Parkrun’s growth has been phenomenal. Their mission is “to transform health & happiness by empowering people to come together, to be active, social & outdoors.”  They want to reach more people. Commendable. They say critics don’t understand parkrun – it’s a community event not a race, they tell us. They see inactive or socially isolated people as the ones who need parkrun most. So it is important that people don’t fear that they will be too slow or will feel unwelcome.

Over the years the parkrun team have looked for ways to make it less intimidating for the inactive, with initiatives like tail walkers so a newcomer won’t be last, and parkwalk to legitimise the participation of people who don’t run at all. Notice that those are things that happen in real life, at the events – they are nothing to do with the published results. What matters is whether you turn up, and whether you have a good experience. That happens between 8.30 and 10am on a Saturday in a park. It’s likely that word of mouth is the biggest factor in getting people there, and volunteers being welcoming and tolerant of slowness determine whether nervous newbies come back.

Now parkrun says that “insight”, by which they probably mean market research, has told them that the statistics are a deterrent for those who are new to exercise. They want to “present data in a way that is not off-putting and doesn’t imply that parkrun is a race.” So they have removed course records, along with lists of who’s had most first finishes, sub-17 minute men and sub-20 minute women, and age grade or category records.

Will that help parkrun to keep growing? You had to look hard to find where the course records (male and female) were listed at the bottom of a page along with other stats for each parkrun. Hard to spot, unlike the ‘latest results’ page, which always has someone pretty fast (and male) in first place. Is that a deterrent? If it is, it’s still there. Seeing that someone else once ran it in 16 minutes is hardly relevant, though watching speedy runners can be quite exciting. Might not some people be motivated that they can be part of the same event as an Olympian?

What about the other information that’s now been hidden – fastest men and women, age-grade records and the rest. Newcomers to parkrun will have been completely unaware of those extra tabs on the website. Some parkrunners, on the other hand, find them interesting and motivating. There’s a Facebook group called parkrun statsgeek with thirteen thousand members. Most of them are pretty upset about the loss of access to the statistics. A poll shows 82% of them disagree with parkrun’s decision, 66% strongly. These are the people who run parkrun most weeks. Many of them are volunteers without whom the weekly events could not run.

In business terms, parkrun is prioritising non-customers over its most loyal customers. What’s more, it won’t address either of the issues that have triggered this change. Non-runners won’t have known about these lists but will still see the weekly results that look very much like race results. Meanwhile, the parkrun regulars feel they have lost something, and that they are not valued. From the Facebook statsgeek group:

“I tried to see most runs in my age group at Huddersfield. Including friends who are now in older age groups. Not a time thing. First time in 12 plus years I could not see anything. I feel robbed”

“My reading of the situation is that parkrun don’t want this kind of thing at their events so if my purpose for being there is to race or chase records then I am not welcome at their events.”

“I get really motivated and inspired by looking at performances from older females in my Age Cat and above.”

So to the elephant here. Parkrun was getting a lot of criticism for letting male runners who identify as women register as female, taking First Female finishes, age-grade records and female course records. Since the weekly results are not changing, this doesn’t change either. It’s just harder to track. Meanwhile the males registered as female (twenty or so in the UK) can continue to feature in the female placings.

Parkrun changed the product hoping to make it less unappealing to non-customers, but they have succeeded in upsetting many of their existing customers, especially the most committed, and there are certainly more than twenty of them. It has also made many more people aware of parkrun’s self-ID policy, which runners know is counter to that of World Athletics and UK Athletics because it is unfair to female runners. It’s even possible that for every non-runner who is pleased the stats have gone, there’s one who is deterred by an organisation that seems to put trans-identifying males before women.

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Like all businesses, banks need to operate responsibly, treating employees and customers decently, and using resources efficiently so as to minimise their environmental footprint. But the vogue for ESG reporting seems to have prompted companies to report proudly of proactive initiatives that go beyond their business activity into general do-gooding. Employee team-building through charitable or community projects is nothing new. It’s the enthusiastic, sometimes almost rabid, vocal support for righteous causes that can lead companies astray. When Black Lives Matter happened, there was pressure on businesses to express overt support. Keeping quiet was seen by some as bordering on racist abuse. It took considerable resolve to say, this is not our business. Pride has become increasingly corporate, and this year it was a whole month of logos changed to rainbow colours and displays in offices, shops and branches. Halifax rebranded the entire exterior of its flagship London branch in rainbow colours. If only the same energy went into making such places more accessible for disabled people.

