Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey is under fire for offering his opinion on the health care debate in the U.S. His comments in an op-ed which were critical of proposals to reform American health care have sparked calls for a boycott of the companies’ stores and have even generated a anti-Whole Foods Facebook page.
The Economist magazine, among others, have laid into Mackey and other outspoken CEOs to “keep their mouths shut”:
…the best strategy, from the perspective of maximising shareholder value, is probably for customers to know as little as possible about the personal opinions of a company’s boss. When tempted to sound off on matters of controversy, bosses would be doing their shareholders a favour by taking a deep breath and then zipping it.
Mackey is far from the first outspoken CEO to take on a role in a public policy debate – Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca, Ted Turner are among the many CEOs who have spoken publicly on matters of public policy that were only tangentially related to their business. Some even went so far as to run for public office:
Yes, CEO comments become controversial when they misread the political winds as Mackey apparently did. But as The Economist rightfully pointed out: “society…could do with hearing, from time to time, the logical arguments and wisdom built on experience that, at their best, business leaders can bring.”
Despite the rhetoric of the day, CEOs should speak up if they are passionate about a subject. They can be experienced and knowledgeable voices with real insight that contribute to a public debate – as long as their opinions are taken in the same spirit as all of the other opinions on the topic. Mackey may have slipped up from a shareholder point-of-view (though whether there is any long-lasting reputational effect will not be known for some time), but from a public communications point-of-view he has made a valuable contribution.
One key lesson out of all this: if you are going to enter the public debate, make sure you control how it is being framed. Mackey’s op-ed was originally titled “Health Care Reform.” An editor at the Wall Street Journal took it upon themselves to change the title to “Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare” setting up the appearance that Mackey was crusading against the President.
Two developments which show that newspapers might still have life in them:
The Chicago Tribune is hosting a local site for bloggers called Chicago Now. Why don’t more newspapers do this? Local content has always been one of the leading reasons to read a newspaper – why wouldn’t they leverage that credibility to corner the online market for local news and commentary? (Via Poynter)
The New York Times looks at the London Daily Telegraph’s scoops that generated the British Parliament’s “expenses scandal” and concludes that this has brought a spotlight to a new approach at the UK’s leading newspaper: focusing on news and fresh content.
One of the most interesting aspects of the scandal is the revelation that old-fashioned scoops can still sell papers. Many publishers have assumed that in the Internet era, “exclusives” stay that way for about three seconds, so they are not worth pursuing. Instead, they have shifted the emphasis of their papers toward analysis or opinion.
The Daily Telegraph’s approach also is a reminder that there is an old marketing adage that still applies to newspapers: be different than your competitors. (By the way, one of my favorite headlines from the expenses scandal: “MP claimed interest on mortgage paid from Swiss bank account.”
Some new links on speeches, the art of speechmaking, and the impact of new technology on presentations:
Scott Feschuk dissects a Stephen Harper speech which, he says “deserves to go down as one of the monumentally inept addresses in Canadian political history”. (Macleans)
On a lighter note, Scott Berkun draws attention to a web site dedicated to the “Top 100 Speeches of All Time“. He points to Malcolm X as the best speaker of the bunch. I have always had a soft spot for Ronald Reagan – see him as the voice of middle-class Americans here, the voice of national mourning here (with Peggy Noonan’s famous closing words), and as the voice of freedom here.
Think your speech will be the same when people are commenting on it through Twitter while you are speaking? Twitter is now being used to comment on presentations as they are presented.
One of the wonderful benefits of YouTube is that elected officials and pundits alike can be held to account for their previous comments. Rarely do you see a better demonstration than this video: a YouTube video featuring financial commentator Peter Schiff’s warnings about the impending economic crisis with fellow pundits ridiculing him (found via Paul Kedrosky’s blog Infectious Greed).
U.S. commentators are concluding that this year’s presidential election campaign has marked a turning point in the use of online vehicles. According to the New York Times:
Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them.
For the speechwriters among us, the New York Times helpfully offers a web site dissecting the basic stump speeches of Obama and McCain.
On a related note, James Surowiecki concludes that McCain’s speeches were hampered by his use of “inside-the-beltway shorthand.”
One of the reasons John McCain isn’t especially successful as a debater, or as a speechmaker, is that he often discusses issues by using inside-the-Beltway shorthand, a shorthand that’s completely baffling to anyone who doesn’t already know what he’s talking about—which is say, completely baffling to almost all American voters.
For only the fourth time since the early 1900s, Canada and the US are holding national elections at the same time. While American campaign dynamics and personalities rarely have a direct influence on Canadian results, American political tactics and strategies do have a habit of finding their way into Canadian campaigns.
Already, the Harper Conservatives have charged to a Usain Bolt-like lead with positive ads and their war room ready to go. Meanwhile, the opposition Liberals have been beset with in-fighting and a leader that bears more resemblance to Michael Dukakis than Barack Obama.
In the U.S. presidential election – an open election with no incumbent since – both campaigns are moving aggressively to adjust their campaign tactics on the fly:
…the McCain organization has become a campaign transformed: an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine that was on display here last week at the Republican convention that nominated McCain. [New York Times]
Slate Magazine digs up a 1988 New York Times article where Roger Ailes explains why presidential campaigns use the media strategies they do:
‘There are three things that get covered,” said Ailes, then directing George H.W. Bush’s media campaign, ”[V]isuals, attacks, and mistakes.” A successful campaign, he continued, avoided mistakes and gave the TV networks “as many attacks and visuals” as they could.
So why the focus on mistakes? According to Jack Shafer,
The networks overdo mistake coverage because 1) it’s easy, 2) the other networks are doing it, 3) the opposing campaigns are goading them on, and 4) it creates space for yet another easy story when the candidate who has gaffed can point to a gaffe by his opponent.
And as James Fallows points out in his blog today, it’s incredibly difficult to avoid mistakes during exhausting high-pressure political campaigns:
The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble. Why do candidates so often stick to a stump speech that they repeat event after event and day after day? Because they’ve worked out the exact way to put their positions on endless thorny issues — Iraq, abortion, the Middle East, you name it — and they know that creative variation mainly opens new complications.
If someone is campaigning for the presidency or vice presidency, there’s an extra twist. That person has to have a line of argument to offer on any conceivable issue. Quick, without pausing in the next ninety seconds, tell me what you think about: the balance of relations between Taiwan and mainland China, and exactly what signals we’re sending to Hamas, and what we think about Russia’s role in the G-8 and potentially in NATO, and where North Korea stands on its nuclear pledges — plus Iran while we’re at it, plus the EU after the Irish vote, plus cap-and-trade as applied to India and China, and what’s the right future for South Ossetia; and let’s not even start on domestic issues.
The point about every one of those issues is that there is a certain phrase or formulation that might seem perfectly innocent to a normal person but that can cause a big uproar. Without going into the details, there is all the difference in the world between saying “Taiwan and mainland China” versus “Taiwan and China.” The first is policy as normal; the second — from an important US official — would light up the hotline between DC and Beijing.
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