By Sharon Williams, founder and head of strategy at Taurus  >>

IT WAS ALBERT EINSTEIN who said, “The leader is the one who out of the Clutter brings simplicity … out of discord, harmony ... and out of difficulty, opportunity.”

I often wonder where the leader is in a crisis.

After a career in crisis management, I’ve seen so many companies get it wrong. But is it the brands and companies that get it wrong or is it the people?

The thing about crisis communications is that, at the time of crisis, it’s very easy for everyone to blame somebody else – whereas each of us should have the responsibility very clearly allocated and understood. 

The reality is harsh. If a company name is on your resume – in other words, you work for a company brand and that brand then hits a crisis – your resume is then affected forever. So isn’t it everyone’s responsibility?

The other thing about crisis is that it immediately and almost certainly affects the bottom line. It affects revenue, shareholder value and affects everything to do with the amount of money that a company is responsible for making or generating.

It includes an impact on shareholders, paying salaries and indeed paying tax. So it affects the individual, the company and the country.

I encourage you to think of and view Crisis as a critical centre of your business objectives.

You are captain of your own brand

The other thing we have to understand is that within or outside of crisis, whether we like it or not, we are captains of our personal brand. It is nobody else’s responsibility to be able to communicate who we are and who we’re not.

If you are not taking control of that, and if you create a vacuum around who you are, and what you stand for  –  someone else fills in that space.

The reputation you build through your personal brand takes years to build and seconds to destroy. We see this every day with the likes of politicians and CEOs – and ordinary citizens who make mistakes in the public arena.

I like to think of reputation as a bucket, and you’ve got a reputation within that bucket.  What you want to do is fill the bucket with really good positive things about you. You want other people to have a bucket full of positive thought about you, and if the proverbial hits that bucket – and it will at some point – then it’s far less likely to fall over if that bucket is full of good substance about you that people understand.

What happens if that bucket is empty and no one knows who you are? You can expect that bucket to make a really big sound when it’s kicked.

Don’t self promote. Do self-strategize

That doesn’t mean that you have to be self-promotional; it means you just have to be who you are: with a strategy.

Steve Jobs, when he appeared in public, was consistent. He even dressed the same almost every time.

This consistency builds trust. Brands out there are built on trust and shareholder value is built on trust.

So, let's look at why you should build and maintain a personal brand. Maintain a personal brand because you want to be understood fast. Time is of the essence. Who has time to waste?

If you’re invisible and you stay quiet, who knows what to think? If you are not out there and you create a vacuum, you’re not making it clear if – or what – you stand for. Then other people will fill that spot for you, and most importantly, when things go wrong, people are less likely to give you a chance.

Artificial intelligence (AI), already in play for some years, is about to change our lives again as the internet did over 50 years ago. If AI is automating and sliding decision making to be faster and automatic, in a highly competitive environment, building your personal brand is going to leave you ahead of the competition and allow you to stand out within those AI-driven environments.

Be found. Be understood.

It’s the people …

So, if risks and crises are happening every day, how does a company get it so wrong?

Let’s have a look at the experiences from the last year. You can barely open the newspaper without seeing some story of a crisis badly handled. From Woolworths CEO Brad walking out of an interview … KFC running out of chicken … Optus understating an outage …

But, is it companies that get it wrong or is it people?

If people don’t get it right, the brands get blamed because of individual poor decision-making. 

So, what goes wrong, and what happens in these situations?

Lack of speed to act. On the whole, people are slow to do damage control.

They don't quite understand that the proverbial has just hit the fan and we need to be running or we need to be acting.

Not owning up. Another mistake with a vast impact. Denial doesn’t go down well.

Deception. Hoping to get away with deception, which of course is never a good idea. Not being honest won’t work in your favour.

So, then, how do you prepare against crisis?

