Brand Integrity: What does the British Airways, Fisher Price recall and "Trust" tell us?

In my previous posting, I spoke about how I thought we were at the beginning of a process that will see a real shift in the honesty and respect that marketers start showing to consumers.

This is needed to win back trust for brands, but also to ensure that they build - and maybe even survive. This thought was driven, in part, by the seemingly accelerating stream of episodes showing a real lack of honesty and integrity towards the consumer. These include events such as the premium rate phone "rip offs" by all of the leading UK TV channels, including the BBC funded entirely by everyone paying a license fee, and brands like L'Oreal being found out for "faking" performance of their mascara in TV ads by using fake lashes

Maybe it is because I am more sensitized on the issue, but I feel like I keep seeing more examples and events that illustrate the need for brand owners to step up the honesty and integrity towards their consumers. In the last 24 hours, three things caught my eye:

(1) British Airways, rated in the Top 10 Brands (2007) in a vote by around 3000 UK Consumers by Superbrands, has been fined over US$500 million by the UK and USA authorities for colluding with its rival Virgin Atlantic on fuel surcharges to cover the spiraling increases of fuel. The two companies are bitter rivals allegedly, and yet found it acceptable to talk to agree the levels and timing of adding the surcharges they passed on to consumers rather than have an honest competitive battle.

Virgin Atlantic were not fined as they were the ones who "blew the whistle" to the authorities and so did not receive any penalties. While I am sure this is the process, it does seem unusual they were not fined or penalized in some way.

The fact that both parties thought it fine (excuse the pun) to do something like this shows lack of respect and a disregard for their passengers and cargo clients.

(2) Fisher Price, the major child toy company, announced almost at the same time as the news above broke, that they are recalling over 1 million toys across 83 different types of toys as the paint has too much lead in. Surely safety is something that should be ingrained completely?

(3) Also in the same 24 hours, I saw that Adage ran a story online written by Lynn Upshaw called "Integrity in Marketing is not Optional". Lynn Upshaw is a marketing consultant and a member of the faculty at the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley. His latest book is "Truth: The New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World". In the article he talks about and reinforces many of the thoughts that had been forming in my mind on this topic, and also gave some examples of companies like Johnson & Johnson that focus on ethics and integrity in brands and their marketing, advertising and claims - with severe consequences for employees who don't stick to them.

On Amazon in the details about the book they write: “A recent market research study (Datamonitor) concluded that 86 per cent of US and European consumers feel that they have become more skeptical about corporations in the last 5 years. In particular, consumers lack trust in the mainstream media channels and the specifics of product claims”.

That is scary. Brand owners need to really start to work on this. As we all largely sell broadly the same products with similar features and benefits, brand building is all about the relationship and trust that consumers should be able to have that by buying a brand they are getting safer and more trustworthy options.

Without that there are no brands surely?

What do you think? Leave a comment...