TheAgitator.com
Dropping Phelps May Have Hurt Kellogg Image
Thursday, February 26th, 2009Ad Age reports that cereal company Kellogg may have taken a hit for its decision to drop Michael Phelps after the bong photo fiasco.
Vanno, a website that follows 5,500 companies, compiles its reputation index by capturing “gossip, news, opinion and personal insight about companies and their reputations” submitted by users that it converts into numerical scores and rankings. Its figures shows Kellogg, which was ranked an impressive No. 9 in January, fell to No. 16 after announcing its peanut-butter-related recalls. But the company fell to No. 68 after letting Mr. Phelps go…According to Vanno, Kellogg has since fallen to 83.
I don’t know how valid Vanno’s reputation tracking formula is, but it’s at lest encouraging to see the company’s rank go down rather than up.
I hope this is true. I think it would be the perfect feedback for Kellogg if they lose customers because they dropped Phelps. Most people don’t really care about this and Kellogg raising a stink over it makes them look like busybodies and tarnishes their image.
It’s worth noting, however, that Phelps hurt his own case when he apologized. Some people think that such an apology is a good PR move to smooth things over, but the reality is that it provides validation to the companies who drop him. It lets them say, “Look, he’s not just admitting that he did it, he’s admitting that he knows it’s wrong.” But, it isn’t wrong and there is no reason for Phelps to be contrite.
His best move, both legally and in terms of PR, would have been to make no specific statements about his activities that night. “I am an adult and no one was in any danger. That should be the end of any legitimate concern here.”
My favorite part of that story, other than the whole Kelloggs-stepped-in-it-bigtime part, is this:
Mr. Correlation? Hi, nice to meet you. Have you met Mr. Causation? Oh, so you guys don’t always get along without controlling for all the other variables? Well, isn’t that a shame.
Note:
There are two other problems besides the well-known squabbles between Messrs. Correlation and Causation. First, we have a biased sample. Second, we have a huge other issue. It seems our friends the food nannies have become involved. (Pop tarts are worse than pot, therefore if you reject pot you must reject pop tarts: yes, it’s hugely flawed, but food nannies are flawed people.)
Also, for a small website allegedly tracking 5,500 companies, I suspect we have a law of small numbers problem as well.
In Phelps’ case, most parents would gladly take a little pot smoking if their kids grew up to be an athlete in a league similar to Phelps.
I hope it hurts their bottom line big-time. I’ve been boycotting the self-righteous fuckers, as have most of the people I know.
This would be more believable if the graphics didn’t look like someone had Powerpoint and three minutes to do it in.
This is one of those cases where I really wonder what would have happened if he actually had responded as Radley proposed. Well, he certainly would have still lost his sponsorships, but he might very well have become a folk/counterculture-superstar.
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Pass it on and post this everywhere!
“Dropping Phelps May Have Hurt Kellogg Image”
Good.
[...] tip to TheAgitator.com. [...]
The best comment on Kelloggs dropping Phelps was this SNL bit.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/56636/saturday-night-live-really-michael-phelps
hilarious.
Damn, Chaz, you beat me to it. Seth Meyers really nailed it on the head.
[...] According to Vanno (a company “reputation index”), the whole peanutbutter recall hurt Kellogg’s less than dropping Phelps. As 420 puts it, “never again will companies ignore the buying [...]