Anant’s blog: Brands Under Fire

What does a brand do in times of  trouble? What roles can advertising and communication play in times such as these?

These were questions that Ivan Arthur and Kurien Mathews wanted answers to, and, on behalf of the Subhas Ghosal Foundation, laboured, with the active help of 13 communication professionals, to produce a study that attempted at providing answers.

I was present throughout the exercise, and I tried to recall all that was discussed during the deliberations. (Incidentally, the resultant book, Brands Under Fire, is being published by Penguin and will be at bookstores in a couple of weeks).

Could Satyam gain from the expert opinions and analysis?

Sadly, there’s nothing that advertising can do at a time like this.

There’s nothing that PR can do either; PR can send you positive messaging once there is something positive to say --  coming from a credible source.

As of now, while the credible sources in the form of the three new members of the board exist, there are no clear, positive messages that they can send out.

As and when there are, it’ll be interesting to see how the damage control exercise is handled. And it’ll be interesting to see who handles the PR; that’ll be  a peach of an account to win.

On another front, there are 53,000 employees at Satyam, almost all of whom had no clue that the management was fiddling the books and making complete idiots of the media, the regulators, the stock markets, the banks.

What of them? They’ve all been doing their jobs, diligently, and getting paid fairly for the effort.

Today, they are insecure, unsure if the pay cheques for January will come.

I stumbled on this blog launched by an employee. I’ll follow this regularly till Satyam is out of trouble.

Communication can, even at times like this, play a positive role.