The events immediately preceding Governor Spitzer’s resignation require no recapitulation. At the time, his many enemies and detractors chuckled, confident they had seen the last of the combative crusader, and the Spitzer brand went into hibernation just as quickly as some of the financial firms he once targeted.
Almost half of New Yorkers in an AP poll believed he should serve jail time.

But a few months later, and within a fortnight of Manhattan US Attorney Michael J. Garcia’s declaration that the “public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges”, Mr. Spitzer has re-emerged as a pundit in the pages of The Washington Post.

Further advancing his rehabilitation, Slate.com – arguably our nation’s online magazine of record – last week bestowed Mr. Spitzer with a regular forum under the title “The Best Policy.”

“I go forward with the belief, as others have said, that as human beings our greatest glory consists not in never falling but in rising every time we fall,” Spitzer announced in his resignation speech.

Sure enough, the Spitzer brand has now transcended peccadilloes, pathos, bathos and inexplicable self-destruction to become about . . . the glory and triumph of the indomitable American spirit. Now that’s re-positioning! And it seems to be working among at least some of the Slate readers who aren’t authoring vituperative screeds:

“Love the article. Glad to have the benefit of your keen insights again. A lot of us in New York State miss you very much, and I speak for so many who regard you as the BEST Attorney General we ever had.”

“What was genuinely “disgraceful” was the invasion of Mr. Spitzer’s privacy, the cruel infliction of pain on his family, in order to block his intervention on Wall St.”

And even:

“Glad to have you back now what about becoming the next Senator from NY. we need some one like you in the Senate.”

For years Eliot Spitzer was the most feared and loathed man on Wall Street. For a few weeks he was the butt of jokes. And eight months later the éminence grise is back on the national stage.

Odds on Blagojevich, anyone?

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In this bleak economic climate, it seems CEO’s either don’t care to acknowledge the realities of the current situation, nor disheartening forecast for 2009 – or (even worse) are so mired in denial that it somehow hasn’t dawned on them just how bad this fiscal crisis is.

The Heads of GM, Ford and Chrysler know all too well that these are dire times. Hey - they’re even driving to congressional hearings instead of using their private jets!

But listen a little more closely, and it’s apparent they’re still not coming clean about what it will take to pull them back from their respective precipices. A Slate article notes that the Big Three regard the proposed $34 billion bailout package as a band-aid until they get back on their feet: “The executives and union leaders speak as if the bailout money is simply needed to tide them over until the sun comes back out. Exuding and instilling such confidence is a big part of their jobs.”

This is certainly true — it is an unenviable obligation of CEO’s to have to grin through the worst of times and try to convince consumers that some semblance of order will soon return.

The trouble is, neither congress nor consumers are buying it, and are treating the Big Three as a lost cause by voting with their feet. Our theory is that if the Big Three’s argument were more along the lines of, “Yes, it really is that bad, but here’s why you should help us out anyway…” stakeholders might be more likely to consider their pleas. To get some straight talk from Execs amidst this fickle and unreliable economic climate, fleets of cars ill-suited to evolving consumer tastes, and a historical backdrop of short-term thinking  would at least offer a small sign of movement in the right direction.

To conclude with some parting, Culbertian words for all the CEO’s:  as tough as it is to be realistic about bad news, when you’re not even honest with yourselves, everyone can smell Bullsh*t.

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At BrandCulture we like to acknowledge design done well, whether it’s in our own backyard or across the pond. The Fashion V. Sport exhibit at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum showcases apparel at the intersection of function and elegance from Nike to Chanel, Yohji Yamamoto to Vivienne Westwood. For those of us who don’t have the luxury of making our way to the V&A to see Speedo’s one-piece wonder worn by Michael Phelps, a Sherlock Holmesian houndstooth get-up by Adidas, or a blinding array of dayglo trainers, a visit to Fashion V. Sport’s vivid website or its accompanying blog will suffice.

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First, the organization doesn’t time its nearly 13,000 CSR’s calls. Obviously managers encourage efficiency in addressing customer problems, and USAA is pushing to make its website more of a one-stop-shop for self-service. But freeing CSR’s from the tyranny of the clock can’t be underestimated. Most call centers measure their employee’s interactions down to the second so that they can staff as leanly as possible. USAA, on the other hand, is asking employees to provide unparalleled service, and giving them the time to do so. It means giving up some staffing efficiencies, but USAA is willing to make the investment.

Second, USAA rewards its CSR’s well. For 2007 employees received a 14.9% bonus, USAA reimburses tuition fees, and staff perks include a company-funded pension, free financial advice, and on-site child care and fitness centers. They’ve recognized a simple truth: if you want to hire and retain talented, hard-working people, you have to compensate them for their market value and their effort.

