matthey, the only Chemicals company in the FTSE 100, is reminiscent of Peter Ustinov. Initially understated it hides a talent which is truly exciting once fully revealed.
[Read more…] about The Best is Understated

Whistling For Attention

Somewhere around the time British Rail was privatised there was a wonderful quote from one of the presiding ministers: “Only 90% of passenger trains reach an eventual destination”.

Ever since then I’ve been deeply concerned about the remaining 10%. Are they lost out there somewhere, haunted by howling commuters, doomed forever to search for the Shangri-La of an “eventual destination”?

As well as showing how important it is for our leaders to think before speaking, this tale also demonstrates the inherent danger in relying upon statistics to prove a point.

So here’s another equally dubious one: less than 2% of UK companies encourage employees to raise their concerns if they believe their employer is breaking the law.

The rest, by definition, are either happy for such employees to approach the media, or are certain their employees will simply stay schtum.
[Read more…] about Whistling For Attention

Driving Customer Loyalty Through Emotional Involvement

Perhaps the single most important aspect of developing customer loyalty is emotional involvement in your brand. Customers who feel an emotional connection and response to your brand are inherently loyal to it. Let’s look at a few examples.

Star Trek

The Star Trek brand is one that fans are deeply loyal to. In fact, Star Trek fans are borderline obsessive. Loyal fans attend conventions, buy products, dress in costumes, play games, and learn languages related to the Star Trek brand and corresponding universe that has grown around it. Now, that’s loyalty! [Read more…] about Driving Customer Loyalty Through Emotional Involvement