Benjamin Franklin’s words are particularly appropriate in these turbulent times, when it’s more important than ever for companies to consider every opportunity to protect and manage their hard won reputation and brand value.
But as Paul Mead writes, it is interesting to see that one of the largest media channels - online - is more often than not completely neglected from a communications point of view in times of strife.
Yet search engines and Google, in particular, have such an enormous audience (over 28m people per month in the UK) and are such a part of our everyday lives that it’s astonishing how many brands can get this channel so badly wrong in times of crisis.
Over the last few weeks, for instance, Bradford and Bingley has rarely been out of the news as speculation reached fever pitch that the UK mortgage lender would become the next Northern Rock.
During this period of intensive media and market interest, the volume of searches for ‘Bradford & Bingley’ on Google has increased dramatically as clearly shown on the Google trends graph below.
And here’s where the current marketing and communications set up of most major brands in the UK breaks down.
Search is considered by most CEOs and their cohorts as a direct response channel and is, therefore, looked after by the media agency.
Media agencies will always deny this but, with very few exceptions, paid search will be poorly understood and natural search even less so in these organisations.
This set up will also mean there will be little or no liaison or integration with the PR agency in order to develop a wider strategy for the search channel.
An interesting question would be to consider what percentage of this huge increase in brand-related searches might be consumers looking to open a new account with Bradford & Bingley?
It’s impossible to say for sure but I will take a guess at very close tozero.
And what did concerned shareholders or worried customers of the bank see when they reacted to the news flow and Googled ‘Bradford & Bingley’ to find out what was going on?
Well they did see Bradford & Bingley at the top of the paid search and natural search listings, which is one thing at least.
However, more worrying was the site’s prominent message to all the stakeholders:
"Internet Saver 6.51% p.a. gross/AER. Open today with £1."
Mmmm. Thanks but I think I’ll leave that one.
I might be able to open an account today, but before nationalisation most consumers would have been more concerned about whether the bank would be around for much longer than the 24 hours required to open an account.
A look at the Google search results page shows no attempt to understand what people are looking for and regain some brand equity by delivering the right message at the right time - or to address the concerns posed by an Adwords ad run by The Telegraph to target worried consumers.
I am picking on Bradford & Bingley here, but it was the same with Northern Rock.
And it’s the same today with Alitalia, with MFI, with JD Sports and probably with most of the businesses at the centre of credit crunch-related speculation today.
Online is the modern channel of choice for information and search engines are most people’s starting point in that journey.
The search engine results page should therefore be considered as the frontline in modern communications and brands need to think more seriously about their ‘search relations’ programme.
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