Even the most well-intentioned employees need the freedom, the authority, and the incentives to consistently deliver great customer service. USAA has structured its contact center operations and its total compensation around this lesson. It is one that all companies who aspire to provide standout service should take to heart.

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One company that is getting this right is The Leavitt Group. Leavitt is 46-year-old multi-line network of insurance agencies that has grown to 115 locations, and has reached annualized premium revenues of $1.3 billion.

Leavitt’s brand promise, Protecting Your Business, Protecting Your Way of Life, is as meaningful to employees and agency partners as it is to customers. This line is the type of concise articulation of a singular idea that all consultants strive for – an expression that encapsulates the essence of the business from the inside out; that engages employees, partners, and customers alike.

But what truly sets The Leavitt Group apart is its delivery on its brand promise. Leavitt is a business comprised of people who return phone calls and provide the type of high-touch customer service that makes local businesses competitive – all while running one of the nation’s largest insurance brokerages.

Yet the group’s continued growth and its expansion into increasingly larger metropolitan areas raise questions as to how the company will be able to translate its Cedar City, Utah roots to a broader stage. If Leavitt sticks to the values on which it was founded, it will no doubt succeed in evolving its brand and extending its culture for another 46 years of even greater success.

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His basic point is that performance reviews serve more to underscore the reporting hierarchy than to actually improve performance. Rather, he argues in favor of ‘performance previews’, in which a manager and a report consider how they can work together to ensure that the employee is successful (since, he posits, managers should be held accountable for their reports’ performance): The preview structure keeps the focus on the future and what “I” need from you as “teammate and partner”…

We like the sentiment, but we call, well, bullsh*t.

First of all, Culbert’s idea is not revolutionary, despite the sense he tries to create that he is slaughtering a sacred cow. His concept of a preview is really just a performance review done well. Past is prologue, and any forward-looking plan requires an analysis of preceding events. And even if a review does focus solely on past performance, it doesn’t require much of a mental leap for an employee to infer what their manager’s criticism and praise mean in terms of future expectations. Sorry Sam, but the subtle addition of the letter ‘p’ in a reverse-psychology attempt to show how revolutionary your idea is by showing how simple it is just doesn’t work for us.

Second of all, we’re sick of hearing about teams where teams don’t belong. Teams and teamwork have become the corporate world’s version of American Flag lapel pins, and they’re losing their true meaning as a result. Let us be clear: when a boss gives an order and someone carries it out, that is not teamwork, and that is okay. An effective chain of command can get amazing things done - just ask the army. When, on the other hand, an employee helps a colleague meet a tight deadline, that is teamwork. A flat organization with overlapping responsibilities can also achieve incredible results - just ask the open source community. Sorry again Sam, but a team is defined as a group of players, and the coach is not one of those players.

We believe that performance reviews can work, but they can’t be only annual, they can’t be exclusively from boss to direct report, and they need to blend rigorous objective standards with subjective feedback. Reviews need to be part of a constant and virtuous feedback loop among networks of colleagues. They need to happen top-down, bottom-up, and side-to-side. They need to take into account the fact that these are people working together, and organizations need to trust those people to make subjective judgements about performance.

Which brings us dangerously close to another on our hit list of corporate nonsense: “Our people.” If we only had a nickel for each organization for which it’s The People that make the difference, we might never have to worry about another performance review again…

If you have any of your own favorites, please feel ‘empowered’ to share them.

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• Your employees are busy (we hope). By posting information to an intranet, you’ll unclutter their inboxes by at least one email. No employee doesn’t like that. It might not be easy to transition from emails to an intranet, but with a little practice they’ll get used to, and may even prefer, checking for information they need, rather than being interrupted by information on next week’s fire drill.

• Unlike standard email or printed newsletters, you can actually track the information people seek out on the intranet. You can determine what content employees consume and how often they check back for updates what communications - in other words which reports are effective and widely-read, and which ones can and should be discarded altogether. As a manager at national restaurant chain Panera puts it, “we have an initiative to reduce the number of reports we produce.”

• Social networking isn’t just for teenagers. New utilities like Socialtext (a wiki-intranet hybrid) are facilitating a way for employees to communicate at and about work on their own terms. The intranet can help you keep the pulse of your organization, give you access to employees’ ultroneously-generated ideas, and build a sense of shared purpose and collective ownership from the C-suite to the front lines.

It takes thick skin and a commitment to honest exchange, but it works. A certain dash of realism is required – after all, your intranet is competing with the internet at large. But the potential efficiencies, learning opportunities, and community-building aspects can make it worth the effort to create an intranet that’s as engaging and useful as your website should be.

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Lindstrom elaborates that it is the act of partaking in rituals surrounding certain brands – “such as putting a lime wedge in a Corona or slowly pouring a Guinness” - that keeps us coming back for more. (As does the alcohol content of said products. We’re just saying.)