The NatWest story is troubling because it goes even further than noisy virtue-signalling. NatWest is free to demand its employees sign up to behavioural codes, whether to support certain positions or to keep quiet. Up to a point, because there are limits even there. Employers are not free to discriminate against people based on their protected beliefs, and that will normally include not gagging them. The recent Forstater case at the Employment Appeal Tribunal established that believing that sex is binary and immutable is a protected belief, and that you should not be required to pretend otherwise in the workplace. Who’d have thought that needed to be a protected belief, but here we are. Maybe that is a sign of how far the corporate ESG agenda and the drive for “purpose” has gone way past old-fashioned volunteering days and charity fundraising. Purpose is about what you are here for as a business. But many businesses seem to have centred some form of social engineering instead. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

But until now there was no suggestion that businesses also vetted the beliefs of their customers. It’s a bit of a shock to find out that Coutts, the private banking business within NatWest, had people trawl through customers’ social media accounts and compile a dossier of their wrong think. This was revealed by arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage, a polarising figure for sure. But all his views have been out there for years, and none of them are illegal. After Coutts wrote to tell him they would be closing his bank accounts, he submitted a Subject Access Request to find out what internal correspondence there was about him. The result was a forty-page dossier listing his offences. Apparently one of these was liking a jokey Tweet by Ricky Gervais, because it made fun of trans issues. Risqué jokes and memes are everywhere on social media. It’s breath-taking to think that your bank – whom you pay to provide a service, but with whom you have no personal contact – could be stalking you online, and deciding that some jokes, some comments, some opinions render you beyond the pale. In this case, it was the bank, not Farage, who revealed that he banked with Coutts, so there was not even the defence that the association could be harmful to their business. Well, it is now.

The Financial Conduct Authority may now investigate the goings-on at NatWest and Coutts. Meanwhile, it’s likely that tighter regulations will be drawn up to ensure that in future no bank can treat a customer this way. We now know that Coutts’ policy on getting rid of customers had been amended to include “discrimination”.  Disagreement is not discrimination. Liking jokes online might demonstrate bad taste but it affects no one else. The only discrimination here was by the bank, against Farage. You have to wonder what’s gone wrong, to get to this point. Most concerning is that the people who made these decisions – and there must have been several inside the bank  – thought they were the good guys. This is a long way from the ESG goal of using transparency to encourage good business practices.

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Companies must have lawful employment and other policies. Some may go further than legally required, in their parental policies or healthcare cover, for example. But should those positions be actively promoted in their brands’ marketing communications?

There have long been brands that did exactly that. The Body Shop was founded nearly fifty years ago on Anita Roddick’s activism around protecting the environment, no animal testing, fair employment and fair trade. You bought the brand knowing that’s what it was about. Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream is almost as old, founded by two old hippies who built irreverence and rebellion into the brand, with product names like Karamel Sutra and Cherry Garcia (after their rock idol Jerry Garcia).

That’s not Bud Light though. It’s a mainstream beer often bought without much thought at all. As craft and speciality beers grow, its giant volume is being chipped away, but it’s still the market leader in the USA, perhaps because it’s the default option for a lot of people, a lot of the time. All the same, the VP of Marketing (until recently) wasn’t happy with that. She said Bud Light had been seen as “a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humour” and she wanted to change it. Among her initiatives was to send Dylan Mulvaney some Bud Light cans with Dylan’s face on them, which Dylan featured in social media posts about Bud Light. It’s safe to assume Bud Light paid Dylan for these.

Rather predictably, Bud Light’s core customers didn’t like it. Rather than seeing it as making the brand more inclusive, it came across as preachy and teachy. Were guys across America now expected to think Dylan’s year of womanhood was something they too should celebrate? Kid Rock was one of many who said no, and sales crashed.

So are Bud Light customers transphobic? More likely they are sick of having this agenda pushed into everyday life. Ordering a beer is not a teaching moment. There is a huge disconnect between corporate executives and ordinary people on whether brands should be speaking out on social issues. In a recent survey by the Brunswick Group, 63% of corporate executives thought they should be, while only 36% of the general public agreed. Similarly, on the question of whether corporate activism is effective, 75% of executives said yes, versus 39% of the public. Almost two thirds of people think brands taking a stand on social issues are just virtue-signalling.

This specific issue is particularly polarising. Even many people who have no objection to transgender identification are troubled by the casual way in which Mulvaney appears to have appropriated womanhood, literally as a costume. (See also the Nike sponsored posts for women’s gym apparel including a bra which Dylan definitely doesn’t need.) So the issue is compounded by the fact that Dylan clearly lacks authenticity. That has rubbed off on the brand that decided to sponsor it. The VP of marketing got what she paid for, but not what she intended.

