Dow Chemical Co. is going to whack 5,000 employees, or 11% of its total workforce, and will tell another 6,000 contractors to sit on their hands until further notice.
So much for the human element.The Human Element is the corporate branding campaign that Dow has been running since 2006. It's gloriously beautiful and thematically broad...an ethnically-diverse series of facial closeups, positioned next to vague declarations about the importance of community, the environment, and global happiness.
I'm sure the company spent many millions on it.The campaign has earned Dow high praise in the communities that tend to praise such expenditures. One branding apologist declared that Dow's brand equity had soared in 2007, growing 34% to account for 16.22% of the company's market capitalization.
A global PR campaign based on the branding was a success because it helped Dow "build new and often stronger relationships with stakeholders."While its marketers were busy delivering their ideal of the brand (and congratulating one another), the marketplace changed. Energy prices went up, demand went down, and the financing of Dow's business activities (ongoing, as well as at least one very pricey acquisition) got a lot harder.
So now it's shuttering or idling 200 factories, and discarding lots of people.What's this going to do to the company's branding, I wonder?The strange thing is that Dow is actually a responsible business. No, not by the nonsense measures of the corporate social responsibility marketing crowd, but for real.
Sure, it makes modest, mostly symbolic commitments to do good in the world, and then promotes the hell out of them...what company can resist, right? But Dow made a business strategy decision a few years ago, encapsulated in a document entitled "2015 Sustainability Goals." It's a guide to how it intends to lower the social and environmental impacts of its business, which it readily admits is based on some pretty toxic, scary elements.
Dow's goals aren't just feel-good; they're actual, measurable, real-world targets. Boring % and dull financial metrics. And this from a company that gave the world Agent Orange and the Bophal catastrophe. Exxon's board couldn't get its major shareholders to approve one iota of real action to back up the outright lies of its corporate branding about the environment.
Dow put its money where its mouth is. And all they got for it was imaginary brand value? Equity, shmecklity, I say. Why the hell did Dow sign over its legitimate business strategy to the branding machinations of a bunch of communicators (internal marketers, and their external agencies)? What the hell does the human element mean, anyway? The brand experts successfully abstracted a real company behavior, and then chose to communicate it in vague, feel-good, nonsense ways.Dow could have:Told the truth - A variety of communities, from the activitist to the casually interested, would be interested in the specificity of Dow's commitment.
These details, along with a honest and continuing description of the company's behaviors, should have been the substance of every social media interaction. Get people talking about specific facts, not somehow consuming branding dreck about a bike race around the world to support sustainable waterBeen consistent - Goals, like life, are a process, not an outcome, and nobody needs to believe that Dow (or any company) will ever reach some ideal future state.
So the 2015 goals are going to be out of date, or need to change (get better, faster, whatever); the company initiatives are real-time, so why wasn't the substance of its communications to involve its stakeholders in this ongoing evolution? Where's the global effort to write the goals for 2016?Challenged others to match its commitments - Greenwashing is a common shortcoming of most environmental programs, and the fact that marketers are left to deliver symbolic branding is why most people don't trust what the companies say.
Dow was and is different; it has actually made business commitments, so why couldn't its outbound communications offer up standards to follow, examples for other companies to emulate, or even open source its activities so others could do them, too?Integrated its goals into departmental outreach - Ultimately, brands exist in corporate behaviors far beyond and apart from the creative inventions of marketers. Dow's sustaninability goals must have had a significant impact on how those departments go about their business, so how were those actions communicated?
How did they stand out from "regular" behaviors? How did Dow focus resources to understand how those actions would actually earn it more regard, inquiries and, ultimately, more business?Instead, it gave the world the Human Element. Only now it has to admit that the element is disposable. And the brand equity it built up via all that brilliant obfuscation? Zero. Not terribly responsible, is it?
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