BRAND BOLLOCKS

 

 

The TV drama Mr Bates v The Post Office opens on a title-card: This is a True Story.

It doesn’t say: This is based on a True Story (like most TV dramas) but: This is a True Story.

It’s worth making the point because the facts are beyond belief.

Hundreds of people lost their jobs, their houses, their life savings, they were made bankrupt because no one believed them.

Marriages broke up because people wouldn’t believe their partners.

Children were spat at in the street because no one believed their parents.

Innocent people chose to plead guilty because they knew no jury would believe them.

People committed suicide because no one believed they were innocent.

No wonder no one believed them.

They were saying the Post Office was wrong: the organisation which ran 9,300 post offices across the UK and had just installed a state-of-the-art computer system into all of them.

The new computer system showed money missing from their branch, not anyone else’s, so they must have taken it.

The computer-system couldn’t be wrong, and the Post Office wouldn’t lie.

Except we now know it was, and they did.

At least two thousand people running small post offices were accused of defrauding, false-accounting, or theft.
Each of them said they were innocent and claimed it was a problem with the system.

When they called the Post Office ‘help-line’ each of them was told they were the only one, they were told the system worked perfectly for everyone else.

But we now know the system was faulty and the Post Office was lying.

After 20 years of lies and deceit, they managed to bring a legal case against the Post Office.

One of the Post Office witnesses was Angela van den Bogerd, their Business Improvement Director.

The Judge asked her why the Post Office had continually lied, covered up the problems, and prosecuted innocent people.

She answered, “It was to protect the brand”.

The judge didn’t understand, “What does that mean: ‘Protect the brand?” 

She hesitated, she was in marketing, she’d never been asked what brand meant.

‘Brand’ was the word you didn’t question, brand was the god they worshipped.

It’s the first thing youngsters learn as soon as they get into advertising or marketing.

But the judge wasn’t in marketing, so he repeated, “What exactly is brand?”

She was flustered, in her world everyone knew brand was sacrosanct, she’d never had to define it, everyone simply accepted it.

She said, “Well…er…it’s…..it’s….er….”

The judge said. “Is brand what you say about yourself in your marketing, is that brand?”

When she hesitated, the judge said: “Because you say: ‘The Post Office is One of the Most Trusted Public Sector Institutions in Britain’ – is that your brand?”

And Angela van der Bogarde was silent.

How could she be protecting the brand as ‘the most trusted’ with cover-ups and lies?

That exchange revealed what the public knows about brands that marketing people refuse to accept.

They know it’s just meaningless jargon, empty waffle to make marketing sound important.

The nearest you get to brand in ordinary language is ‘reputation’.

Everyone knows politicians lie, everyone knows estate agents lie, everyone knows advertisers lie.

The public expect them to lie, the only people gullible enough to believe the lie are the people repeating it.

So they hold onto the illusion of brand like a security blanket.

And that’s what we teach youngsters coming into the business, that brand is the Holy Grail and all marketing depends on it.

Incidentally, the person in charge of the Post Office during this time was Paula Vennels.

During this period, she was also an Anglican priest, lecturing people from the pulpit on truth, integrity, humility, and all the Christian values.

That’s another example of ‘brand’.