Did this week matter to Subway, Ashley Madison and Coca-Cola brands?

Toronto Sun ^ | August 22, 2015 | Tony Chapman

[rickmichaels]

Three separate but related stories exploded in mainstream and social media this week.

Ashley Madison’s membership list of 30 million-plus customers likely, as well as their personal details, was released by hackers to the world.

Jared Fogle, the former poster boy for Subway who filmed over 300 commercials after losing 200 pounds on a Subway diet, is likely heading to jail after the courts found his appetite extended to sex with minors and collecting child pornography.

The CEO of Coca Cola’s was forced to defend their funding of “scientific” research where they had asked us to swallow conclusions suggesting obesity was the result of a sedentary lifestyle and not the over consumption of calories.

All three featured a single brand at the epicentre that overnight went from appearing invincible to being highly vulnerable. And that vulnerability stems from the growing power of the consumer and their use of social media to harness their collective energy, regardless of motivation.

Some consumers were simply demanding transparency and truth, while others had craved content and commentary for their personal publishing empires and then there were even a select few who had the coding skills to hack into the bowels of an organization.

In the past when there was a consumer uprising, brand managers could limit collateral damage by hiring “spin doctors” and “crisis management” experts to craft messages designed to deflect or contain the controversy. This is no longer the case and brands caught in the crossfire can become endangered, if not extinct.

Lets look at this week to see what brands were shattered, battered or it didn’t matter:

Ashley Madison is shattered and I doubt it will survive. Major retailers like Target have survived data breaches that included credit card numbers, so have governments and other institutions with information we consider of the utmost privacy. This is different. Ashley Madison site was designed to move one’s moral compass from faithful to unfaithful and their data breach will unleash a tsunami of marriage breakups, public shame, firings and class action lawsuits.

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Coca-Cola as a brand will be battered. Their funding of research whose conclusion counters what even elementary school kids learn in their first health class will add fuel to a fire that has been set by nutritionists and other like-minded professionals who have been warning the consumer of the dangers of over-consumption of sugary drinks. The company will survive but attack on their research could make their sales of their flagship colas, already in decline, tailspin even faster.

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Jared’s arrest won’t matter to the Subway brand. He was a highly effective pitchman in the early 2000's but by 2008 the consumer itch to be scratched moved from health to value, primarily driven by McDonald’s dollar menu that had taken the industry by storm. Subway countered with their $5 footlong and the race for cheap gut fill was underway. In an almost perverse way Jared’s arrest and attachment to Subway might awaken the latent “Subway is better for you” positioning from a decade ago but brands like Chipotle and Panera Brand have trumped them with this promise.

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Is there an antidote that brands can use to hold back the growing power of the consumer? The naked truth is no. Branding is nothing more than packaging and positioning, the gift wrap and bow on a present that is often similar to many other competitive offerings. When the consumer decides to tear it open, when the anarchists seek absolution in social media it becomes a hurricane with no shelter in site.

[Tax-chick]

I agree with both of you.

I wonder how many of AM’s customers were looking for affairs with other men, though.