We Can't Afford Pensions.

This morning (1/11/13) The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 was discussing a planned strike by Fire-fighters in England and Wales. It's a dispute over pensions.

As soon as pensions were mentioned I snorted and thought "well, no one can afford pensions these days...". Then I took a moment and realised that I'd been sucked into one of the great financial narratives of recent times.

No one can afford pensions....

Organisations across the country are changing their pension plans due to "short falls" or in other words "we trusted our investments would work, but they didn't" and employee after employee has seen the value of their plan fall.

When I was in the BBC I saw my final salary scheme come to an end, and I accepted it...

The problem is... This isn't a story about pension deficit this is a story about pension entitlement and redundancy, but it fits so neatly into the default narrative of pension black holes.

I immediately wrote it off as another organisation stung by the financial down turn moaning about bad investments that the financial world said would be fine and then were ruined by another group of financial experts. You know, the old story.

Default Narrative is hugely powerful, it informs out gut reactions to complex stories, it makes us see stories from the wrong angle, with the wrong colour, and the wrong shape. When we remove our default, (like getting the person seated in front of us at the theatre to remove their comedy oversized 'My Fair Lady' hat) we can see the whole story and not just the bits that press our buttons.

Sugar, Coke, Health & Business.

 
Photo Credit: RєRє via Compfight cc

On the 9th of May James Quincey the President of Coca-Cola Europe appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'PM'. He was interviewed by regular presenter Eddie Mair. The interview is available here...

listen to ‘PM Programme Coke Interview pt1’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘PM Programme Coke Interview pt2’ on Audioboo

I think that this is a great example of a large organisation doing something to break their 'default narrative' which simply reinforces their 'default narrative'...

The Coke default narrative in this case is...
"Coke is full of sugar and sugar makes us fat"

The result of Coke getting involved in anti obesity campaigns (and involved in this interview) changes the narrative to...
"We know Coke is full of sugar, but we're not going to admit that it contributes to obesity; by the way here are our anti obesity measures, which we're taking EVEN THOUGH Coke doesn't contribute to that obesity" 

We're left with a modified default that portrays the organisation in an even worse light...
"Coke is full of sugar, sugar makes us fat, and The Coca-Cola Corporation doesn't care."

As the interview progresses Mr Quincey states that people 'struggle to balance what goes in and what goes out... [low calorie and sugar free options] allow people to get the balance right.' Or in other words 'sorry fatty, you're too stupid to drink our drinks so we're going to offer you something else, because you've been struggling".

From the moment Mr Quincey enters the studio he has been stitched up like a kipper.

Coke is part of our collective food based cognitive dissonance. It's bad but we like to have it and we're not sure about the morality of the manufacturers. By approaching this dissonance the organisation attempts to mitigate its responsibility and (some would say) liability; they are doing good things so the problems are the consumers fault. It's not guns that kill people it's people that kill people... It's not coke that makes you fat it's YOU that makes YOU fat; you shouldn't blame the manufacturers of the tools.

Engaging the media on your core difficulty will often end badly.

When engaging someone as skilled as Eddie Mair it will end very badly.

He's prepared with multiple studies, he's prepared with the killer questions, he's prepared with 9 sugar cubes.

The challenge to eat 9 sugar cubes is a classic ploy, in this case it's the "would you feed this to your children?" question. It's side stepped and then returned to, it's the question that won't go away.

So, where does this leave an organisation that has an elephant in their room? (in this case it was a tasty sugary elephant... mmmm sugar elephant)

Weigh up the reputational risk between doing something and doing nothing. Doing nothing allows the default narrative to continue, you can acknowledge it, you can even monitor it, but it's unlikely to change rapidly without other circumstances coming into play. If you find there is a sector story you're dragged in to you need to reassess your default in that light.

Doing something attempts to change the default for the better, but the influential (in the UK) PM Programme is not the place to do it. What was the Coke Comms team thinking? Mr Quincey walked into the lions den and got delicately mauled. The key A + B demographic who hang on Eddie Mair's every word will have been delighted by the result and suddenly opinion formers are looking at the Coke initiatives and branding them 'fat wash'.

Do something you can make it worse, do nothing and it can get worse all by itself...

Which will you choose?


FYI Diabetes UK have covered sugary drinks and type 2 diabetes in this article regardless of what Mr Quincey may have said.

PUT THE PHONE-IN DOWN!

I need to give you a little bit of personal background before I start this blog because I'm going to sound like an intolerant psycho by the end of it.

I was born in 1974 and lived most of my young life in the mining village of Calverton in Nottinghamshire. My father was a policeman my mother is a chiropodist. We were not well off in the 70's.

When the 1980's came events took a strange turn. In early 1984 I was 9 and still at junior school. All of my contemporaries were the sons and daughters of miners and I was the son of a policeman. The miners' strike was not a happy time for anyone but as a 9 year old it was filtered through the childish lens of learnt partisanship. My friends felt hostility towards me because their families felt hostility towards the police and I was related to the police. It was all very simple.

From my upbringing in an environment where no one had much money I left and went to university, as my brother had done before me, and became a member of the middle classes. I am now a middle class white man (I was always white) concerned about mortgage rates and with a complete inability to complain in restaurants.

I needed to tell you this in the context of what I'm about to say. I have seen life from both sides and I think it's given me a rounded view of the concerns of a number of sectors of society; I like to think that I understand 'the man in the street' or more appropriately 'the riot in the street' and this is the point; phone in programmes talking about riots are pointless because The Public are idiots.

Seriously, The Public (note the capitalisation) are utter morons who jerk their knees and can't see further than their own noses. The Public are racist, partisan, and politically inept, they jump to conclusions and they either want hanging to be brought back or criminals given a lovely hug and sent on their way.

People however are wonderful intelligent beings with a wealth of experience and ideas, they love their families they strive to better themselves they paint pictures, write books and become aroma therapists.

People are brilliant stars.

The Public are idiots.

This is why phone-in programmes don't work.

They don't work because it's The Public that calls. Firstly no one normal has EVER phoned a radio station. No one. Normal people don't want to get involved. Every single caller to a radio station is a bit odd.

After a national crisis or during a time of difficulty broadcasters go running to the special phone-in as a reflection of what people are thinking and it's supposedly reflecting the thoughts of a nation. Shall we do some maths and work this out then? There may be 20 people on air on a national 1 hour phone in ('Call You And Yours' for example on BBC Radio 4) there are 65 million people in the country; you then have those callers (possibly 300 on a day like today) filtered by the person answering the phone. They will be thinking "will this person make good radio?" these callers are pitched to the producer who will make the final decision on getting them on air. The overriding thought through all of this is again "will this person make good radio?" The producer will give balance, they will give a representative selection of views but ultimately it's what makes good radio. Fine, the phone in is entertainment after all. As the youth would say, end of.

The producers of the next news strand will then be fed some of the views of these callers. Remember these callers are representing The Public and somehow these views will become 'overwhelming public opinion' or 'we've been hearing that...' These views will transubstantiate into news!

This tiny sample of people who are phoning a radio station become the only thing that the news and the politicians can focus on. Because they are now 'public opinion' but as we know The Public are numpties who are scared of everything and want to meet out summary violence.

It will always be the same until broadcasters decide that it's nice to let people phone in but ultimately the experts in the field are the people to listen to. They are people who aren't The Public.