Scenario plan. You can brainstorm this over a sandwich and whiteboard it, then develop a scenario plan for each potential crisis. This is essentially a 10-point plan and they’re not particularly complex. However, it allows you to workshop potential crises, so when something happens that you’re not expecting, at least your scenario plan has ensured you’re ready to deal with it and rehearsed. The police, fire brigade and Army do this all the time. The Army is particularly brilliant at it.

Train the team and assign responsibility. Once you’ve developed your scenario plan, train team members. Assign ultimate responsibility to the actual person where the buck stops.

Test, test, test. Ensure each scenario is tested and rehearsed. Then, audit, monitor and engage, because things are always changing in the world. Your scenario plan will evolve and expand as the environment changes, and new threats and opportunities arise.

Learn from the past. It’s a good idea to look at other people in your industry and crises impacting them, and then look at instances outside your industry. These case studies are always good to learn from.

Have your responses to each crisis ready at hand. CEOs, heads of divisions and chairmen should have their laminated crisis plan easily accessible on their desk or bedside table or ready on their phone.

The great thing is that constant change is here to stay, and we’re always changing well after the crisis is over.

Measure, test, rehearse, audit, monitor and engage so – when the crisis is finished – your crisis work actually starts again, because you go back and you analyse and you review.

Returning to an earlier example – KFC. They ran out of chicken and they took out a full-page ad in mainline papers owning up to it.

The first thing they did was act quickly and apologise. A great example to remember when crisis planning.

About the author 

Sharon Williams builds people, brands and businesses.

She was born and raised in London, then spent time living in Hong Kong before moving to Sydney, where she founded Taurus, a multi award-winning agency, in 1995. The Taurus Bullseye™ methodology she created has stood the test of time and more than 2,000 brands have benefitted from the strategic Taurus Bullseye approach.

Starting Taurus in 1995, Sharon knows something about tenacity and reinvention. She calls it her No Bull proven approach to position, grow, adapt, remain relevant and rebuild.

Sharon is one of the world’s leading personal branding experts and created Taurus Profile™ over 18 years ago to show how a personal brand has a direct impact on revenue and business objectives.

www.taurusmarketing.com.au

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonwilliamstaurus/

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IT WAS AN AUSTRALIAN company that pioneered bathroom/toilet/convenience advertising around the world 40 years ago – and has continually developed its system to help save lives ever since.

Within the unique personal spaces of public bathrooms, Convenience Advertising has cleverly and sensitively brought vital public health information to people of all walks of life across the world, especially through critical health periods such as the HIV/AIDS crisis, waves of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), community drug problems and, most recently, COVID-19.

The Convenience Advertising method of tailoring messages with illustrative clarity – and sometimes humour – has proved time-and-time- again to drive spikes in calls to advertised health services that can – and do – help people to get the treatment they need.

Since 1984, Convenience Advertising has delivered billions of messages and more than 5,000 campaigns across 14 countries.

With a focus on high impact public health campaigns, the bathroom messages have saved countless lives, from Australia all the way to the US, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Russia, China, Thailand and Laos PDR. 

Getting messages on target during crises

In 1984, the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) epidemic was spreading globally, with people who contracted the deadly virus facing huge stigma. 

Public health advocate David Stanley, who was deeply involved in the international public health response to HIV, established Convenience Advertising to reach audiences at risk with lifesaving, preventive HIV messages. He remains an active director to this day.

“I had the idea of putting messages into bathrooms, in venues that could be considered a locus of risk, such as bars, clubs and pubs,” Mr Stanley said. “We trialled our first HIV campaign in Melbourne, and the results were astounding, with 13,000 calls to the HIV info helpline in the first two weeks alone.

“This told us the channel was very effective, that targeted out-of-home public health messaging worked. So, we took the idea national.

“Independent research commissioned by the Commonwealth Government in 1989, into the effectiveness of bathroom advertising, found the HIV campaigns delivered an average unprompted audience recall rate of 84 percent, with high reported usefulness, relevance and messages understood. 

