The bubble is not a new concept. As children most of us learned the story of
the “The Emperor’s New Clothes” where a ruler gets talked into going naked in
public because no one will tell him he’s wearing no clothes. As adults, we hear it often associated with
politics as when David Gregory on "Meet the Press" refers to “the Beltway bubble”
and Bill Maher had a segment on his show during the recent elections called
“Dispatches from the Bubble.”
Let’s face it, no one enjoys hearing bad news and so as
human beings we often close ourselves away from it and put up protective
walls. Whether it’s our choice of
friends or the news channels we watch, it’s reassuring to surround ourselves
with people that think and see the world like us.
But just as the Emperor suffered great embarrassment when
his bubble was burst, so we run the risk of leaving ourselves/our companies/our
brands open to criticism, embarrassment and brand erosion when we fail to open
our eyes and ears to the negative perceptions around our products and
brands. And it doesn’t matter if what’s
said is accurate or not, in the world today content is seen as truth whether
it’s a well-researched piece of journalism or a random comment or blog post on
the web. All it takes is one negative
comment or review that gets picked up and shared and suddenly millions of
dollars and many years work building your brand can be brought down in days.
I’ll give you a personal example. Back in September my company conducted some
internal focus groups using employees as proxies for the general public. We were asked questions about our general
eating habits, our perceptions of healthy and the category of health, and we
discussed products in general and our products and company specifically trying
to get a better and broader sense of the challenges we face and opportunities
we have. In my group, I made it a point
to answer honestly – taking off the hat of employee and executive, and
answering both as myself and as the general public attitudes toward our
company. It was amazing to see how
uncomfortable that made people. I wasn’t
saying horrible things, I was merely acknowledging that there are people that
don’t think the best of us – but it was clearly bumping up against our
corporate bubble.
In December, our company was targeted by a hedge fund
manager accusing us of all sorts of bad business practices and dishonest
motives. Much of what he said was flat
out false, but the stock took a substantial hit and internally people were
shocked that this could happen. However,
had anyone looked outside the bubble, his accusations wouldn’t have been so
surprising and we might have been better prepared.
As brand managers and marketers, it is our job to craft
messages that speak to people in ways that make them feel good about our
products and brands. But to do that and
do it well, we must be prepared to take the bad with the good and listen to our
detractors as much, if not more, than the people that love us. Whether it’s traditional methods like focus
groups or new means like monitoring social media, we are not doing our jobs if
we are not listening, hearing and acknowledging all the opinions out
there. And yes, there are going to be
people that say bad things just to say them, as social media specialist Beverly
Macy says, “haters gonna hate.” But if
we shy away from listening than the haters have a much better chance of
winning.
It’s not easy to hear
negative and even harder to have to represent that point of view within the
company but that is the job of a brand manager. After all, if you build your brand out
of a house made of bubbles, it may look shiny and bright for a time but they
will inevitably burst leaving nothing but soapy mess to clean up.
