Brand kill

If there was ever any doubt that the actions of an organisation are the primary contributor to the brand, the past few weeks have erased them once and for all. I am fairly certain that although BP wanted their brand to be an example to all – this wasn’t the example they had in mind.

It all started innocently enough. As reported in an article on Huffington Post, two seemingly insignificant decisions and related actions are quite possibly ground zero for the spectacular brand meltdown that has followed.

Collectively saving the company 10 hours and $7 million dollars at the time, the shortcuts taken on the Horizon deepwater well and mentioned in the article, would now be viewed as a veritable bargain. From the article:

“…the company apparently chose a riskier option among two possibilities to provide a barrier to the flow of gas in space surrounding steel tubes in the well.

Despite warnings from its own engineers, “BP chose the more risky casing option, apparently because the liner option would have cost $7 to $10 million more and taken longer,” Waxman and Stupak said.”

Millions of litres of oil, reputation in tatters, share price in free fall and continuing stream of missteps have landed not just the brand but the company on the endangered species list alongside the oil soaked wildlife. 24/7 Wall Street is predicting the company will break up into pieces to help segment liability for the spill and segment public perception of the crippled brand.

So what lessons reside in this cautionary tale, because certainly BP is not alone in underestimating the potential flow on effects of decisions and actions?

I am reminded about a favourite book of mine that I mentioned in a past blog called The Logic of Failure which describes how the people and organisations take sensible steps towards certain disaster.

In an attempt to help organisations see more than two steps beyond the obvious, I often suggest they try the pebble in the pond exercise. Drop your decision in the pond and then see what potential ripples you can imagine (good and bad). Take them out as far as you can inside and outside the organisation.

For example, take a decision to accept a large order for a product that you manufacture. Your production is already running at capacity, but the $$ value of the order is just too good to pass up and this is an influential potential client you have been trying to win for some time. What would the ripples potentially look like?

Here are a few, I am sure you could imagine others:

• Quality of products falls because there isn’t time to carry out quality assurance process as usual, leading to a jump in defects and customer complaints.
• Increased volume forces the rationalisation of processes and results in new efficiencies.
• Meeting the deadline and helping the client leads to more contracts and a significant increase in sales for the year.
• Greater demands and more pressure on the workforce make some employees unhappy and they leave.

Of course, added to these ripples is the context of your organisation’s purpose, values and vision. But safe to say, no matter what those are, any outcome of a decision and action does have the potential to impact the brand, not just on a customer perception level, but also on a fundamental operational level.

If you stop and take the time to imagine it, you have a fighting chance of dealing with it. Without any foresight of potential outcomes you can be left desperately trying to plug a leak in the ocean floor a mile underwater.

See you next week.

Michel Hogan is a Brand Advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations recognise who they are and align that with what they do and say, to build more authentic and sustainable brands. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment.