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Archives for 2010

Keeping Yahoo! Brand Value Alive

yahoo_logoI read an interesting article about Yahoo! last week on BrandWeek that asked various business experts to weigh in on whether or not new leadership is the band-aid needed to bring the company back to its former position of strength.  The responses were all fairly similar and match my own feelings about how to fix Yahoo!  The consensus seems to be that Yahoo! lacks focus.

Focused brands are powerful brands.  They own a word or phrase in consumers’ minds and deliver on consumer expectations for the brand promise with every brand interaction.

The question these days for Yahoo! is — what does the Yahoo! brand promise?  The answer is unclear.  Is Yahoo! a search company or a media company?  Is it a news organization or an editorial organization?  Consumers aren’t certain, and that leads to confusion.  When consumers are confused by a brand, they turn away from it in search of a brand that meets their expectations for it again and again.

So what can Yahoo! do to save itself?  There is far too much value in the Yahoo! name to let it go, and one can only point the finger at ineffective leadership insofar as that leadership doesn’t demand focus.  Yahoo! still attracts eyeballs and it still attracts advertisers, but the muddled brand is at a crossroads.  It’s time for Yahoo! to pick a path and get going.

I wrote a book about the value of the Playboy brand, and the Yahoo! story isn’t too dissimilar from the Playboy story in that it’s a brand that lost focus.  I don’t discredit Yahoo! from moving away from search into new directions, but the brand lost itself along the way just as Playboy did.  That’s a common problem for publicly-held companies whose stockholders demand double-digit growth year over year.  Only time will tell if the appropriate changes can be made to re-focus both brands on promises that not only allow the brands to survive but thrive over the coming years.

What do you think?  Can Yahoo! be fixed?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Book Review: Eradicating Ecocide

Polly Higgins headshot

There was absolutely no doubt in Polly Higgins’ mind as she mounted the makeshift dais at the book launch of “Eradicating Ecocide”.  There is only one way to deal with business executives whose companies are wilfully destructive of the environment: prison.

“We need the punishment to be incarceration,” she stated, referring to business leaders who commit Ecocide.  But what exactly is Ecocide and how do you commit it?

The book, “Eradicating Ecocide” gives you all the answers you need, and it does so in a measured and well argued way.  This is because its author, Polly Higgins (pictured), is a lawyer with a deep understanding and firm grasp of international environmental law.

So, the book isn’t another wild diatribe against business … rather it is an examination of international law and how environmental protection has somehow been left by the wayside.

In the process it points out various loopholes commercial interests may have got used to, and asks business leaders to examine them and ask some deeper questions about the meaning of responsible business.

Definition of Ecocide

Interference in an area’s political, territorial and sovereign self determination are all defined within the United Nations charters as crimes against peace.  These definitions include the concept of genocide, the deliberate extermination of a people in order to further political or commercial gain.  However, to deliberately sabotage the land those people rely upon is a far less clear cut issue, although the results can be just as devastating.

This, put simply, is Ecocide.

You need only to think of the ongoing debate surrounding the slow, lingering death oil pollution is causing in the Niger Delta to get the point.  Why should it be “Not OK” to massacre a culture because it stands in the way of commercial gain (like the imperialists of old) but “OK” to poison the environment upon which that culture relies?

The Sharp End of Ecocide

There is one argument that it is not up to companies per se to clean up the environmental devastation their operations cause, providing they provide sufficient funds and support to enable the civil authorities to affect the clean up on behalf of their citizens.  This is what lies at the heart of the Chevron/Ecuador dispute.

However “Eradicating Ecocide” goes one step beyond, seeking to bust what can be painted as a mitigation-orientated culture.  Instead of cleaning up the mess, why not just make creating the mess illegal in the first place?

That, coupled with the imprisonment of culpable executives, would change attitudes towards commercial pollution more radically than sustainability standards or voluntary measures, the book argues.

This is the way “small scale” environmental law is going, with more and more companies being fined more and more heavily for breaching waste and water regulations.  Why, the argument may come soon, should specific industries be targeted but general ones not?