“With these results, we then took bathroom advertising to 13 other countries,” Mr Stanley said.

Innovating the message by location

Convenience Advertising has since delivered thousands of international and Australian public health campaigns, from safe injecting in international hotspots, to the world’s first responsible service of cannabis program in the Netherlands (including 600 coffee shops) which received national media attention.

Then there came the HIV prevention focus in Thailand – which included free condoms for international visitors. Convenience Advertising also developed the now globally famous Australian First Nations HIV campaign, ‘Condoman’.

“It’s been a blessing to work with our partners, and most importantly, the affected communities, to deliver messages that we know have changed, and even saved lives,” Mr Stanley said. “The ability to narrowcast, to take messages directly to the target audience, at the locus of risk has been extremely effective.

“We’re able to reach people in a private space, with minimal distractions, where they have at least two minutes to understand and engage with the message, whether it be to visit a website, take a multilingual information card, and nowadays scan a QR code.

“This remains a powerful way to reach specific at-risk audiences,” he said.

Technology brings the message (out of) home

The last 40 years has seen huge innovation and change in the media landscape, through the way advertisers not only reach and engage with audiences, but how they track the level of engagement.

Convenience Advertising has harnessed this change, with the use of digital screens, QR codes and new and innovative technology, and remains one of Australia’s most effective out- of-home advertising channels.

“The value of bathroom advertising has increased over time, and will continue to do so,” Mr Stanley said.

“The smartphone, coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, it’s a whole new dawn for prevention. The future of bathroom advertising is full of exciting possibilities.

“We’ve worked really hard to improve public health for 40 years, and we’ll continue to do so for as long as humans have the biological need to visit the bathroom,” Mr Stanley said.

Convenience Advertising now partners with more than 3,200 venues Australia-wide – including shopping centres, parent rooms, airports, universities and TAFEs, pubs, bars, and clubs.

The agency also works with all levels of government, and commercial and not-for-profit organisations across the country to deliver high impact awareness, behaviour change and product marketing campaigns.

www.conads.com.au

EDITOR’S NOTE

ANYONE founding a company, who wants innovation to be part of its DNA, should study David Stanley’s story and the trajectory of Convenience Advertising. Business Acumen editor Mike Sullivan’s long-form interview with David Stanley – replete with his hard-earned insightful observations and anecdotes of hard-won success – will be published on September 16.

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By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

PRINTING business Kwik Kopy is one of Australia’s oldest and biggest franchises.

The business was established in Australia in 1982 when Penfold Printing acquired the Australia-New Zealand rights to the USA’s expanding Kwik Kopy network and it was purchased outright by Stephen Penfold in 1985.

Stephen’s son Matthew is now chairman of the board, several years after running the Darling Harbour NSW franchise.

The business has been growing successfully despite all the changes in the print industry.

Kwik Kopy started a copy shop on every corner, but it evolved massively over the last 10 years with the type of printing that can be done on digital machines. It now does digital print as opposed to the ‘old school’ offset print and it does that through its franchisees which are all local based businesses.

Customers include corporates that want part of their printing done for messaging purposes, but the bulk of the business comes from small to medium sized businesses. It does everything from their business cards to banners to pull-up signage. It is now moving into design and digital marketing. 

Coping with digital disruption

Sonia Shwabsky, the CEO of Kwik Kopy, said the industry had gone through a lot of digital disruption over the last 10 years.

This included the big international printers coming into the market, new design tools like Canva and retail type operators and then the big offset printers moving into the digital space.

“What we’ve been able to do is to address that by saying: ‘We provide personalised local service. If you want to talk to someone and you want someone to help, which you do need, it’s a high-involvement type product, you can come and see us,” Ms Schwabsky told Talking Business.

That’s opposed to an outfit like Canva, which is basically all about software.

“You don’t have anyone to talk to, you have to do it yourself and what we find is a lot of people outgrow that,” Ms Schwabsky said.

