Are marketers allowed to have opinions?
Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 09:22PM ...Or more specifically, are marketers allowed to have opinions about brands?
Regardless of type of agency, marketing practitioners have long lived by the unspoken rule of keep your mouth shut about clients, or POTENTIAL clients. This conflict of smart business intersecting with vibrantly opinionated people is nothing new, but the recent few months/years have brought the debate back into the spotlight. Our current forums for communication have become more visible, everlasting, and increased the probability of speaking before thinking.
Below are a few examples and references that I've come across that help illustrate this reality. The question I want to examine is, are marketers who share their opinion at risk of hurting themselves beyond repair?
Chicagoans for Rio, a site that now has been taken down was actually built by a Chief Creative Office of an agency that was backing the Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. The creator was very clearly stating his opinion around Chicago hosting the Olympics as an individual, but it conflicted with a company that paid him to create the opposite sentiment.
The always opinionated Joseph Jaffe has a recent rant up about his poor experience with YouTube. Sure Joseph owns his own company and doesn't have to answer to a boss, but he does have to answer to someone. (The someone being the brands he represents). Does he hurt his chances for new business with this kind of content?
The now fairly well known example of @keyinfluencer who tweeted the statement below back in early 2009 was a classic case of an out-of-context tweet being interpreted differently by various parties. You can get the full details here, but essentially a client who happened to live in the city this exec just landed in saw this tweet and was displeased enough to make a very big issue out of it.
One the best examples of showing one's heated opinion was in the case of Cramer-Krasselt and Career Builder. After the latest Super Bowl ads that CK produced for Careerbuilder failed to show up in the USA Today top 10 commercials, the client decided to put the account up for review. The agency did not defend and President Peter Krikovich wrote the following in an internal memo:
"To our amazement, to our total astonishment, all that astounding business success was less important than one poll. C-Kers, we have to tell you - in our entire history, hell in the history of this crazy thing called advertising, I'm not sure there has ever been any thing as baseless or as unbelievable as that. It's so ludicrous and they are so serious about that poll it's almost funny."
The article that brought this issue to my attention most recently was one written by Edward Boches. He chronicled the following conversation between himself and fellow blogger Ben Kunz.
This exchange resulted in blog posts by both parties as well as multiple contributions to the debate such as this, this, and this.
A lot of great conversations were had in the above links and after diving through all of them I've grouped the opinions and realities into the following buckets:
1. Keep your mouth shut. If you don't have the judgement to not offend your client you won't have the judgement to handle a crisis situation when representing them and brands can't put their trust in you.
vs.
2. Tough Lough. You're criticizing a brand that you do, or may eventually work with, but you're doing it in a way that is helpful and one that has the backdrop of wanting to make this brand better and one you desire more. Your heart goes into the brand and their success means your success and the clients appreciate that.
vs.
3. Because 20% of our online communications involve brand mentions and we just can't help ourselves we hide under the veil of vagueness and lack of context. Perhaps a brand will see one of your off-putting updates but won't have much evidence to really prove your meaning. This is an action taken out of fear that some of your clients will understand your critiques, but some will surely not.
vs.
4. You say what you want and you don't care. You have a small client list who loves you and the brands that tick you off are horrible organizations that you wouldn't want to work with anyways. You want them, and the rest of your peers to know how much you loathe them.
Web 2.0 + Having an Opinion = ?
As you might have guessed by the title of this blog. I'm going to say that Constructive Grumpiness is your best bet for the average agency-type who has a prolific online persona. Brands are a major part of our lives and they contribute to the interesting interactions (and subsequent digital musings) that we experience throughout our days. Somewhere in between being tight lipped and a complete idiot, there's room for all of us to share our critical thinking and advice through the channel of constructive, sometimes snarky, opinion.
Think that people who work for brands have no negative thoughts about the company they are employed by? They do! They hear and feel the same things as their agency counterparts and they will understand your opinions if they come from a rational place. There's a big difference between your mom telling you "you're fat" vs. the neighborhood bully doing so, it's intent. You have an opinion. You have an incredible number of venues to share it. Make it clear that it comes from a place of care and not hate, and you should be relatively safe in this "overly-sensitive" digital world.
