Ready, that is, until I’m not.

And so it was with the news that Goldman Sachs is considering a big, broad, very public effort to polish its brand. “Public” as in advertising, letters to the editor(s), responses to media reports - even an appearance by CEO Lloyd Blankfein on Oprah.

Can you imagine? Oprah. I picture it as a cross between Tom Cruise’s 2005 crazy-eyed appearance and her skewering of James Frey in 2006, and not in a good way.

Lloyd Blankfein

Look, I may condemn the investment banking scoundrels for their wrongdoing when I’m out having a drink somewhere, but – behind closed doors with the Goldman team – this would be my position:

Goldman executives may indeed be shocked – even hurt – by the way they’ve been treated by Congress, or by the all-out vitriolic point of view on Main Street, but the fact of the matter is that these are not the audiences that really matter at Goldman… and this is the price to be paid for what they do for a living.

Goldman isn’t nor was it ever in the business of being loved. It’s in business to be 100% rational, not emotional, and to make money for itself and its clients. That mission defines a fairly narrow set of individuals and companies that really need to know what Goldman is doing. For these people, a big initiative is (a) likely to be a grossly inefficient way of communicating, and (b) even more likely to be seen by those in the know as a silly distraction that pulls Goldman away from (make me money) what it’s supposed (make me money) to be doing (make me money).

Strike One and Two.

Then there’s John Q. Public, who may not understand a lot of Goldman’s business activities but knows the firm was at the epicenter of a series of events that were highly disruptive and that made a very small number of already rich people even richer. For most, these beliefs are almost purely emotional, and no company can advertise itself out of negative sentiment. If you lay low – particularly when a bunch of abstract business concepts are involved – the public’s anger will dissipate, and soon another target will present itself.  Sad but true.  To communicate now would only inflame an audience that – to be brutal – Goldman doesn’t need.

Strike Three.

Branding, PR, advertising… none of these tools can be used to uproot deep-seated negative opinion while an issue is still hot. It’s tempting to buy full page ads in the Wall Street Journal that say you’ll make things right (paging British Petroleum) but you can’t win doing this and, frankly, it’s a bit immature and disrespectful. It’s like saying “Hey, I punched you in the eye, hard, and I can’t take it back or make it any better, but I still want you to like me.” In Goldman’s case, the firm plays hardball, it’s going to bruise some people and it’s going to make billions of dollars for its inner circle of stakeholders. Everyone knows that’s the game, and – when the spotlight turns toward them – those involved need to be able to put up with not being “liked” in exchange for their success.

Goldman’s communications advisors would do well to make sure that its client is staying focused on what’s important to its core business and true constituencies.  I disagree with those who say that Goldman must vigorously present  ”its vision of the ‘right thing to do’ in the financial services industry going forward.”  To what end?  To “clarify” its point of view, or contribute to the national dialogue? Through a branding campaign? On Oprah? Please.

No.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to simply live with a situation, keep going and accept that there are moments when the right kind of marketing may be no marketing at all.

You may have read about the massive insider trading case against Galleon Group.  A former consultant, Danielle Chiesi, was a participant in and beneficiary of the conspiracy.  Her criminal trial begins later this year.

Is she scared? Perhaps, but there seem to be more pressing concerns at the moment.

HERE is Danielle Chiesi last October, on the day the FBI led her away in handcuffs:

And HERE is Danielle Chiesi now (February 2010):

These two photos were taken about four months apart. In between, Chiesi began to morph a la Michael Jackson.  Two months in, The New York Post noted the disappearance of Chiesi’s “bloated face and dumpy sweater” (see first photo) in favor of a ”slim new look” that looked like it was ”straight out of central casting for a prison flick.” 

I love it. 

Next stop: Dancing with the Stars, or perhaps her own makeover show.  Assuming, of course, she doesn’t spend the next 10 years in prison.

And I would definitely believe, by the way, that Ms. Chiesi is terrified of prison…. because it’s going to be very – very – hard to keep up her new plasticized look behind bars.

