This week, we look at two incidents that highlight issues of cultural diversity. The first is Reebok and how its embarrasing choice of the name "Incubus" for a sneaker triggered a flood of jokes, and amusing, and not so amusing, comments about the dangers of choosing a name in the '90s.
The second case study is a focus on Silicon Graphics Inc., which was found to have sold high-performance supercomputers to the leading Russian nuclear testing facility. What do sneakers and supercomputers have in common you ask? Answer: Both companies need better translators.
Reebok:
The facts: Nearly a year after the product was launched, an ABC affiliate television station in Phoenix reported the discovery that Reebok's women's shoe dubbed "Incubus" had, in fact, been unintentionally named for a mythical demon who preyed on sleeping women. Once the embarrassing fact came to light, Reebok immediately began a search for a new name.
Why no one researched the name in the year it was on the market was never explained.
To its credit, Reebok didn't attempt to brush it off or dodge the issue, even though no mention of it appeared on its Web site.
|
CRITERIA |
GRADE |
COMMENTS |
ADVICE |
|
Extent of coverage |
C |
Coverage took on a life of its own as the jokes flew around the Internet about other rejected names. |
When the Internet takes over, make sure your own point of view is represented. There was no mention or explanation of the incident on Reebok's home page. |
|
Effectiveness of spokespeople |
C |
Marketing folks got out there, but didn't seem to be terribly credible or effective at defusing the situation. |
The use of spokespeople was actually fine - it was what they had to say that was clearly not credible with the media. |
|
Communication of key messages |
C+ |
A "we-don't-know-how-this-happened" message came through loud and clear. Unfortunately, it didn't make them seem very smart. |
Find a credible explanation and if your original answer isn't credible, find another one. The press did tie in Reebok's social-causes concern with the name, which was good. |
|
Management of negative messages |
B+ |
Other than mjor egg on the face, no serious negative messages were conveyed. |
Try to avoid a response that is going to make you look stupid on David Letterman and the Internet. |
|
Impact on customers |
B |
Apparently very little - they'd already shipped 53,000 pairs of them when the news hit. Might they have sold more, we'll never know. |
Negative customer reaction could have been huge...but fortunately not as many women are on the Internet so they weren't exposed to quite as many of the messages. |
|
Impact on investors |
B |
Slim to none. On the NYSE, Reebok shares hit a 52-week high of 52 7/8 before closing at 52 1/2. My feeling is that the investors and analysts never care much for marketing successes OR blunders. |
Build a case for how you're sensitive to women's issues and tap into women investors. |
|
Impact on employees and prospective employees |
B |
Probably not much, except I wonder if there's someone inside the company saying "We told you so"? |
Are there perhaps openings in marketing that we can apply for? |
|
Overall score |
C+ |
Not bad, could have been better. Lost a moment to make a major statement about support of women. |
Next time, use an encyclopedia instead of a thesaurus and test names on English majors as well as Physical Education majors. |
Silicon Graphics:
The facts: On Feb. 18, the story broke that the Commerce Department had been investigating the sale of two small supercomputers from Silicon Graphics Inc. to the Russian Scientific Research Institute for Technical Physics.
During the sales process, when asked, the customer claimed to be purchasing the computers for environmental research. Problems arose because - based on those statements - SGI did not believe that the sale required a license from the Commerce Dept. SGI appeared naive about selling to the Russians, but what we truly had was a failure to communicate.
|
CRITERIA |
GRADE |
COMMENTS |
ADVICE |
|
Extent of coverage |
B |
Amazing how little it got. One problem area was talk radio. One DJ complained that it was disappointing tht this has happened to such a great company as SGI. |
The Mea Culpa approach is always the best for making nasty incidents like this one go away. |
|
Effectiveness of spokespeople |
A |
CEO McCracken took the heat and took it well. His admission of "errors in judgment" should be a model for other CEOs when the spotlight is on them. |
Perfect use of a perfect spokesperson - in a pinch when you need the most credible guy around. |
|
Communication of key messsages |
A |
Throughout the coverage, SGI was positioned as the leading supplier of high-performance computers and supercomputers, not such a bad positioning. And The follow-up action was swift. |
Again, hard to improve on because the CEO had them down cold. |
|
Management of negative messages |
B |
As many stories positioned SGI positively as negatively. |
The good news is that the Russians wanted the powerful products...a fact that I'm sure wasn't lost on consumers. |
|
Impact on customers |
A |
Probably more of them learned about SGI's capabilities in the areas of fast computing than did before the crisis. |
See above. |
|
Impact on investors |
C |
Several stories positioned SGI as a company in financial trouble and thus "desperate" for any sale. |
Unfortunately, the only thing that could have been done to make this better was to beat the analysts' estimates four quarters in a row. |
|
Impact on employees and prospective employees |
A |
Negligible, except for the sales force that will need to change its procedures for selling. Their corporate Intranet kept employees informed and aware of the situation at hand. |
Sounds like there's a need to improve communication with overseas offices. |
|
Overall score |
B+ |
Nice job, and a good lesson learned. |
The lesson is there's a big difference between doing business in the states and doing business in Russia. |
Katharine Paine is founder and CEO of The Delahaye Group, an international image consulting firm based in Portsmouth, N.H.
Over the past decade she and her firm have analyzed more han 1 million articles, studied thousands of Internet postings and interviewed thousands of event attendees to provide quantitative and qualitative measures of success for her clients. Her column on measurement appears monthly in PR NEWS.
Paine can be reached at 603/431-0111. Visit the company's Web site at http://www.delahaye.com
In Closing...
As a result of a particular conversation that stemmed after last month's Image Patrol appeared, I realized that clarification may be needed of the perspective and objective of this column.
A key element of this column is that it is entirely based on what we read in the media. We intentionally do not research beyond the articles and radio transcripts that we read because it is through these media that we gain a sense of the image projected to the audiences in a crisis situation. Our objective is to critique companies' handling of crises in order to learn from both their successes and failures. - Katharine Paine