The clock to ensure the Earth remains healthy enough to support humankind is already ticking.  This book asks everyone to re-examine the legal framework within which we are attempting to accomplish this, and provides business leaders with a golden opportunity of making it happen.

Eradicating Ecocide is available from Amazon and leading bookstores.

The Global Gender Gap Report


AfriSki

The fifth annual Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) “assesses 134 countries on how well they divide resources and opportunities amongst male and female populations.” The report measures the gender inequality gap in four areas:

  • Economic participation and opportunity
  • Educational attainment
  • Political empowerment
  • Health and survival

Good news: The United States has finally broken into the Top 20, after hovering around 30 for the first four years of the report.

Bad news: The United Kingdom has tumbled from a ranking of 9 in 2006 to #15 this year.

Great story: The tiny Kingdom of Lesotho has advanced from #43 in 2006 to (drum roll, please) #8 in 2010.  Lesotho has just two million people and only a modest economy—but its literacy rate is among the highest in Africa.

More good news: Looking across the board at progress made since the first report, it turns out that gaps are closing in health and education, with current data showing that (in the 134 countries covered) 96% of health gaps and 93% of education gaps have been closed.

More bad news: Only 60% of economic participation gaps have been closed.

WEF also publishes a Corporate Gender Gap report, which is based on a survey of HR execs from 600 major employers in twenty countries, representing sixteen industries, and ranging in size from 1,000 to 30,000 employees.  The survey’s 25 questions assessed companies on:

  • representation of women within their establishments
  • the use of gender-equality practices such as measurement and target-setting, work-life balance policies and mentorship and training

The survey also gathered respondent opinions on:

  • the biggest barriers to women’s leadership
  • the probable effects of the economic downturn on women’s employment in their countries and industries.

The resulting report is not only informative but actually very interesting.  It provides detailed summaries of the findings by country and by industry.  From the report website you can download the whole report or a summary chapter.

High-level observations from report co-author Saadia Zahidi:  “The findings of the report are an alarm bell that the corporate world is not doing enough to achieve gender equality. While a certain set of companies in Scandinavia, the US and the UK are indeed leaders in integrating women, the idea that most corporations have become gender-balanced or women-friendly is still a myth. With this study, we are giving businesses a one-stop guide on what they need to do to close the corporate gender gap.”

My favorite factoid: Averaging all respondents, the top two “barriers to women’s rise to positions of senior leadership in your company” were identified as

  • General norms and cultural practices in your country
  • Masculine/patriarchal corporate culture

And amazingly enough—those were the top two choices in the US, and two of the top three in the UK.  Something to think about . . .


(That snow-covered landscape is the Afri-Ski resort in Lesotho!)

Lipton Makes Brand Guidelines Fun with an iPhone App and a Million Dollars in Virtual Sales

lipton-millionaireLipton is a well-known brand that promises decent tea.  but Lipton had a problem.  As DDB Hong Kong describes, “Lipton approached us with a problem: no one was reading their brand guidelines. However, when was the last time anyone got excited by brand guidelines? … We created something completely unheard of — brand guidelines that are actually fun and engaging.”

How did DDB Hong Kong do it?  They created an iPhone app and gave every Lipton brand manager in the Asia Pacific region an iPhone.  The “Lipton Millionaire” app included an interactive version of the “Lipton Voice” brand guidelines to study and a game which challenged Lipton brand managers about their knowledge of the Lipton brand and allowed them to compete against each other in a virtual game to win one million dollars in virtual sales.

According to DDB Hong Kong, knowledge of the Lipton brand is at an all-time high and excitement and belief in the brand promise from the most powerful brand advocates — employees — is undoubtedly higher, too.

You can check out the Lipton Millionaire video here or check it out on the Lipton Millionaire website.

What do you think?  Would an iPhone app help your brand managers better understand your brand guidelines or help turn them into powerful brand advocates?  It worked for Lipton.  It’s unfortunate that the effort only involved brand managers.  While they certainly need to understand the brand guidelines, all employees should be educated about the brand and why guidelines are important.  Afterall, an employee doesn’t have to be a brand manager to be a powerful brand advocate.  Give them the chance to learn, embrace, and believe in your brand, and they just might advocate it for you.

Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Does your corporate site comply with Twitter guidelines?

You have brand guidelines, don’t you? Or, more specifically, guidelines for how your corporate identity can be used?

Many companies do, and post these on their corporate sites.

Yara logo guidelines

Here’s a straightforward way of doing it: Yara provide their logo in EPS and PNG formats, explain the meaning of the logo, give us the colour reference, and provide guidelines about the whitespace to be left around the logo.

So you know about asking people to comply with your guidelines, but here’s something to think about: Twitter have published their new guidelines for using the Twitter trademark over the weekend, and these will require some adjustment for most websites. (Hat tip to Social Media Today).

You don’t think of Twitter as corporate yet? Maybe not, but nevertheless, they have a brand identity to protect.

They suggest that you use the phrase ‘Follow me [us] on Twitter’ either with or without a Twitter logo, but that you do not manipulate the logos, use an outdated version of the logo, or create your own button or mark using their logo. And most certainly you shouldn’t incorporate the Twitter logo with your own in any way.

The word Twitter should be spelled out and capitalised; and the word Tweets is to be used to refer to the messages or updates.

This is no more than any company should be doing. Making it clear what is or isn’t acceptable use of the corporate identity – and making those guidelines easily available – is vital, and should be included on any corporate website.

Because of the nature of the Twitter tool, they’ve gone a step further, and say that you should not display a screenshot of any person’s Tweets without their permission. Again, this isn’t a surprising guideline, but it does mean that many sites may need to review their content to see whether they comply with this one.

I’ve revised our sidebar to be sure that we comply with their guidelines, and will be reviewing our web content. Do all elements of your web estate conform, including not only the corporate website but also your other social media outposts, such as your Facebook page?

EU and UK on Governance Collision Course

EPP Summit March 2010The EU has rejected the idea of voluntary codes for corporate governance for Europe’s businesses and has shown support instead for compulsory measures.

In a speech on Monday, the European Commission’s Internal Markets Commissioner Michel Barnier said “I am clear we will not be able to rely only on voluntary codes”. (Speech in full (PDF))

The EU is due to deliver a discussion paper on Corporate Governance in 2011 and it is now certain that this will include an element of compulsion in sustainability reporting.

This will cause consternation among some of Europe’s member states.  The UK in particular supports wholly voluntary measures and is likely to fight against any top-down imposition of standards from Brussels.

In particular the UK’s corporate governance and reporting regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, has said it will “defend to the death” the voluntary “comply or explain” principle which underpins many of the UK’s corporate reporting requirements.

Proposals which are up for discussion include limiting the number of directorships a person can hold, making a Chief Risk Officer mandatory and moving director remuneration away from the “hit-and-run culture that has caused so much damage”.

However Commissioner Barnier’s comments are aimed at a bigger target than just the EU.  He concluded:  “None of these actions can be wholly effective if taken in Europe alone.  We live in a global world.  And in a global world, policies which have a global impact must be designed – and applied – at a global level.   That is why action at the G20 is so important.  And why Seoul next month [November] matters – because it’s the right level for the issues we face.”

The Seoul Summit agenda includes the G20 Business Summit, a roundtable of 100 CEOs meeting with government representatives who will address Trade and Investment, Green Growth and CSR and is described as “a process, rather than a one-time event”.

The summit will also focus upon how to implement changes in the global financial system to make it more robust and accountable.

As Commissioner Barnier made his comments within the context of improving financial systems and increasing corporate responsibility, it seems likely that the EU will raise the subject during the roundtables or the main summit itself.

So the scene seems set.  Sooner or later the EU will push for compulsory governance standards and will push for them to be recognised worldwide.  You have now been warned!

Picture Credit: EPP Summit March 2010 by europeanpeoplesparty under Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives License.