Brand enthusiasts, does this terminology of almost spiritual brand devotion and ritualization sound familiar? With its echoes of the Symbolic Frame, Lindstrom’s findings will resonate with adherents to the gospel of Terrence Deal and Lee Bolman. Though Deal and Bolman’s focus is the loyalty within organizational cultures (rather than allegiance to retail products), they too attest to the significance of rites, traditions, and symbols in creating brand allegiance.

Like the Corona drinker’s ritual of stuffing a lime wedge into the bottleneck time and again, when the ladies and gentlemen of Ritz-Carlton confer for their daily lineup, they know exactly what to expect: they will discuss one of the Ritz’s 12 Service Values, important departmental news, and any issues from the day before. Similarly, the strict adherence to calling one another “ladies and gentlemen” is a crucial tool in creating a unified culture. According to Deal and Bolman, such linguistic and ritualistic consistencies inspire loyalty and unity within an organization.

We’ve long been fervent believers in Deal and Bolman’s theories, and now we’re rejoicing in Lindstrom’s assertion that it’s not flashy, fleeting images of products in ad campaigns that sell; rather, products that create meaning to the consumer are what ultimately inspire repeat buying. Successful brands resonate because they create a valuable experience, and, as Lindstrom’s MRI’s unequivocally tell us, quite literally get stuck in our heads.

What makes your brain’s branding synapses fire? Is it the act of stirring a sugar packet into your daily Peet’s beverage, or twisting apart an Oreo? At work, is there a ritual that keeps you motivated? Tell us about brands that inspire your devotion – we’d love to know.

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Your brand is the intersection between the promise you make to stakeholders, and the reputation (or lack thereof) you’ve earned in their minds. That reputation emanates from their interactions with your products, your prices, your offices, your stores, your staff, your partners, and anything else that is associated with you. And 99% of the time, their experience with you begins with your product or corporate name and logo.

So how important are that name and logo? Only as important as a first impression.

Whatever you want your brand to stand for in the marketplace, you want to start building that position from the moment someone sees or hears about your offering. While we agree wholeheartedly with Seth Godin that a logo alone doesn’t change marketshare, we couldn’t disagree more about researching a logo’s effectiveness. How else can you know what impression you’re likely to create with your target audience?

Moreover, how much goodwill do you give up by not involving internal stakeholders in the decision-making process? Quite a bit, Mammoth Mountain appears to be finding out the hard way.

With the proliferation of online tools, research (both quantitative and qualitative) doesn’t have to be expensive. One certainly needn’t spend months and millions to find out whether a design is accomplishing an objective or not.

Additionally, the support created by soliciting internal stakeholders’ opinions pays dividends that far outweigh the costs. Employees who are proud of their company’s logo and its brand can be its most powerful ambassadors, and interactions with them can be extremely powerful brand touch points.

Finally, logo research can and should do much more than eliminate outliers. Done right, a logo is a solution to a communications challenge - you want it to express or underscore your value proposition. If you want to be known as the fast company, does your logo communicate speed? If you want to be known as service oriented, does your logo evoke a sense of high-touch? If you want to be a progressive organization, is your logo exhibiting leading-edge characteristics?

A logo alone won’t guarantee success, and a great product or company can make a neutral or even questionable logo seem inoffensive or even great in retrospect (sorry Seth, but Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks fall into this category). But if you’ve only got one chance to make a first impression, shouldn’t you use all the tools at your disposal to make it the best one you can?

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While the Obama campaign has largely been a model of branding perfection, its occasional outsized confidence (Berlin? Greek Columns? Thoughts of delaying the Phillies’ victory when Pennsylvania is a game-changer?) may have limited its success in closing the deal with the moderate middle.

• Can Obama’s message connect without seeming overly self-serving?
• Can it stand out amid the sea of celebrities and slick production values to which prime time viewers are accustomed?
• And if it does, will the cost raise eyebrows in the middle of what Obama himself calls “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?”

It’s not just about politicians either. Given the current economic climate, all marketers need to consider their outbound marketing spend not just in terms of the bottom line, but in terms of the impression it creates among customers and partners. When times are tough, no one wants to see money being spent frivolously. Sometimes it’s better not to talk, but to listen, focus on a core promise of substance, and work even harder to deliver on that promise for your customers.

The lesson: sometimes less is more, and some things are better unsaid.

And lest we forget, the grandiose staging of Obama’s Democratic Convention speech was followed by McCain’s announcement of Sarah Palin as a running mate, a resurgence of the Republican base, and a temporary leadership position in the polls for McCain.

We’ll be watching to see what Barack Obama can say in a half-hour prime time infomercial that couldn’t be communicated better in some other way, and whether the Obama campaign hasn’t overlooked – particularly with this prime time spot – that the medium is an inescapable part of the message.

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