Category: Brand

Faking It

Excuse the crappy home made logo mashup, it’s purpose will quickly become clear. Earlier this week my attention was drawn to a website set up by Shell to encourage people to strapline some new arctic energy ads for them. There were some honest attempts by people to come up with something environmentally friendly and catchy, and most people had opted to send Shell up. Here are a few examples:

Shell Spoof Ads

Turns out the whole thing was a scam set up by Greenpeace, and they’ve blogged about it here. In addition to the website Greenpeace had a fake Twitter account sending out legal threats from Shell. I suppose I should have guessed, and it did look plausible and I do feel a bit of a chump. I have Matt Alder to thank for pointing out what was actually going on and I’m grateful to him for stopping me (and perhaps others) from digging our own holes any deeper.

And the truth is, I feel more than a little stupid, I feel a little angry too. I’m not sure I appreciate being duped by an organisation that purports to tell it straight, at least that’s how I felt Greenpeace played it prior to this. On the campaign overall Matt observed, ‘An interesting approach and it certainly got spread around but I’m not sure that deceiving your supporters is such a good idea.’ Compared to what many have said on the Greenpeace blog, Matt is being very polite about this. It seems that Greenpeace has scored a spectacular own goal with one of the commenters from the Greenpeace blog, Mark Goodge saying ‘From now on, every opponent of Greenpeace only has to point at this [campaign] and say “Greenpeace are liars and fraudsters” and their case will be made.’

Faking it is a risky business, you’re likely to get caught and when you do, your trust is blown. Is it worth it?

Turning a Blind Eye

Blind Eye

When is it OK to ignore the elephant in the room? At what point should we acknowledge ‘I can’t cope’, or ‘dammit I’ve screwed up here’, and take action or make that call for help?

The security firm G4S are splashed all across the news here in the UK after seemingly goofing up the security recruitment and training plans for the Olympics. It’s not a minor slip, they are thousands of people short of their targets. In March 2011 G4S won a £284m contract to provide 13,700 guards, but only has 4,000 in place. It says a further 9,000 are in the pipeline. G4s revealed this two days ago, with just two weeks to go before the start of the biggest world sporting event, and yet as recently as May 2012 G4S was riding high as winner of Best Global Recruitment Strategy award at the Recruiter’s Awards for Excellence.

I expect this goof up will cost G4S dearly (although bizarrely there is no penalty clause for failure within the contract itself), but at least it serves as a powerful reminder to the rest of us. Too often in the workplace we wait for someone else to take a lead, or assume it’s someone else’s responsibility.

When you think something’s going badly wrong, whether it be malpractice, bullying, or just good old fashioned human error, take courage and say something.

painting credit

Update:

The plot thickens. Since I wrote this post it has emerged that the UK Government were warned about difficulties with the recruiting process ten months ago. The warnings came from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, not the security company itself. So now the UK Government is under pressure to explain why it didn’t take the matter further. Much pointing of fingers is currently going on.

Chug Off!

I used to look at the logo for the World Wide Fund For Nature and think, awww, it’s a panda, how cute. Not any more. Now I look at it and I see the bear wearing the mask of a burglar. ‘How could I be so heartless?’ I hear you cry, ”What can have happened for you to fall out of love with the panda?’. The answer, dear reader, is street fund raisers, better known as chuggers.

Yesterday, Villiers Street near Charing Cross was alive with orange vested WWF chuggers. I steeled myself as I headed down the street, trying to look busy, pretending to be on the phone, playing all the tricks in the hope of avoiding contact. But no, today I was up against the Bionic Chugger and he took me on. Three times he tried to engage me, the first two I replied, ‘no thank you’ and on the third I blurted out, ‘Chuggers, arrgrrgghhhhhhh!’

I walked on, free from further chugging, when all of a sudden a lady approached me purposefully and for a second I thought, ‘uh oh, I shouldn’t have dissed the chugger – this person’s probably a life member of WWF and I’m about to get my smackdown‘ – did you see what I did there 😉 But I needn’t have worried, the lady spoke kindly with me, shared my frustration and then we parted company, laughing about our shared experience.

But the truth is, it ain’t funny. I see chugging as damaging to a brand. It’s intrusive and to me at least, it feels unwelcome. But I’m left thinking it must work for these organisations or they wouldn’t do it – would they? So today my search is for people sympathetic to and supportive of the humble chugger. Is that you? Please let me know.