Brand Failures_ The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time - Matt Haig [51]
Ultimately, the McLibel trial serves as a reminder to other companies of the importance of ‘brand perception’. In the final analysis, the facts didn’t matter. What mattered was the way the media’s perception of McDonald’s influenced a considerable strand of public opinion. To this day the McLibel trial has left a stain on the company’s international reputation, fuelled by a website, www.mcspotlight.org, which seeks to keep this and other legal issues dogging the company in the public gaze.
Lessons from McLibel
Don’t underestimate the power of the internet. Supporters of the McLibel campaign were able to organize themselves online. Brands need to monitor and respond to online criticism in a positive way. ‘Things are two-way now,’ explains internet guru Esther Dyson. ‘Customers are talking back to companies, employers are talking back to their bosses and vendors are talking back to suppliers.’ The internet manages to bring aggrieved consumers and activists together, in a way that simply wasn’t possible in the age of one-way media. In the words of Doc Searles, who co-founded one of Silicon Valley’s leading advertising agencies and is a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, ‘What these little voices used to say to a single friend is now accessible to the world. The speed of word of mouth is now limited only by how fast people can type.’ In other words, if people want to get their point across there is little companies can do to stop them.
Understand that financial muscle isn’t as strong as it used to be. Following on from the previous point, the power of the internet means that financial resources are no longer enough to suppress criticism. ‘One of the major strengths of pressure groups,’ says Peter Verhille, of the PR firm Entente International, ‘is their ability to exploit the instruments of the telecommunication revolution. The agile use of global tools such as the internet reduces the advantage that corporate budgets once provided.’
Concentrate on public perception. In trying to set an example against the Greenpeace activists, McDonald’s helped to highlight the activists’ cause.
40 Perrier’s benzene contamination
No matter how careful a company is, bad things can happen to its brands. The part that is within the company’s control is how it decides to handle crises when they occur.
The company most respected for its crisis management capabilities is Johnson & Johnson. When a problem emerges with a Johnson & Johnson brand, the company addresses it immediately, and never tries to cover it up. For instance, when the company learned that its Tylenol brand of painkillers had been tampered with in a US supermarket, the company acted straightaway. It ordered that the Tylenol product be taken off the shelves of every outlet in which it was sold, rather than just the specific supermarket where it had been tampered with.
Once the recall was in effect, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would not put Tylenol painkillers back on the market until the product was more securely protected. This meant making sure Tylenol had tamper-proof packaging, and so the company designed individually packaged pills in foil bubbles. Of course, both the recall and the repackaging cost Johnson & Johnson a lot of money, but this short-term loss was more than compensated by the fact that Tylenol’s brand was preserved in the long term. Some experts have argued that the Tylenol brand eventually benefited from the crisis, because consumers were so satisfied and reassured by the company’s response.
Not all brand crises are handled so effectively. In 1990 high levels of the toxic substance benzene were discovered in bottles of Perrier. The company had little choice but to recall the product. Within a week the company withdrew 160 million bottles worldwide.
However, when the media first found out about the