Accenture's New Ad Campaign: Elephants, Frogs, & Tiger, Oh My!

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Steve Baird

Earlier this month, I noted Accenture's words in publicly ending its relationship with Tiger Woods, having announced around December 13, 2009, that it would "immediately transition" to a new ad campaign, and then compared those words to the company's actions in continuing to run the Tiger Woods airport ads even three weeks after their termination announcement. Right after Accenture's announcement, Going Concern Blog asked "Who Will Replace Tiger Woods at Accenture?" They offered some possibilities, including Phil Mickelson, who is already tied to KPMG.

Accenture's marketing team apparently spent some quality time at the zoo to come up with Tiger's replacements, yes, that's plural. A few days ago, in the Minneapolis airport, I saw Accenture's answer to Going Concern's question: Animals. Concourse G was sporting some brand new Accenture ads, one featuring an elephant balancing on a surfboard, with the tagline "Who says you can't be big and nimble?," and another featuring some frogs hopping over one another with the tagline "Play quantum leapfrog." By the way, how nimble or quantum-oriented is a company that needs at least four weeks to have their words and actions begin to merge?

Putting aside the timing for a moment, you might ask, why animals? Clearly animal mascots and endorsers are a much safer option than human beings, for a variety of obvious reasons. Indeed, one Twitter user notes that using an elephant is "no risk." By the way, someone ought to remind Daniel Snyder of this if he ever has the wisdom to re-brand the Washington Redskins professional football team, as I have previously suggested.

Actually, the largest surprise during my experience in Concourse G, a few days ago, was seeing a lingering Accenture ad still featuring Tiger, now more than a month after Accenture's promise of an immediate transition. The Tiger ad in question was of the thinker/doer variety, so a curious one to keep in circulation, as it appears Tiger is doing much more thinking than doing at the moment.

Given how long it has taken Accenture to "immediately transition" to new Tiger-free ads, given that it hasn't yet successfully removed all Tiger ads from circulation, and given the damage it is believed that Tiger has caused to the Accenture brand, I'm left wondering whether companies plan for these kinds of endorsement-gone-wild contingencies as part of their crisis management planning. It would appear Accenture did not and was caught flat-footed, but who would have guessed, right? Nevertheless, Accenture's unfortunate experience might be a good lesson to all those companies who closely link their reputation with endorsers or mascots outside of the animal kingdom. Perhaps having some pre-approved ads ready for emergencies would permit a nimbler and more quantum-like response when things go wrong.

With respect to the choice of animals, they certainly have served others well. For example, a clumsy white duck works for Aflac, and a little green reptile, seems to work pretty well for GEICO. To the extent either of those little guys offend, disgust, or embarrass anyone, at least Aflac and GEICO are in control of their words and actions, so any resulting damage is more easily considered a self-inflicted wound.

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Whatever Happened to the Adversarial System?

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Guest Blogger

My job sometimes is rescuing attorneys, often from themselves. Perhaps the quintessential illustration is a comment made by a corporate general counsel recently, whose organization was responsible for a number of victims, including fatalities. Her opening line to me was, “We’re not the empathy department in this company.” However, the reason she was talking to me was that the organization was about to be inundated with lawsuits from survivors, additional victims not yet known, and the unintended negative visibility that generally accompanies these situations, especially when your organization is considered a perpetrator.

Clearly, the adversarial system works in the courtroom—a rigorously controlled process and environment. Outside the courtroom, the adversarial attitude quickly brands one as cold, arrogant, callous, and anti-victim.

One of my clients is among the largest losers in an intellectual property lawsuit involving copyright infringement. For some 25 years, this firm distributed (via the most convenient mechanism available) copies of a small, highly focused financial advisory newsletter to all of its agents, associates, and franchises. At the end of 25 years, the author of the newsletter decided to sue for infringement. When I heard about the case, my first question to the client’s legal department was, “What’s your plan to settle this case?”

I received two immediate responses: “We’re not interested in settling” and “We have a good defense.” “What,” I asked, “could possibly be a defense that passes the straight face test?” The lawyers’ response was that the individuals involved, “waited too long to file a lawsuit.” “They knew all along what this client was doing with the materials.” My response was, “Even as a non-attorney, my guess is they have you dead to rights. Try to get them paid today. It’s only going to get worse if you wait.” The answer was something along the lines of a trial being inevitable.

The lawyer was prophetic and, of course, the trial was worse and sillier than one can possibly imagine. The jury threw the book at my client. The verdict was never appealed even though there was some bluster at the time that, obviously, such a huge jury award would be appealed.

The lesson for all attorneys is getting clearer by the day: Even though our system is adversarial at its root, as the number of cases getting to trial decreases, more and more forces are pushing for settlement. Increasingly, the answer is to find and hire lawyers who are comfortable being empathetic. Being empathetic is the opposite of being adversarial. Empathy means doing things that matter, where actions speak far louder than words. The concept of empathy is often described as “putting yourself in someone’s shoes.” If that other person is a victim, you’ll be causing yourself and your argument, as well as your attempts to settle, extraordinary damage. Better to step back and look at what the “victim” needs that you can provide, promptly, as a means of settlement and resolution.

Ninety-nine cases out of 100 filed will be settled, arbitrated, negotiated, dropped, or dismissed. Having your day in court is getting to be a pretty rare event.

Oh, and did I mention learning how to apologize? We’ll save that for another blog post.

-- James E. Lukaszewski, The Lukaszewski Group Inc.
 

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