The Marketing Bureau

The Dangerous Disconnect Between Rhetoric and Reality at a Time of Crisis
First Published on www.knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

BP's flawed handling of the environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is creating an identity crisis for the company. The gap between its stated commitment to environmental responsibility and its slow and stumbling reaction to the oil spill disaster exposes its top management as tone deaf and seemingly indifferent to the deep damage being done to the company's brand.

Two management professors -- Hamid Bouchikhi of the ESSEC Business School in France and John R. Kimberly of the Wharton School -- wrote about BP's equally faulty treatment of the 2005 explosion at the Texas City, Texas refinery in their book, The Soul of the Corporation: How to Manage the Identity of Your Company. Now they offer six steps that BP should have taken this time around to mitigate the damage -- and that other companies should consider when it's their turn to cope with crisis.  Read more >>

....Through Attribution Analytics
By Brian Lesser & Brad Terrell
First Published on www.imediaconnection.com

The advent of digital media and advertising has provided marketers with new abilities to precisely manage and measure the online success of direct response campaigns. Tracking the effectiveness of brand marketing through digital channels, however, hasn't always been so simple.  Read more >>

By Brian H Meredith
From the NZBusiness Magazine "Marketing Maestro" Archive.
First published May 2003

What is a Brand? I like what Suzanne Hogan, at U.S. based Consulting firm Lippincott & Margulies has to say..... Read more >>

Brand Irreparably Damaged?

The following AP Story is a significant and chilling reminder that, irrespective of the business you are in, the market conditions in which you operate or the "smarts" of your senior management team, the lack of a true market orientation that is reflected in everything you think, say and do, can be catastrophic in its consequences. If a tanker drives badly on the highway, the Brand is damaged. If negligence pollutes the Gulf of Mexico, the Brand is damaged. And if the manner in which you respond to and manage that crisis simply deepens the crisis through the fuelling of scepticism, mistrust and, in many cases, hatred, the Brand is damaged in a potentially irreparable manner.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - A stockholder lawsuit claims "gross mismanagement" by top BP officials has severely damaged the company's reputation and hurt its value. Read more >>