The chief executive of Bud Light owner Anheuser-Busch InBev blamed “misinformation and confusion” on social media. He defended the activity, saying “it was one post. It was not an advertisement.” As so often, the explanation just makes things worse. So what if it was just a post? Didn’t you want people to see it? Or is this a half-hearted way of withdrawing support for the endorsement of Mulvaney? His statement seems like the ultimate proof that they were never really committed to this agenda, thus proving that it did indeed lack authenticity. Result: neither side is happy. They would have been better off if they’d done nothing at all.

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They created a promotion intended to change behaviour, and then were surprised when behaviour changed. It reminded me of the infamous Hoover debacle of the 1990s, which nearly bankrupted them. People don’t buy vacuum cleaners often, and Hoover’s stock was piling up. So they came up with a cunning plan: you could claim two free return flights when you buy one of their products. The terms and conditions were supposed to make it hard to redeem, and to generate some income to cover the costs. Lots of consumer promotions are never redeemed.  Big brands can print 50p money-off coupons on boxes of cornflakes or laundry detergent knowing most of them will end up in the recycling. But maybe the data relating to 50p coupons can’t be extrapolated to flights worth hundreds of pounds. It generated the kind of market stimulus central banks dream of: vacuum cleaner sales went through the roof. Rapidly followed by a glut of as-new Hoovers on the 1990s equivalent of ebay.

Both these companies estimated promotional uptake based on past behaviour. Reasonable, but insufficient. This is the sort of “black swan” that Nicholas Nassim Taleb advises companies to consider when they do their risk analysis. It’s not the small effects that matter. It’s the unlikely but huge ones that do the damage.

There’s a parallel here with covid modelling, though that has more positive results (no pun intended). Every time SAGE or alt-SAGE or whoever announces the latest scary extrapolation, some people change their behaviour. For every rebel who responds by going out more, or claims they do, there’ll be more who become more cautious. The modelling is instantly rendered wrong by voluntary behaviour change. The modellers are, in due course, ridiculed for their doomsday predictions. But what a marketing success: to get significant behaviour change without spending any money or political capital. The price is of course the modellers’ reputations, and the resulting public cynicism about their pronouncements, which weakens the public response over time. Tracking attitudes and claimed behaviour, as well as actual behaviour, helps to reveal the voluntary change and offset the cynicism.

So what’s next for Pret? So far they are sticking with their subscription, though their denials that there’s a problem will not wash with their most loyal customers, whose experience tells them otherwise. It’s time they fronted up. Dealing with reality is surely the most basic of business requirements. Painting a falsely-rosy picture to the media may be tempting, but no one can expect to do it to customers and get away with it.

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How does this happen? It’s easy to be wise in hindsight. Let’s look at the advertising development process to see where it may have gone off the rails, and where it should have been stopped.

The brief from the client at John Lewis to the ad agency was probably ok. Let’s make another lovely ad like Tiny Dancer (in which no damage occurs).

The agency team worked up ideas, turned them into scripts, pitched them to the client, until they found one they agreed on. At this stage, was it clear that the core idea, the ultimate peace of mind that accidental damage cover gives, was not a core benefit of John Lewis home insurance? That’s ok if it’s going to be made crystal clear it’s an add-on.

My guess is that things first went wrong either at script stage, or in pre-production. They got carried away virtue-signalling. Instead of making an ad focused on the brief, they really went to town on the freedom of self-expression. It’s a bit of a leap from accidental damage cover to the ultimate in enlightened parenting, but that’s where they pitched their tent. Hence the mother idly watching while the boy trashes the place. He’s just expressing himself. The laundry brand Persil has a version of this, in a long-running campaign called Dirt is Good. But it’s tightly bound to the product benefit. Play is healthy and developmental, so let the kids play, knowing Persil will help you wash their clothes clean.

The John Lewis idea was similar, but either at script stage or in the boundary-pushing hands of the director, it wandered way beyond letting a child express themselves. It became a demonstration of wanton destruction of other people’s stuff, held together in a camp display that no nine year old has ever performed without adult direction. Little boys do dress up and act as Mummy but unless Mummy does drag or has a serious problem with alcohol it doesn’t look like this.

Then in post-production, they went full Desmond Is Amazing. Post-production is when the raw material is edited, and the music is chosen. That shot of the boy pouting into the camera was dubious. “Edge of Seventeen” left no room for doubt. At that stage, the clients, or the agency account team, should have been saying, is this a bit too sexualised? Is that really reflecting John Lewis values? Eventually the finished ad was signed off as ready to go on air. That also involves multiple people. Always there is a legal or compliance person, who should have said, this misrepresents the product. That’s the official reason the ad’s been pulled. But not before a lot of classic John Lewis target market, middle England, women complained about how inappropriate it was to show a prepubescent boy like this, and to cast his sister and mother in utterly passive roles while he deliberately harms their stuff. Mumsnetters had plenty to say about this. But mostly, John Lewis, we’re just very disappointed in you.

