The British Airways pilot sounded calm, but he urgently needed a decision. Shortly after taking off from LAX one of the four engines on his Boeing 747, had exploded. With 5000 miles to fly and 351 passengers on board, should he return to Los Angeles or continue the flight to Heathrow?
Senior BA managers on the ground faced a crossroads. If they considered BA’s brand values, the direction was clear: the airline that defined itself as ‘reliable’ and ‘reassuring’ would obviously advise the pilot to turn the plane around and head back to LA. But if the management team started to look at the financial implications, the decision became more difficult.
Turning the plane around would cost the airline upward of £100,000 in reimbursement costs. Should they take the brand path or the profit path?
At 29,000ft somewhere over Northern California the pilot’s radio crackled into life and his orders were conveyed. Continue on to London. The pilot was probably not surprised. In 15 engine failures since 2001, BA had made the same decision. For all the fine identity work, advertising and PR, when a pile of money is put on the table, brand values cease to be relevant.
Business comes before brand – economics before equity.
An even bigger brand has been facing an even bigger crossroads.
In late 2000, Google engineers created a clunky but effective Chinese version of its main portal that quickly became as important a part of life for millions of Chinese people as it had for the rest of us. Then, in 2002, the portal vanished. The Chinese government had begun blocking it using what has become known as ‘The Great Firewall of China’.
With Google’s performance severely restricted in China and a local search engine, Baidu, rapidly emerging as the market leader, Google faced an enormously difficult choice. It could acquiesce to the Chinese government and develop a nation-specific site that enforced the authorities’ censorship policy. Or it could remain true to the brand’s much-heralded commitment to the freedom of information and stay out of the world’s biggest market for search.
The contrast between brand and business opportunity could not be more stark. Everything in Google’s brand identity screams non-co-operation with the Chinese government. Google’s bold, if informal, company motto is ‘Don’t be evil’. Its self-declared mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible’. Its philosophy of 10 unbreakable rules is equally unequivocal: with points such as ‘focus on the user’, ‘democracy on the web works’ and ‘the need for information crosses all borders’, the correct path for Google was clear.
Yet, in January of 2006, Google took the money. Directly contradicting everything it stood for, Google.cn was launched, with the new portal actively censoring any and all content the Chinese government deemed inappropriate for its citizens.
Then Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed that he may be having second thoughts about its sell-out. ‘Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense,’ he told journalists. So is this a glint of brand integrity?
Perhaps.
More likely, Brin is increasingly aware that Google.cn is being soundly thrashed by Baidu, the clear market leader for search in China. By considering withdrawing its self-censored site, Google appears to be returning to the crossroads and, this time, making a brand-consistent decision. In reality, Google is making another business move, and the brand, as usual, has nothing to do with it.
30 SECONDS ON … GOOGLE
– Founded in 1998 and listed on the stock market since 2004, Google provides an interface in more than 100 languages and results in more than 35. It has a ‘no pop-up ads’ policy.
– Google’s drive to free up information has drawn the fire of print publishers. French publisher La Martiniere has begun proceedings over the scanning of its titles for the Google Book Search service, while The World Association of Newspapers has threatened to sue over the Google News aggregation service.
– Google co-founder Larry Page has boasted that he never reads print newspapers.
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3 comments
TJ
May 23, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Wow…the word evil sounds so harsh. When I see the word evil I equate that with a lack of integrity or selfish motives. Which in either case I wouldn’t want to be viewed as the company who chose to be evil in order to be profitable.
Larry
May 24, 2008 at 12:09 am
That’s Brinny for ya. He’s talks a good game but when it comes down to it, he’s utterly useless.
He recently voiced support for a shareholder proposal dealing with Chinese censorship. He agreed with it in theory, even abstained during the vote, but in the end did absolutely nothing.
The “don’t be evil” slogan is just that – a very clever marketing device. The media have largely bought into it.
Michael Roberts
August 1, 2009 at 1:49 am
In a 17th century letter from Francis De Sales to Madame de Chantal, he wrote what has been paraphrased in modern times as “the path to hell is paved with good intentions”. There can be no dispute as to Google’s intent, which presumably was, and hopefully still is, for good. “Evil” per-se is one of the few words we have that leaves no wriggle room in defining; in fact, it is probably one of the few words that can define itself by way of a self-evident circular reference.
However, I have personal experience with Google that suggests that profits definitely outweigh their commitment to the motto. An issue close to my heart is that it Internet libel. Google has been granted effective federal immunity for the republication of online defamation, even if a victim gives them conclusive proof that the factual allegations are false, Google can ignore the reasonable requests to remove it from the search index. It is much cheaper to send out a canned e-mail to the victim citing section 230 C. of the communications decency act, worded in such a way that it almost looks like they are compelled to leave the materials posted on their index.
Excellent post, nice analogy. Cheers,
Michael Roberts
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