Posted on 08/23/2015 10:08:26 AM PDT by rickmichaels
Three separate but related stories exploded in mainstream and social media this week.
Ashley Madison’s membership list of 30 million-plus customers likely, as well as their personal details, was released by hackers to the world.
Jared Fogle, the former poster boy for Subway who filmed over 300 commercials after losing 200 pounds on a Subway diet, is likely heading to jail after the courts found his appetite extended to sex with minors and collecting child pornography.
The CEO of Coca Cola’s was forced to defend their funding of “scientific” research where they had asked us to swallow conclusions suggesting obesity was the result of a sedentary lifestyle and not the over consumption of calories.
All three featured a single brand at the epicentre that overnight went from appearing invincible to being highly vulnerable. And that vulnerability stems from the growing power of the consumer and their use of social media to harness their collective energy, regardless of motivation.
Some consumers were simply demanding transparency and truth, while others had craved content and commentary for their personal publishing empires and then there were even a select few who had the coding skills to hack into the bowels of an organization.
In the past when there was a consumer uprising, brand managers could limit collateral damage by hiring “spin doctors” and “crisis management” experts to craft messages designed to deflect or contain the controversy. This is no longer the case and brands caught in the crossfire can become endangered, if not extinct.
Lets look at this week to see what brands were shattered, battered or it didn’t matter:
Ashley Madison is shattered and I doubt it will survive. Major retailers like Target have survived data breaches that included credit card numbers, so have governments and other institutions with information we consider of the utmost privacy. This is different. Ashley Madison site was designed to move one’s moral compass from faithful to unfaithful and their data breach will unleash a tsunami of marriage breakups, public shame, firings and class action lawsuits.
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Coca-Cola as a brand will be battered. Their funding of research whose conclusion counters what even elementary school kids learn in their first health class will add fuel to a fire that has been set by nutritionists and other like-minded professionals who have been warning the consumer of the dangers of over-consumption of sugary drinks. The company will survive but attack on their research could make their sales of their flagship colas, already in decline, tailspin even faster.
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Jared’s arrest won’t matter to the Subway brand. He was a highly effective pitchman in the early 2000's but by 2008 the consumer itch to be scratched moved from health to value, primarily driven by McDonald’s dollar menu that had taken the industry by storm. Subway countered with their $5 footlong and the race for cheap gut fill was underway. In an almost perverse way Jared’s arrest and attachment to Subway might awaken the latent “Subway is better for you” positioning from a decade ago but brands like Chipotle and Panera Brand have trumped them with this promise.
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Is there an antidote that brands can use to hold back the growing power of the consumer? The naked truth is no. Branding is nothing more than packaging and positioning, the gift wrap and bow on a present that is often similar to many other competitive offerings. When the consumer decides to tear it open, when the anarchists seek absolution in social media it becomes a hurricane with no shelter in site.
“The CEO of Coca Cola’s was forced to defend their funding of “scientific” research where they had asked us to swallow conclusions suggesting obesity was the result of a sedentary lifestyle and not the over consumption of calories.”
Distinction without a difference. Consume more calories than you burn, and you’ll get fat. Sedentary lifestyle means you’re not burning as many calories as your instinctive consumption level is designed for (body expects to burn X calories, so you hunger for that much intake, then by not living up to the expected burn rate end up storing the energy as fat).
“Coca-Cola as a brand will be battered.”
Baloney. It’s a stable market base. Nobody who drinks Coke is going to stop drinking Coke just because Coca-Cola promotes the notion that you won’t get fat drinking Coke if you’re active enough to burn all the extra calories it provides.
What about the Gene Simmons brand?
Actually Subway is in trouble. If the claim by one person claiming to be an informant for the FBI and that she reported Jared to subway management and met with them twice about it and subway did nothing about it... They at Done as a brand.
If this turns out to be true no person with a shred of decency will ever eat there again.
Ashley Maddison yes, if you want to be a secret place getting hacked is bad. Subway no, they’d already been weaning themselves off Jarad for a while before all this started. Coca Cola no, they still own most of what people drink in this country, the “flag ship” could cease to exist tomorrow and barely effect the company.
I am guessing the informant was very much involved in the molestation. If you look at the her statements that have been released about jarred activities they are just not the type you could make unless you had very inside knowledge.. unless there is inside correspondence in the company about jarred nothing will happen. even if there is some proof of knowledge it would be those working for the company that knew that might have legal problems.
Indeed. How true. Quote of the day.
Nailed it with regard to Subway.
The lesson to learn from this technology-wise is that a determined hacker can gain access to pretty much any system.
The bad news is that hackers tend to be leftists. We can wallow in the schadenfreude when immoral companies like Ashley Madison get hacked, but how will we feel when they start hacking conservative sites just because they disagree with our message?
Coca-Cola will die when Ebt is prohibited from purchasing it.
Coke is right. If we all had the kinds of jobs that people had when the recipe for Coke was made, we'd all be skinny.
Back then people were 15,000 kcal/day farmers or lumberjacks.
Don't blame Coke for people's ass-sitting, cubicle dwelling lifestyle (sic).
For that matter, should Subway attempt to rename their footlong sub "the Jared"?
The information could have been obtained by perusing one of the bosses computers when they were not there.
If ( for example) a computer was down and only that computer and the boss’ computer had a needed program installed.
The evidence seized in the first case came from a workplace computer, so this would be a reasonable conjecture.
Before 1955, Coke was sold in 6.5 oz bottles - about 75 calories a bottle. That might make a difference as well...
She was an employee and claims 2 meetings with management over it....
If this is true ,Subway is done
Coke and Subway will recover.
Ashley Madison is toast. Not that anyone cares.
I think the part that will hurt Ashley Madison the most is the revelation that 95% of their users are males!
What a bunch of chumps!
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