There are two reasons I wanted to write a quick post on this event:

(1) FCS named two of my faves as Best In Show.  The first is American Express, which was named Best In Show – Corporate Image advertising for its Martin Scorcese-Tina Fey “Timeshare” (my label) ad.  The post I wrote about this ad is HERE.    The second is E*Trade which was selected Best In Show – Consumer Retail for its “Baby” campaign – and you know how much I love this campaign.  I first wrote after its premiere at the 2008 SuperBowl, then again this past January when the second round of ads came out (“I wanna punch the economy in the face“).  And E*Trade has kept it rolling with two more greats, Singing Baby and Golf. 

(2) It’s a walk down memory lane. 2009 is the 15th year FCS has given its Portfolio Awards.  1995 was the very first year – and my team won an award for our ChaseDirect launch campaign.  ChaseDirect was the U.S.’ first national direct bank (even before Bank One’s Wingspan, which many remember), and we won that night.  It was a business that we all felt passionately about and my team from Chase and Wells Rich Greene were there to celebrate. 

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.

The Internet did this for car buying years ago:  between Consumer Reports, Edmonds.com, CarsDirect and a myriad of other sites, the shopper who would have previously driven to whatever dealerships happened to be local now has a lot more bargaining power… and can buy a car from anywhere in the country if the (online) price is right.

To that end, I recently commented on a TechCrunch story about a new company called DriverSide.  Like RepairPal, DriverSide.com intends to help cash-strapped consumers more effectively maintain their cars instead of having to sell or replace them.  My point was that these sites will only begin to reach their real potential when a user can write his/her need and have mechanics compete for the work via online bids, a la an eBay auction.

Almost right after I posted this comment, I stumbled on a unique application of this concept from the Netherlands: Spaarbod.  You thought Bankrate made it easier to shop for interest rates?  Spaarbod permits Dutch consumers to specify how much money they’d like to bank, for how long and on what terms, and the site (like Bankrate) returns the best rates publically available at the time.  You can accept one of these offers immediately, or Spaarbod will send your request (minus your personal information) to participating banks who can then bid on your money.  Within 24 hours, you get an email listing the five highest bidders. 

The service is free to use, and winning banks pays Spaarbod a commission when bids result in new deposits.

It’s not difficult to imagine these auctions going live, where each participating bank would have an employee bidding in real-time for a user’s deposit.   

Heck yeah!  And why do I have to shop around for the privilege of giving you my money anyway??

Such a seemingly simple idea but – on a marketwide scale – this model has major implications for advertising and marketing overall.  If engaged consumers (buyers) approach marketers (sellers) when they are in the market for a seller’s services, those sellers could potentially spend far less money on spray-and-pray mass marketing… and pass the savings on to the customer in the form of lower prices or, in this case, higher interest rates.  The advertiser is likely to spend less and the customer gets a higher-value, more customized outcome. 

Doc Searls (who also may have been the first person to use the word “conversation” in a marketing context) first coined the phrase “intention economy” to describe the idea of markets designed around engaged buyers instead of message-pusing sellers.  I’ll explore the intention economy in another post.

AIG opened a Pandora’s Box when it sent a media advisory to MSNBC notifying the network that the company was adding a new shop to its list of PR firms. List, you say??  This peaked MSNBC’s/Rachel Maddow’s interest, and she has twice run lengthy segments this week regarding the firm at the top of that list:  Burson- Marsteller.

And aside from being absolutely beside herself that AIG is spending taxpayer money on spin, she offers a quite lengthy history lesson about BM, including specific references to the following Burson-Marsteller clients (Oh yeah:  she’s irritated):
- Blackwater after it killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad
- The folks at Three Mile Island post-nuclear meltdown
- The Bhopal people after the disaster that killed thousands of people in India
- The Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceauşescu
- The government of Saudi Arabia three days after 9/11
- The military junta that overthrew the government of Argentina
- The government of Indonesia, accused of genocide
- The government of Nigeria, accused of genocide and Biafra
- Philip Morris? *cough*
- A silicon breast implants manufacturer
- The government of Columbia after killing unionizers
- They Aquadot people, after it was found that the toy produced the date rape drug.

