Never underestimate the power of a brand name, even if what underlies it is not good.
Huh!
Arise, Mr. Bernie Madoff, a man whose reputation – his brand and brand name – evoked commentary like “pillar of Wall Street,” “the best of the best,” “a huge figure on Wall Street” and a man “who inspired confidence.”
Richard Nixon once in recounting the famous quote, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time” allegedly told a speech writer to concentrate on the latter group. Well this Madoff creep seems to have done that and oh how horribly successfully. This man’s brand image was so powerful that it appears even the SEC were in awe of him and failed to act on a number of tip offs.
We all need heroes. They help us to believe in our version of Santa Claus and sometimes even motivate us to great things, but the level to which people are put on a pedestal, which is then rarely checked for cracks is a human trait that can horribly backfire.
I still remember the first time I became aware of Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling. It was a few years before his downfall in the most notorious financial scandal of the decade. I happened on the latter part of an interview on a cable financial show as the interviewer fawned over him. It was actually the level of obsequiousness that first got my attention. ‘Who is this guy I thought?’ He is being treated like a god.’ And indeed that is how it continued until the walls came tumbling down. The brand image, the aura that surrounded him seemed to ensure a Teflon type of reporting and investigation, exactly the same as with Madoff. New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer was not only treated like a god, he thought he was one.
I’m struggling for a moral in all of this.
I do want Barack Obama to be as good as his brand is suggesting (that would mean he IS God), I do want Jamie Dimon to be the financial genius and guru that Wall Street claims him to be and in the light of Elliot Spitzer, I pray Patrick Fitzgerald has no skeletons in his closet.
I am one of the world’s great optimists. I KNOW my next golf shot will be my best one. I KNOW I will get home before the snow storm strikes. I KNOW my next pint of Guinness will be just magical (you don't have to be an optimist to know that). The problem with all of these scandals is that I’m starting to KNOW that I need to be a bit more circumspect, but I pray I will always return to “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Thursday, December 18, 2008
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