Murkier yet
Having speculated recently on the ethics of ‘ambush marketing’, this writer is taking a further downward plunge into the murky world of entrapment.
It seems as if hardly a week goes by without some well-known individual being exposed in the tabloid press. Last week it was Lord Triesman, head of the English Football Association, who told a young woman he had befriended that he suspected Spain and Russia had colluded to bribe referees. The young woman leaked this information to the Mail on Sunday newspaper, together with transcripts of amorous messages, allegedly sent to her by Lord Triesman.
Then later we learned that popular Sunday tabloid, The News of the World, announced that they had effectively ’stung’ the Duchess of York, former wife of the Queen’s son Prince Andrew. In a recorded interview the Duchess agreed to provide a reporter posing as a successful businessman with access to her former husband, the UK’s ‘trade ambassador’, for £500,000. Devastated by this revelation, the Duchess has apologized profusely, saying that Prince Andrew was completely innocent of any involvement.
People who should know better wax lyrically that everything these days can be counted as “a brand”, including personalities. Well they’re not: personalities are personalities—some might even be celebrities: but brands they most definitely are not.
One of the fundamental requirements of a brand is consistency: the brand is relied upon to deliver the same satisfactions time after time. If consistency breaks down then so does consumer trust and the brand has a crisis on its hands. People, almost by definition, are fallible—some even are gullible. The best brands are neither fallible nor gullible, and it is only when the human factor intervenes that they become so.
Entrapment reveals the vulnerability of human nature. It is an arguably savage corrective, designed to play to our baser instincts—pleasure in seeing others we think should know better exposed and humiliated. Thank heavens nobody has yet devised a way of stinging brands. But, as those bank brands laid low by the financial crisis have shown, they can do a pretty good job at stinging themselves.
Tom Blackett is the non executive chairman for the Siegel+Gale London office.
June 3rd, 2010 at 5:19 am
Do you not think that some attempts to blackmail brands and some occasions when brands have found to have a problem represent an attempt to sting a brand? We had benzene in Perrier, various Coke scares, Tylenol and most recently, Greenpeace’s attack on Kit Kat. Those may be bad examples, because the brand bounces back after good handling, but there must be some that have gone under. Ratners, as a self-inflicted sting?