SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Two Easy Steps to Win my Business

A colleague recently sent around a very interesting BusinessWeek piece about the efforts companies are making towards restoring public trust in their brands. It was, I thought, a great look at how McDonald’s, American Express, and Ford are tackling the core problem of distrust in an era when largesse, recklessness, and complacency among major corporations have led to a financial panic and recession.

While McDonald’s and Ford have primarily improved their public standing by actually improving their products, American Express’ story, I thought, was more interesting because its products aren’t exactly tangible. It, primarily, is in the business of moving money around - a valuable, essential service - but the extent of the average consumer’s interaction with AmEx involves swiping a card at the grocery store and paying up at the end of the month.  The same is true of all credit card companies, really.

So traditionally credit card issuers have competed at the margins. Credit cards are more or less functionally identical, so companies had to lure new customers by touting perks like the security of their cards (AmEx “Blue” cards),  the quality of their customer service (AmEx platinum cards), or the ubiquity of card-accepting merchants (Visa). AmEx even benefited from a false underground rumor of an exclusive “Black” card issued only to celebrities; in response to the rumors, the company actually started issuing a similiar “Centurion” card in 1999. Rewards like cash back and airline miles are other competitive battlegrounds for issuers.

But given the new austerity of the recession and the leeriness of consumers punch drunk from commodity bubbles,  financial panics and record unemployment, AmEx needed a new marketing tack. So it turned to the stalwart of American business mythology - the yeoman entrepreneur, repairing bikes and baking bread in once-vacant storefronts across the nation.

As someone with an entreprenurial bent, I love the ad. I really, really do. I’m incredibly inspired by stories like these, where an economically beleaguered place like Detroit, thanks to plummeting costs of living, attracts artists, entrepreneurs and other risk-takers to rebuild the city. My escapist fantasies usually revolve around moving to places like Baltimore or Cleveland and participating in their ongoing rebirth.

AmEx is right to run campaigns like these on two levels: first, as an emotional matter, I think most Americans are kind of like me - we envy the freedom and the boldness of entrepreneurs, and alignment with those virtues is never a bad thing. But on a more substantive level, the only surefire way to improve America’s moribund corporations is to enable small businesses to mount challenges to their dominance, and American Express’ fate is directly tied to the health of the broader corporate sector.

I would have liked to see more substance in the campaign, though. What concrete actions is the company taking to improve small business’ access to credit? Is it working with Chambers of Commerce in places hard-hit by the recession to offer business tips to would-be entrepreneurs? How else is it promoting OpenForum, its online resource for small businesses? Is it working with governments to remove barriers to business creation? You never find out.

So, big business - if you want my trust, don’t try to align yourself with my values, or sell me on your brand image. I want to know exactly how you can help and what you’ll do in the event you fail to help. Information that doesn’t accomplish one of those two things just isn’t particularly relevant.