Reader Comments (6)
I think marketers should voice their opinion of clients and potential clients. It feels so much more real if they do. I would trust a marketer that shows their bias, rather than one that stays in the middle.
If you wouldn't say it to their face, then it's probably better to leave it off Twitter. Or can it be re-phrased? Maybe something like, "It would really help me out if...." or, "If this place had wi-fi, I'd be buying coffee here all day."
This is tricky. I mean, the whole reason this space has been so successful is that it allows everyone to speak up. But, when you're representing (or behind the representation of) a company, is there a line you have to draw in speaking up about them? Do you have to be completely loyal?
Like you mentioned about the name of your blog, I think there's a constructive way to talk about a brand you're frustrated with. Blatant attacking = probably not going to win you any points with your client/potential client/agency.
The best criticism is the kind that recognizes efforts and offers alternatives. That's probably the kind of criticism marketers are safest putting out in public. Does that mean mouths will stay shut? (Or, fingers won't furiously type?) Probably not.
Great post, Len.
I think there's some common sense that should have gone on with some of these people, especially the ad guy involved with Chicago for Rio. However, I don't have a problem with people stating opinions about brands, no matter their position.
For example, CK's response to Career Builder was awesome. Instead of the bullshit PR release that would have read "We're really saddened to lose Career Builder as a client, blah blah blah..." they called out a client who wouldn't be returning to them most likely on their shady decisions. Things like that are what make ad agencies so interesting- they like to go against the grain, a lot. Except in today's landscape, being genuine and transparent isn't quite 'going against the grain' any longer.
I think most of us would fall into bucket 2. We typically complain about brands because we're let down. We want them to have awesome products that never fail, and service that rocks our world. Anything less and we're upset, but we don't necessarily want them to fail. (Unless maybe it's AT&T, then, fail away).
Teresa nailed it in her comment "the best criticism is the kind that recognizes efforts and offers alternative."
My point in that fun-filled Starbucks Wi-Fi debate, in which I used over-the-top language to slam the coffee chain for not providing free wireless internet access, was really to illustrate the bravery -- or more often the lack of it -- I see in the ad agency world. I've been in many meetings with partner agencies (as media planners, we partner with other creative/branding shops frequently) in which top creative chiefs compliment a CEO on his golf game and nod enthusiastically at every suggestion that comes from the management team's lips. Heads nod; groupthink ensues; bad ideas rush off to execution. I can't tell you how many times I've seen bad creative go out based on esoteric nuance that simply doesn't "read," and then fail miserably. Of course we should be circumspect, but all this praising and fawning does the client little good. Clients are best served when challenged to do better work, structure better campaigns, and avoid serious mistakes.
I've written this elsewhere, but several years ago in a prior life I worked as a marketing manager for a large home-service company that decided to reduce customer service -- to save several million dollars. It had previously scheduled annual home maintenance visits. The idea was customers wouldn't notice, and they really only needed the maintenance every two years. Months later, customers began having trouble, and a cascade of defection began ... and it took the firm three years to finally stop the bleeding. The customer losses were extreme; the company stock fell like a knife; it was almost pushed to the edge. All from one bad, bad idea. If some brave soul had stood up in the initial meeting and said, strongly, this is a terrible concept, it might have stopped. Sometimes challenging groupthink requires being brave and taking a position that no one else in the room will agree with. Sometimes being right means convincing others they are wrong.
Using the phrase "dumbass," as I did tongue-in-cheek in my Starbucks post, is obviously going too far. But the point should be made. All that matters in business is results. If the path is off course, it may take a strong push to get people moving back in the right direction.
Thanks, Len, for a good post here ... my apologies for missing it earlier, I've been busy criticizing my clients ;)
Ben Kunz
Director, Strategic Planning
Mediassociates
C 203 506 7269
linen cabinet
Nice guestbook. I've visited your website on occasion and finally decided to sign. Anyway, take care and keep it up!