Across the country, many brands are either dealing with a crisis and trying to survive it, or emerging as stalwarts of survival for the greater good. Here are three scenarios, each with a unique brand connection to perseverance. Make way for the new economy called survival.
The NFL
While American football fans and fantasy team captains hang on to their hopes for a winning season, the National Football League faces its latest challenge as individual expression competes with sportsmanlike conduct and team unity.
It’s too early to tell whether fan loyalty will result in disdain and longterm loss for the league or if the drama along the sideline will actually draw more broadcast viewers and social media followers of the intrigue. Headlines about player and coach behavior seem to be garnering more attention than scores and stats. Commissioner Roger Goodell will need to flex his muscle and leadership when the team owners convene soon to express their obvious differences. It’s all Goodell can do to keep the media at bay as other national voices push the league closer toward its own goal in a defensive posture.
Some would say the NFL barely survived the concussion catastrophe, but this issue is a horse of a different color. We’ll soon see whether the league is more about individual voices or clear expectation of respecting the flag, despite the disrespectful behavior of some who live under it.
Every spring, like a blanket of wildflowers, people from all over the world cover the City of Austin, TX, during SXSW to share their creative expressions, music and ideas. It’s a modern-day pilgrimage to the capital city to investigate, network, watch, listen and enter into different worlds of thought and virtual realities. It’s the place to discover new technologies, new movies, new emerging trends and the brands that can influence the way we all live and work.
This year, Leafly, which claims to be the largest cannabis website in the world, presented a well-rounded track over several days addressing multiple topics under the banner of Cannabusiness. The Leafly Lounge inside the convention center used its interior walls to provide simple text and graphics to help introduce SXSW participants to the cannabis topic.
It’s leading message: THC gets you high, CBD (cannabinoids) doesn’t. Leafly creatively demonstrated with juicy-flavored smoothies how terpenes, the natural aromatic compounds in plants and fruits we consume daily, give cannabis strains distinctive flavors like citrus, berry, mint and pine.
A primary brand attribute of Blue Bell Ice Cream has to be delicious. However, it seems to be aspiring to reshape its positioning to embrace the attribute of listeria. Can a bacteria be an appropriate attribute for a delicious dessert?
Once again, Blue Bell is pulling the cows from the marketplace back to the barn. In this case, the ice cream maker is recalling its Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and its newest flavor Cookie Two Step. One step forward, two steps back. The reason for the voluntary recall is the concern that the flavors may contain the deadly listeria bacteria that forced a complete shutdown of the creamery operation in April 2015 and forced a nation to go through a complete withdrawal from its addiction to the dessert.
Thank goodness there is a curtain to hide behind when I vote on Super Tuesday. Although my history is to publicly declare my vote after stepping out from behind the curtain, the 2016 March Primary causes me to bite my tongue and run into the shadows. What if my bet is a Trojan horse, and 2017 dawns an era of regret?
Early in the battle for the Republican mantle, so many contenders made my head spin. It has been the virtual reality show of politics. So many wanting the red rose and the public’s kiss just to stay in the game through the final episode. Following each A Team and B Team debates the overload of commentaries brought forth nothing new to me. I feel like I have to rudder through the deluge of presidential hopefuls on my own.
I’m still in the throws — along with Scout — of discovering that Atticus Finch may not be the man I have distinguished with honor since my youth. His participation in a Citizen’s Council caught me as much off-guard as the current overwhelming emergence of public pressure within the Democratic Party to rename its Jefferson Jackson fundraising dinners, and the cry of students at The University of Texas at Austin for the removal of statues on the flagship campus affiliated with Confederacy.
The reality of man’s failure to love one another is engrained in life’s history, and the clamor to erase it maps out an endless road.
Across the country, many brands are either dealing with a crisis and trying to survive it, or emerging as stalwarts of survival for the greater good. Here are three scenarios, each with a unique brand connection to perseverance. Make way for the new economy called survival.
