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This is the second in an occasional series on potty apothegms about

marketing.

It was probably Phineas T. Barnum who said that all publicity is good

publicity. For showmen, it may be good advice. And, as long as you don’t

think about it too carefully, it’s not bad advice generally. These days,

modern marketing directors and their sophisticated advertising agencies

tend to underrate the solid commercial value of crude fame. They’re so

busy calibrating some minuscule shift in brand-positioning on their

Boston Grids that the good old-fashioned benefits of familiarity and

brand celebrity get lost in the detail. Most publicity, more often than

not, is mostly good.

But that is not what Barnum said.

As always, what every hypothesis demands is challenge. So if someone

presents you with the Barnum hypothesis, look them straight in the face

and say Ratner!

Poor old Gerald generated so much free publicity for himself and his

shops that they took away his job and had to change the company’s

trading name. I do not think Gerald Ratner would agree with Phineas T.

Barnum.

It’s been said that Peter Mandelson raised his public profile during the

summer in the belief that the massive publicity would carry him

shoulder-high on to the NEC. Even more recently, Tony Banks has become

far better known than he’s ever been, with terminal implications for his

political career.

Watergate, Lockerbie, Hoover, Brent Spar: some publicity is bad

publicity.

With the inevitable and continuing trend away from traditional

free-standing brands towards corporate brands and service brands, all

this becomes a lot more important. Parent brands, master brands, company

brands will need lots of simple salience, lots of familiarity, lots of

well-knownness.

But when a corporate reputation takes a nasty knock, the effects are

impossible to contain completely; they can sweep like a virus through

the entire enterprise. If you stick to your policy of free-standing

brands, damage limitation is relatively easy. Tylenol can be kept in an

isolation ward while the rest of Johnson & Johnson carries on trading.

Corporate branding makes that impossible.

So at a time when the value of simple publicity is due for rediscovery,

when event marketing and sponsorship and joint ventures are attracting

increasing interest and investment, and when corporate reputations are

being asked to extend their authority over an ever greater diversity of

goods and services, the word Ratner should be in pokerwork above every

chief executive’s desk: not as a deterrent but as a reminder.

Publicity is not just a cheaper form of advertising: it is different in

kind. You should not assume you can control it. It’s not that difficult

to get a flame started but you can never be sure of being able to douse

it. Unlike advertising, publicity can kill.

To act as though all publicity was good publicity is to be one of those

who, also according to Phineas T. Barnum, are born every minute.