So an SME needing a logo might find an online design tool but then find they have to translate that out into all of their communications.

“That’s when it gets more difficult and people lose interest in doing it themselves,” she said. “They should be focused on growing their business and not designing.”

IT pressure on business owners

The other issue for a lot of SMEs is that working with these tools requires small business owners to be really IT savvy. Not all are like that.

“They don’t have the time to learn, even though the tools are relatively easy,” Ms Schwabsky said.

“But what we find is that when you’re a small business owner, you’re wearing so many hats.

“To sit there and learn something that you’re not going to use in the rest of your business takes time away from the real core business activities you should be doing – so that’s where we come into it.

“We can take info from an initial idea and turn it into that marketing collateral that you need.”

Significantly, Kwik Kopy now scores a massive 97 percent on the Net Promoter Score – the score used to assess customer satisfaction and the extent to which customers would recommend the business to others.

“Our franchisees, because they’re business owners, it is directly related to their livelihoods and their success,” Ms Schwabsky said.

“So the care that they take and the service we provide, they go above and beyond.” 

www.kwikkopy.com.au

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-26-interview-with-sonia-schwabsky-from-kwik

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By Leon Gettler, Talking Business

HOW DOES a retailer become successful by selling on Amazon?

Isaac Wolfe, the CEO of Brooklyn-based Real Essentials said it was done by ‘bundling’. That is to say, when customers want several items of one particular products, like say tee-shirts, the company bundles them in a package and sends them to the client, anywhere in the world.

It allows the company to differentiate itself on Amazon, where its online fashion store is one of Amazon’s most popular private brands.

“The truth is, in 2017 when we started Real Essentials, we were the first to come to the market offering more than one piece to a customer,” Mr Wolfe told Talking Business.

“We came up with the concept of bundling products together in clothing. It was introduced in other categories.

“It really wasn’t in the market on a scale in the clothing industry, so that’s really what we built our business on. Anything that a customer wanted more than one piece of, we decided to bundle it up. 

“So tee-shirts, it’s a volume item. Instead of selling one piece, we’d sell five of them.”

He said this was perfect for the Amazon platform.  

“It allows us to offer a stronger value to the customer, without jeopardizing the quality of the product,” Mr Wolfe said.

‘Body type’ advantages of selling online

Mr Wolfe said the online space allows the retailer to sell to customers with all body types.

“Online is a different market to retail,” he said. “It’s a safe space. It’s a spot that you can do on your own and we want to cater to all sizes, all genders. That’s the online world.”

Mr Wolfe said customer feedback was part of the Real Essentials business decision-making process.

“Feedback is a very important area of the business,” he said.

“We listen to the customers very closely and we have teams dedicated to this, just watching what the customer is saying.

“We constantly improve our product based on their feedback. So if we hear that the customers aren’t liking the quality of the product, or the weight of the product, or the feel of the product, we go back out to our development and production teams, we sit down, we align and make improvements to the product to make sure that we are always offering the best product to the customer.”

True value of customer feedback

Mr Wolfe said Real Essentials gets that feedback “every single day”.

“It just rolls in, all day long,” he said.

“It’s such an important area of our business. We really built our data visualisation sets, to understand what the customer is saying on a very in-depth basis. It’s an area we look at every single day, we have teams dedicated for it.  

“The customer is what our business is built on.”

A lot of the feedback, he said, was around fitting quality.

He said having the right relationships with suppliers, with the factories, was the first way to create products that are affordable.

“To top that, we have our own quality control and quality assurance teams overseas that are watching over our production and our quality day to day,” Mr Wolfe said.

In five years time, he said, he wanted to see Real Essentials setting up bricks and mortar stores across the US.

“I’m not sure we’ll have any in Australia over the next five years, but potentially over in the US,” he said.  

www.amazon.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-6-interview-with-isaac-wolfe-from-real-esse

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