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I’d also recommend John Carreyrou’s book about the rise and fall of Theranos. It’s called “Bad Blood: secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley start-up”. It’s a great read.

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Sir Matthew Pinsent is a very big man, with a big voice, and when he walked up and down the stage at the Marketing Society conference, describing how his crew worked in the Athens Olympics, the whole room listened in awed silence before erupting into rapturous applause. I felt inspired. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure what I’d taken away from it – but we all agreed he was a brilliant speaker and we’d loved it.

There’s a whole industry built on having sporting achievers speak to business people, and the received wisdom is that we can learn from them. Matthew talked about teamwork: when at last they were racing for gold at Athens, it was time to know your job and focus totally on doing that well, and trust that the others in the boat will do theirs. But is that a useful analogy for business? It could just as easily translate as, “Not my job mate”.

I recently heard another Olympian, Steve Williams, describe his odyssey to win gold at Athens, enduring five, or was it six, hours training a day, and doing this six, or was it seven, days a week for four years, preparing for one race. Also on the stage was former Olympic swimmer and Gladiator Sharron Davies, and I asked her what lessons there might be for a business person, since we can’t dedicate ourselves to preparing for one thing like that. Her answer? We all spent all our teenage years as well, so really it’s more like twelve or fifteen years’ dedicated training. Ok, thanks Sharron. So that seems even less relevant to business doesn’t it?

Athletes talk a lot about personal commitment and hard work, especially those in swimming and track events where achievements are individual. That leaves me confused about whether sport as inspiration for business is meant to inspire me, as an individual, to compete and win – against whom? My peers, for personal recognition and advancement? Surely not. Perhaps it means each of us as representatives of our organisation, then, to help our business or enterprise to succeed, to win? But business isn’t a race, or a team competition – it’s an obstacle course on a rollercoaster, with obscure and new rivals arriving all the time, and no finish line.

In swimming, in rowing, in fact in any sport, you all know the rules in advance. You can work hard but you can’t change the rules – and if you try to find some wily wheeze to change the situation to your advantage, you risk disqualification. In business, by contrast, people who accept the status quo are LOSERS! Winners in business change the rules to their own advantage – they spot opportunities that are not yet apparent to others, make things no one else has made, find new suppliers or manufacturing processes to gain cost advantages, lobby for different laws, get creative with tax and domicile, even. It’s the job of a business leader to create change. They definitely, totally, should not seek to conform to the “rules” of the category in which they operate.

So we’re back to personal dedication and commitment? Actually I think there is something more here, beyond the hard work, commitment and belief. It’s not that we are in the presence of genius which might rub off on us. It’s that they had a clear goal, a stated purpose, and they focused on it single-mindedly, and worked extremely hard, enduring setbacks, injuries, moments of self-doubt, but never giving up.

Lucky them, of course. For all the horror of having to get up at six every morning to go rowing in a gale, and then lifting weights in the gym for two hours, followed by whatever the latest training guru has thought up, their job is simple – not like mine or yours, right? It’s so clear what they have to do, whereas business is complicated. Maybe so, but the inspiration I take from Matthew, Steve, Sharron and the rest, is that you first need that clarity of purpose. Why are you at work, and what does success look like?

There’s a personal answer, and there should also be an answer you share with your work colleagues. Like Matthew Pinsent in his crew, we can all focus on our roles, and leave the others to do theirs, if we are all clear on the collective purpose, and we all care enough about achieving it to intervene – constructively, helpfully, and at the right time – so we can all be better together. The ethos of the GB rowing squad reflects this focus on purpose. Their touchstone and mantra is, Will it make the boat go faster? Everyone in the squad can question and challenge everyone else’s actions, if they might not be in the best interests of the team.

Sports team managers like Dave Brailsford, who leads the Sky and GB cycling teams, know there are no short cuts or magic bullets. He appointed a director of marginal gains whose job is to look at every aspect of preparation and training, and find all the tiny tweaks that can be made, which all add up to faster races.

I think the real reason we love hearing from sports people is that we are inspired by personal fulfilment. What we see when Sir Matthew, or Steve Richards, or any one of them speak, is a fulfilled person, someone with a clear purpose on which they have delivered. It is exciting and refreshing to be in the company of someone who has achieved something great, whether climbing a mountain, winning an Olympic medal , starting a charity that changes lives, or growing a successful business. It inspires me to revisit and commit to my purpose with renewed energy. With sports people there’s the added bonus that, compared with their schedules, my day at work is a walk in the park. Lovely.

