Protect Your Brand – Be Careful What You Do With It.

January 17, 2012

Protect your brand by learning from the mistakes of others

So it turns out Jenny Craig – now re-branded ‘Jenny’, has backed out of sponsoring the Kyle & Jackie O Show, after originally and most curiously putting their hand up to be the new major sponsor of the radio program. Curious because of Sandiland’s recent tirade i.e. calling a journalist a “fat slag”, and, previously suggesting that Magda Szubanski (one of Jenny’s spokespeople) go to a “concentration camp” to lose weight.

Social media and blogs were aflutter yesterday with the original news of the sponsorship, with many opining that ‘Jenny’ clearly cared little for clients’ self-esteem. Basically the gist was “what a massive slap in the face.” Not a great way to protect your brand!

Whilst Jenny has done a backflip now, the consequential damage to their brand has been done, and could easily have been prevented with a bit of research (focus groups, social media sentiment, etc), and really – common sense.

What’s the lesson in all of this? Do everything you can to protect your brand, including choosing appropriate ‘destinations’ for your advertising placement. Remember every association your brand has, counts.

To protect your brand you should also portray a consistent, appropriate and targeted brand message. But what happens if you stray from your brand message?

An example of losing yourself, and your brand message, is Meat and Livestock Australia’s latest lamb campaign featuring Sam Kekovich. The annually released ‘address to the nation’ (and this year’s bonus ‘chop hit’ *cringe*) seems to have lost what it means to be Australian; the running theme of the campaigns since its launch in 2005.

The campaign is released each year around Australia Day festivities, but this year’s seems to take a detour, arriving at rhymes commenting on Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian’s ‘un-Australianness’ (probably because they aren’t Australian)…

There have been countless twitter comments, opinion polls and Facebook rants. So is this a case of all publicity is good publicity? Or will this tirade against popular (American) culture cost Meat and Livestock Australia a few devoted meat eaters?

Got a branding question? Be sure to get in touch. It’s what we’re here for.