It was sometime around 1998 and I was sitting in the HR office waiting to find out my fate. My job and, for all intents and purposes, my career in television were at stake.
The reason all this was happening was because one (or more) of my employees had lodged a complaint, stating that I had consistently demeaned the writers and producers in my department, particularly with my unduly harsh and, at times, abusive, critique of their scripts.
I want to be sure that as I write this, I am 100% sensitive to the current climate and, as a preamble to this blog post, it’s probably important to state that being abusive is never OK. But that is not what this post is about. For me, I think this story holds a tremendous lesson about branding.
The first three things to understand about the branding process are:
- Your target audience creates your brand. It’s all about them, their cultural sensitivities, and their perceptions.
- Never make assumptions about your target audience. Wrong assumptions, irrespective of how solid the logic is on which they are based, will kill your messaging.
- You are not your target audience.
Back in 1998, I had not yet fully absorbed these three rules. I had only been in my position as an uppity-up at NBC for a few months. General Electric owned NBC and, at the time, they were seen as the standard by which all corporations should be won. I was about to get fired from the best company on earth.
The G.E. Human Resources Director came into the office. Another Human Resources person followed close behind. I remember watching them walk in and thinking to myself that my transgressions must have been so severe that they required two HR people.
The short, serious man began to lay out my offence while his colleague, a slight blond woman with a squeaky voice and quick hands, scribbled incessantly on a legal pad.
“Mr. Mozloom,” he said, “do you know why we called you in today?”
“I believe it has something to do with some of my employees complaining about how I treat them,” I responded.
The GE HR director then reached out his hand to the squeaky lady who quickly rifled through her notebook and handed him a piece of paper that he quickly handed to me.
“Do you recognize this?” He asked.
It was a script that one of my producers had written earlier in the week. She had brought it to me for review. I made several corrections and suggested some changes.
“Of course,” I responded
“Well! What do you have to say for yourself?” the GE HR Dir. demanded.
Clearly, the GE HR team believed this was the proof that I was an abusive and terrible human being. I looked closely at the script. I checked all of my spelling to make sure I didn’t inadvertently write something horrifically inappropriate.
No. No spelling mistakes. Nothing profane.
I looked at all of my corrections. I looked through my one suggestion to reverse paragraphs. I desperately wanted to see the thing that everyone else in the room saw. I wanted to give a good answer for my terrible behavior. And then it dawned on me:
I’m not only a bad human being, I’m also an idiot.
For the life of me, I could not figure out what was the least bit offensive about anything I had written on her script.
“Uh…,” I said, “This is a script I reviewed earlier this week.”
“Exactly,” the GE HR Dir. said
“And, I guess, this is somehow offensive or abusive?” I said.
“Exactly,” the GE HR Dir. said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
The GE HR. director looked at me like I had just pooped on the floor. “What is it that you don’t understand?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered, “I don’t understand why?”
“Why what!?” he shouted
“I don’t understand what about this is offensive or abusive?”
And the room went silent.
Ten full seconds went by.
The GE HR Dir. walked around his desk and stood behind me. He slowly poked his finger at the script, ruffling the paper as if it would clear everything up for me.
And then he began speaking very slowly.
“You don’t know what about this is offensive or abusive?” He questioned.
“I’m sorry,” I stuttered again, “I’m not seeing it.”
The GE HR Dir. walked back around the desk. His colleague chimed in, lilting her voice the way an elementary school teacher would while making an important point to a six-year old.
“Thom,” she said, “how would you feel if you spent hours on a document only for your boss to hand it back to you looking like that?”
I answered as carefully as I could. I still didn’t quite understand the issue. “Are you trying to say that I can’t copyedit or correct my employees scripts? Isn’t that one of the main functions of my job?”
“It’s not the copyediting of scripts that’s the problem,” the GE HR Dir. “It’s how you copyedit them. It’s rude. It’s humiliating. It’s pedantic,” he yelled.
“Wait?? What?” I asked.
“Well… “ The GE HR Dir. said, “How would you feel if someone handed you back a paper like this, circling and underlining all of your mistakes in bright red. That’s something a middle-school teacher would do. That’s not how colleagues treat each other. That’s not how managers at GE treat their people. It’s just not acceptable.”
And that’s when all the pieces fell into place. This was the Marshall McLuhan moment. My transgression was not in my attitude. It was not in my words. It was not in my conduct. My employees were angry and upset with me because they were, quite literally, seeing red.
Here’s why:
I grew up in television. All of my bosses, from my first job in the industry (back in 1984) all used a red pen to markup scripts. All copyeditors that I had ever been in contact with used red pens to markup scripts. In every media company I had any knowledge of, copyeditors copyedited in red. They do this because red is easy to see and read over black type. Back in 1998, this was the industry standard.
And that was the problem. I had made a critical assumption about my target audience. I assumed they had the same background I did. I assumed that because using a red pen to markup scripts was the norm in every shop I had ever worked in, it would be the norm here as well. Well, it wasn’t. And, evidently, it wasn’t the standard at General Electric either.
Once having explained to the GE HR Dir. and his colleague the reason for the red, I was given a reprimand and told to find a different way to markup scripts. In explaining to my staff the reason for the red pen, they all got a pretty good chuckle. One of them even bought me a purple pen – which I never used.
And that brings me to the fourth rule of branding:
- Educating your target audience is often more important and more effective than entertaining them.
I hope this helps.