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“I will take a break like never before”  

“What better time for us to be brave than now?” 

“I promise to be better just for you.” 

I like Coca Cola. Consumed in moderation, it’s a relatively benign treat. Years of advertising about how Coke is it, et al, have created a fuzzy association in my mind between Coke and being happy. So when I pour it, I get a teensy subliminal rush of joy. It takes a long time for a brand to build that kind of response, especially a brand that doesn’t really do anything much, functionally. Hats off to the Coca Cola Company for that. It’s an achievement any brand manager would envy. 

So why dissociate the feelgood from the brand, and turn it into some sort of personal self-improvement drive? I feel like I’m being admonished to do better. Maybe it’s meant to inspire. But I don’t look to Coke for inspiration.  

Brand purpose is a useful concept but it can lead to mission creep. These days, it can seem as if fizzy drinks and smoothies aren’t here to be enjoyed. They’re here to transform our lives and improve the world. And, in this case, to propose that we improve ourselves. 

According to the senior vice-president of marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa, they’ve decided that “empathy should be the ‘lighthouse’ guiding Coke’s actions going forward”. Empathy would be understanding that little moments of pleasure mean more than usual in the current climate. And letting us savour them. 

Just like the people claiming to have written a book/ learned a language/ redecorated their house in lockdown one, this latest salvo from Coke is best ignored. Brands should give a benefit, not make demands of its consumers. Alanis Morrisette might have something to say about that. Have a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive instead.  

The truth is that this is an extraordinary brand. Coca Cola has built global recognition, reputation, and positive associations, through consistent upbeat communications through thick and thin. It’s no coincidence that Santa Claus wears Coca Cola red. Somehow this explicit call to action is breaking the spell. Businesses are expected to operate responsibly, but that needn’t extend to sanctimony. Thing is, Coke can cheer me up just by being Coke. Have they forgotten that?  

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First, the one that worked. In November 2019 Coldplay launched their new album, Everyday Life, by announcing the track listing in the classified ads section of local newspapers. They chose papers that band members had some connection with. The press ad was nothing more than a simple track listing: not a genuine classified, then, but part of a media stunt which also involved letters to selected fans to ensure it was picked up. It was duly reported and much discussed in national media. Great result. Full marks to Coldplay for an endearing use of old media, which was amply rewarded in new and old media coverage.

The month before, Glenlivet’s whisky pods attracted ridicule. They were in fact a limited edition product for London Cocktail Week but that didn’t stop a tirade of negativity on Twitter. Was that fair? It’s safe to assume these aren’t aimed at a demographic whose first thought on seeing them is, Will these shift stains in a low temperature wash? Nor, indeed, at Glenlivet’s own core market. It could be a cunning way to bring whisky to the Jägerbomb generation, or just a fun way to smuggle more whisky into cocktails. The social media frenzy reminded us all that Glenlivet is there, but it felt badly out of tune with the world of single malt whisky, which is all firesides and Scottish peat bogs.

Now in their 20^th year, Coldplay are music industry veterans, focused on those who already love them. In using old media in a novel way they did something fresh but not shocking. Their stunt felt authentic, which will endear them even more to current fans and may attract new ones.

Glenlivet’s move is a stranger one. The pod concept feels entirely out of character. A weird new product is more problematic than an oddball media move, even if both are transient, because product format is much more central to the brand than marketing communications. So what’s the value of producing a novel format for a promotional event? It has to be good to be worth the risk of alienating the core customer base. Perhaps, like the concept cars at motor shows that are part of the development process, there is more to come from Glenlivet. But I think it more likely this is a quirky idea someone dreamed up in the moment for a bit of fun at London Cocktail Week.

One of the biggest decisions brands must make is whether to focus on retaining current customers, perhaps increasing their consumption, or on attracting new customers, to widen and future-proof the franchise. Neither is inherently better, but it’s much easier to do one well. To those people who shout triumphantly, why not both? I say, that’s not as smart as you think it is. The infamous New Coke fiasco was the result of efforts to attract Pepsi drinkers without considering how their most committed customers would feel about the change.

A brief flare-up on Twitter is soon forgotten. It’s not a worry for a brand that’s been around for almost 200 years, as Glenlivet has. But there’s a wider picture to consider. Time and investment in one thing is time and investment that could have gone elsewhere. And everything you do can have unintended consequences, which aren’t always apparent. I wrote about that here. Unless you believe all publicity is good publicity, the people around Glenlivet could perhaps have spent their time and energy better.

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