She concludes this first segment with the following statement: “When Evil needs public relations, Evil has Burson Marsteller on speed dial.“

Wow.  So I waited with interest to see Burson-Marsteller’s reaction… and think the shop missed an opportunity to sound like the grown-ups in the room.

After reading Mark Penn’s (BM’s President) response, which includes a great deal of “for 50 years” phrases and chest-clutching indignity, I posted the following comment on www.PRWeek.com:

—- Penn had a shot here at a succinct, fact-based response, but blew it with a reaction that IMHO comes off as self-promoting, and his “mock outrage” mutes the core of his message. Phrases such as “our corporate values over the past 50 years”and “never forget over the past 20 years…” are entirely irrelevant and, more importantly, causes the reader to wonder as to the actual intent of this response.

From the way this is written, it appears to me that Penn felt he needed to address at least four different audiences: MSNBC/the cable news business, employees, clients and potential clients. I would propose that the firm would have been better off with shorter and more customized messages to each rather than this rambling catch-all that had to do double or triple (or four-ple??) duty.

And one last thing: I only read the entire statement because Penn’s statement that B-M wasn’t hired to help “burnish [AIG's] image” caught my eye. As a long-time marketing/mgmt exec, let me be clear: regardless of the specific task my team may give an agency, it is ALWAYS a PR shop’s job to help build (or “burnish,” if you will) a client’s image 24/7. If I were under siege at AIG, this comment alone would make me wonder, “What am I paying these guys for??” —–

And in a Penn v. Maddow mud wrestle?  My money is on Maddow.

Recently, Jeffry caught something that tells us just how bad the financial situation is.

Yes folks, these institutions are so upset, and have become so unstable, that they are literally peeing their own metaphorical pants.  And their grammar stinks.  Oh, I know:  it’s shocking!

Jeffry points out something that shouldn’t be a surprise, however:  anything that represents a financial company today that is viewed or experienced by the public – even signage in a local branch - deserves additional scrutiny.  The smallest failure in personal service can undermine costly efforts elsewhere.

Did I mention that this sign was posted on the door of a credit union inside the U.S. Capitol Building?

Jeffry_Pilcher TheFinancialBrand.com Politico.com

Now we appear to have swung all the way to the other extreme.  Take a look at a list of advertisers, all crammed into today’s Wall Street Journal, along with text pulled verbatim from their ads:

MORGAN STANLEY:  “To find the smart investments today, you need to be world wise.”

MERRILL LYNCH (aka Bank of America):  “Seeing clearly.  Acting confidently.”   “With personal insight into your goals and an understanding of the market…” “…Find a smart place for your money.”

CME GROUP: “Rise Above the Risk.” “For more than a century CME Group has provided competitive, transparent and safe markets.” “…protect customers and ensure financial integrity by guaranteeing the performance of every transaction on our exchange.”

TD AMERITRADE: “There’s never been a better time for a second opinion.”

FIDELITY: “Guaranteed income you can live with.”

GLENMEDE: “There’s no substitute for safety and stability.”

PNC:  “…It’s also a way of doing business that has strength and stability at its very core.”

Safe, smart, transparent and guaranteed: these are the adjectives financial firms are now scrambling to use, as they adjust to our new reality  The problem is – well, it’s the same problem as before – if you sound like everyone else, the messages essentially melt into one and stakeholders become unable to distinguish one from the other.  If I held a focus group tonight, and scrambled the names of the above firms and the quoted text, I would challenge anyone to re-match the elements correctly.

I’ll also say this:  killing your ads’ effectiveness may, in fact, be the most benign result.  Worse?  Just as when every firm claimed great returns – which turned out to be untrue and, in some cases, unscrupulous – everyone claiming safety now looks equally unlikely and untrustworthy.

