Brand Ethics – What can We Learn from the Meat Scandal?
In anticipation of Martin Lindstrom’s visit to SA, we asked him to respond to our most current brand ethics saga – the meat scandal.
What you will find is that no brand or retailer is immune to a brand ethics disaster and there are some great lessons to be learned from the meat scandal.
This is what Martin had to say:
Those days where brands were able to hide whenever unpleasant news was released are long gone. In a matter of days a thriving brands can come under a level of attach even threatening their future – case in point would be the Domino’s Pizza case where a video on YouTube featured a young person spitting in the pizzas before being served to the customers. The video attracted millions of visitors – and resulted in a share price drop of 9.2% in just one day.
Be warned and prepare for sophisticated media
This is by far a single standing story – almost on a weekly basis similar stories hit the media – unfortunately in return the media scene has become equally sophisticated – distributing the news instantly to the entire world. And it doesn’t stop with brands – recently a bogus error tweet sparked a major share blip in the U.S. after an Associated Press Twitter account was hacked – and bogus news was released making the entire share market react within minutes.
Be warned – this is only the beginning – needless to say that brands truly have to build in mechanisms which can ensure instant reactions before the news spread.
They did too little and too late – the trust is simply gone
The recent meat crises in South Africa is no exception – those supermarkets involved should have reacted months earlier than what they did. Remember this crises has been running in the UK for almost 5 months – subsequently spread to Central Europe and now South Africa. Needless to say this comes as no surprise – the clever supermarkets would have reacted beforehand, double checked the situation and prepared themselves for the media storm. Instead 60% were caught cheating.
The good news for the retailers is (if there is any) that they all seemed to be in on this and thus no “hero” was pointed out – the bad news is that consumers are left with a sceptical view on every store in the future – the trust is simply gone. And reacting now is simply too late.
Did the leaders do the right thing?
The response from the CEO’s is fine – but far too late – they would have known this well in advance just by watching BBC World news where this crises has been running in the UK for 5 months. The clever CEO would have reacted then, implemented a program to fix the problem and the moment the announcement took place hit the media with a well-oiled campaign. Instead nothing happened before the problems hit the fan.
Can the trust and customer loyalty be regained?
Over react – employ qualified butchers in all supermarkets – endorsing the meat, employ independent experts to endorse all products, offer free samples of the quality meat with these endorsements…launch a “only quality” brand line – and re-launch all meat products under such label. In short, reach in a dramatic way, so that the consumer can see (and feel) that they take this seriously.
