During last week’s
presidential debate, Hillary Clinton leaned on an old and appealing line. “We
are great because we are good.” Reagan has used it before, as did Eisenhower.
What it means, of course, is that our country’s performance advantage on the
world stage comes from our willingness to do the right thing.
Businesses who market
social responsibility as a selling point have been trying to make the same
claim for decades. But it hasn’t been enough of a selling point. So, some savvy
brands are digging deeper on what it means in practice to be great.
Take the recent radical
actions of Swiss sportswear brand Skins, for example. Skins invested a good
deal of its cache on British marathoner Robert Young. An abused child who had
grown into a man committed to the impossible, Young claimed to have run 370 marathons
in a single year. His 2016 feat, sponsored by Skins, was to run across America
in 46 days. What better way to inspire the brand’s performance minded
customers?
But rumors began
that Young was cheating – rather than running – his way across the country. And
this is where things got interesting. Rather than sit back and wait for the
truth to come out, Skins launched its own investigation, hiring two independent
researchers – Roger Pielke Jr, of the University of Colorado Boulder, and Ross
Tucker, of the University of the Free State – to look into the claims.
When
they found that Young had likely been hopping into vehicles rather than
running, Skins published the 101-page report on its website and
ended its deal with Young.
“It was a difficult
situation when the shit hit the fan,” Skins CEO Jamie Fuller told the
Guardian. “But the most important thing for us isn’t the initial problem
– because problems will always happen – it’s what you do when they arise. In
our view, there are no half measures when you apply and live by your
principles.”
The move may seem
counterintuitive at first. When the Nike Oregon Project running team faced a
doping scandal in 2015, Nike waited for the results of its own investigation
and then quietly withdrew sponsorship, a strategy we’ve all come to expect. Why
would Skins invite the negative attention? Why spend money on an investigation
that is likely to embarrass the company?
While Sean Ingle’s
Guardian piece brilliantly scratched the surface as to why this is such a
rare example, it’s worth digging deeper into how the company’s actions measure
up against other corporate social responsibility efforts.
The underlying message of
how Skins approached this speaks of a company on a quest for perfection and, in
that quest, doing the right thing is just a natural extension of excellence.
Skins flipped the logic of traditional corporate social responsibility
marketing by saying: “We are good, because we are great.”
See the difference? Skins
isn’t saying, “We’re making great products because we do the right thing.” It’s
saying, “We do the right thing because it’s just part of making great things.”
The company’s actions
send a strong message about its high-performance gear: to create an extremely
high-quality product, a brand must pursue operational perfection. Abusing
workers, trashing the planet, tripping through doping scandals – this is all
evidence of a sloppy company that cuts corners.
A brand that wants to
charge a premium for what it claims are excellent products wins when it shows
that it ruthlessly roots out imperfection wherever it’s found.
Fuller has built his
entire brand around this concept. The company’s mission statement declares
that: “Sport should be played with creativity, flair and sportsmanship, free of
corruption and drugs.”
How do you live by that
mission? By making excellent products that allow athletes to win cleanly and by
standing up against cheating. For consumers, the message reinforces the value
of Skins products. In the logic of, “We are good because we are great”,
publicly investigating and cutting Young was a no-brainer. In doing so, Skins
took what promised to be yet one more brand-bashing scandal and turned it into
something positive.
Evidence suggests that
transparency in handling a corporate scandal can actually
help a company’s bottom line, both from a consumer perspective as well as overall market value.
That’s why brands should
take notice of this unusual case. Using recycled content, donating a dollar for
each purchase, reducing packaging – these are common efforts by companies who
want to tell a story about doing the right thing. We’ve seen that story before.
The story that gets
people talking – and buying – involves pursuing greatness with passion and zeal
and doing the right thing in that pursuit. Any brand can do this simply by
asking this: what is the greatness we are pursuing, and what good for the world
can we do as part of that pursuit?
-theguardian
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