All of these brands are more and are capable of doing more: the “more” being the hard work needed to determine exactly what it is about the brand that is unique and distinguishable from the competition.*

Without doing this work, going out with a “safety” message isn’t safe at all.

* I am aware that many of the above firms are in different businesses and are not competitors per se.  It does not matter, because it does not matter to the public. For individual investors (and Congress…), too much of the same becomes one, amorphous perception.

Morgan_Stanley Ameritrade PNC Fiduciary_Trust_International Glenmede_Investment Fidelity CME_Group

As of Valentine’s Day, Experian will no longer make its credit score, or FICO, available to individual consumers.  So while you previously could have gone to myFICO.com and purchased any or all of three scores – from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion – there will now be only two.

Given what’s happening in the economy, it seems an odd time from a PR point of view to take such an action.  Lenders are raising their credit standards, and a yes/no decision can sometimes come down to a matter of a few points on your FICO.  If you are in the market for a loan, you want to see all the same information that lender is seeing:  particularly because individuals often find errors in their credit records that must be corrected.

The stakes are particularly high because Experian itself will continue to sell (your) FICO scores based on its data to lenders, such as banks.  This means that the lending institution will see a score that you can no longer see for yourself. 

Fair Isaac expressed surprise at the action at a time when consumers are particularly “concerned about their credit standing.”  Of course, there is some competition between all these parties, and Fair Isaac actually sued Experian in 2006 on an unrelated matter.  That lawsuit is still outstanding, which probably doesn’t exactly create a spirit of cooperation between the two firms.

If you are in the market for a loan or credit card, I would recommend buying your Experian-based FICO score while you still can.  And always pull your other FICOs once a year for free at www.annualcreditreport.com.

FICO credit_score Fair_Isaac Equifax Experian

Let’s knock it out of the park this first week, at least, OK?

May I present to you… Bessemer Trust. Henry Phipps founded Bessemer over 100 years ago to manage his family’s proceeds from the sale of Carnegie Steel. Today, the firm’s website states that Bessemer manages in excess of $50B in assets for over 1,900 families, and that its “history of serving wealthy families affords us an understanding of the issues that matter to you.” 

Really? Let’s review some of the issues that are, in fact, on everyone’s minds these days with regard to the financial markets:  Economic meltdown.  Uncertainty.  Greed.  Irresponsibility.  Misrepresentation.  Anxiety.  This means that any financial firm today has a choice to make:  either don’t advertise – which is a perfectly acceptable option for now - or advertise a message that is very, very carefully crafted to take these concerns into account. 

So I was shocked when I saw Bessemer’s ad in The Wall Street Journal yesterday:  a half-page ad with huge type, saying “We invest your money right along with ours.  Needless to say, you benefit from some very careful thinking.”

My reaction: “They’re joking.  Bessemer is an honorable and discreet company.  Why would they get down in the mud  with a bunch of other companies that followed this same practice and scr**ed over their investors?”  Investing your own funds is no guarantee of anything – it’s not a guarantee of wealth, intelligence, integrity or the “alignment of interest” explained in Bessemer’s ad.  Lots of categories currently in the hotseat invest their own funds:  venture capital firms, investment banks, mortgage companies…  Enron invested its own funds alongside clients, for goodness sake!

To make matters worse, the small type does actually call out some positive characteristics and benefits of being a Bessemer client “as the credit crisis loomed.”  Unfortunately, I can guarantee that no one who saw this ad ever read the small type.

Does the firm have an executive tuned in to the American zeitgeist today?  If not, they need one; if so, that person needs to get his hearing checked.  This is truly a frustrating example of a company deliberately and needlessly putting itself in harm’s way.

I think that not overpromising a kid is a good idea and there are various articles and blogs that give parents ideas of how to manage kids’ expectations.  But telling your kids that, while Santa makes and brings the toys, he sends the bills to mom and dad?  Wow, that’s harsh!

Then again, Santa himself is looking for a second job this year, so all bets are off.