Industry and consumer news sites and blogs have been abuzz the past few days over Johnson & Johnson suing the American Red Cross for misuse of the red cross logo!
(I tried to think of a really good pun involving commentators seeing red and getting cross, but then I remembered that a good pun is an oxymoron.)
For those of you on holiday last week, some background:
- In short, J&J claim exclusive rights to the red cross trademark on commercial goods, and that their rights are infringed by the American Red Cross granting use of the logo to commercial partners for use on various products more or less in competition with J&J’s.
- The American Red Cross claim that J&J do not have exclusive rights in the commercial domain, and that the two organisations have been effectively both using the red cross emblem on competing commercial goods ever since the American Red Cross began commercialising first aid kits over 100 years ago.
- The public war of words was started with this press release from the American Red Cross. A statement in reply from Johnson & Johnson, and a rebuttal from the Red Cross, laid out the claims and counter claims.
Setting aside the foundation of this dispute for a moment, what I found particularly interesting was that, in a rather clever turn on crisis communication, J&J are blogging on the matter. (Also noted today by Francois Gossieaux at Emergence Marketing)
In a post entitled “You’re doing what?!”, J&J’s VP Public Affairs Ray Jordan wrote:
So, I’ve now lived a classic corporate public affairs nightmare: announcing a lawsuit against the American Red Cross. Would I have chosen this exercise as a reputation-building opportunity for Johnson & Johnson? No, of course not.
The approach is very interesting. Instead of the cold dead language of another press release, we get first-person point of view from a J&J spokesman. Adriana Lukas, who has been advising J&J (and other companies) of the potential of blogging as communications tool, says:
We now have the words from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Not a voiceless press release but a real human being telling J&J’s side of the story, from the inside.
Her post on the topic puts forward an excellent analysis of the control issues that corporations face in choosing like J&J to blog, to openly discuss with the public and accept all manner of commentary and debate. As she puts it:
The price for getting your story out there is losing control over where it ends and who adds to it. The ‘reward’ is the ability to bypass the media, an unmediated and more human reach to those who care about the whole story, not just the outrage of the day in the papers.
And as Johnnie Moore sums it up in “When corporate blogging gets tough…”:
Yes, with blogging your fingers get more dirt on them, but you do stand a chance to get a more real engagement. This is a quite a shift for any PR and I give credit to JNJ for blogging it with a human voice. The comments there make very interesting reading – you realise there are many different perspectives on what’s happening and that JNJ are willing to have the conversation, not try and skirt round it.
Blogging needs to be accepted as another means of corporate communication, another tool in the belt if you will. Prior to that blog entry, comments like that of Chris Brown were only to be expected really:
J&J’s press release is analytical, not emotional. The only emotion sounds like they are whining.
Ray Jordan’s blog post delivered what commentators were looking for, and has generated quite a bit of support in resulting comments and related blog entries and news stories. Another press release just would not have delivered that result.
Great post thanks for getting all this information together. It will be really great to see if J&J can really change public opinion by using their blog instead of regular media channels.
Hi Dan, thanks for the comment.
Absolutely. I’m curious to see how far the ripples go. Is the world ready for corporate giants to don a human face and enter into open conversation? I’m sure the bloggers and the blog-aware out there will be receptive of the method even if they disagree with the corporate position. But will the general public pick up on the discussion? Will the message reach mainstream media?
And will J&J manage to keep the topic alive and fresh as events unfurl without getting bogged down in legal mumbo jumbo or excessive self-justification, either of which could alienate readers?
As they say, watch this space…
Thanks for your comment on my blog.
Just wanted to point out that J&J has been blogging for some time now and it gives them some credibility in this case. They have been listening and participating in the blogosphere before this issue (we PR folks don’t call them crisis anymore…
, thus building their reputation.
Some companies might wait, listen and maybe even set up a “blacksite” or “crisis blog” just in case but that will not solve their problem and will not bring them a lot of support of the blogosphere.
J&J “blogger relations” will also help in this case. At least they know and have met the bloggers that matter in their industry.
This story has reached the websites of mainstream media but some analysis will be needed to see if the J&J blog has influenced their reporting. See Google News search results here: http://tinyurl.com/2fgjzg
Indeed, let’s watch this space….
J&J does have an advantage with their blog, and from reading the comments on the new york times, there’s a lot of mixed emotions about the Red Cross. It would be interesting to see J&J conduct a blogger relations campaign on this subject. However, I’d also like to hear more from their own employees, not just the bloggers, is there any disagreement in the company about the suit?
I don’t think “victory” as in the entire liberal media suddenly backs a corporation over a non-profit is realistic, as an objective or outcome.
Having been both a press officer at a local borough council in London which had an appalling reputation for mismanagement (almost entirely deserved) “fire-fighting” continuously, and being a journalist at present dealing with the drug industry, I think I can gauge what the target for J&J ought to be.
If the dispute is presented as one where there are two sides, not necessarily even equal, but where J&J’s position is considered to have SOME reasonable basis; and if the ARC is seen as not entirely blameless, with some skeletons in its closet, then J&J can avoid caving into the ARC’s demands.
It helps that the drug firm has stated its objectives clearly and has now said it would expect to donate any damages claimed to philanthropic causes.
As you report, the fact that the firm was blogging before the crisis gives it a credibility it would not have if a specially-recruited “crisis management team” was issueing corporate-legaleze bullshit press releases.
[Disclosure: I was hired by J&J (via Adriana Lukas) to give a conference presentation on the tools of new media for their corporate affairs, and have dealt with Ray Jordan and Marc Monseau]
What kind of slimeball consultant suggests that a corporation target its opponent by focusing on the “skeletons in its closet” in the manner mentioned above?
Ah, yes… The kind of slimeball consultant working for a slimeball client that would sue the Red Cross.
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