Act Like a Bison, Not a Cow: Run Into Your Marketing Problems Not Away From Them

The bison has long been a symbol of courage, strength and the American West and one of their most symbolic characteristics is their resiliency when dealing with adversity in nature.   

There is a wonderful story about how bison and cows react when a storm is coming. Cows huddle together or try to go around, while the bison take the storm head on, traveling directly into its path.

Bison know that while it may be a brutal, tough slog, it’s also the shortest way to get to safety. Cows, on the other hand, end up bearing the brunt of the storm or just getting lost and disoriented.

We can all learn from the bison not just in life but in marketing as well. Tackling life’s or a business’s existential issues head on may not be our immediate, intuitive instinct but it can often be the only way out of the challenge you’re facing and the true path to long-term resiliency.

Politics, culture and marketing all have some great examples of people, brands, and companies being “bisons”– taking issues head on in an attempt to move forward.

Politics

Biden’s and Trump’s age is a massive issue for voters in the upcoming election. Age is the key headwind for Biden to address and one of the headwinds Trump must face.  Both candidates have reluctantly, but smartly, realized they have to address that matter directly and reposition the other as being unfit for the job.  

Biden by positioning Trump as a child: “The 2024 election is in full swing and yes, age is an issue,” noted Biden, 81. “I’m a grown man running against a six-year-old.”

Trump, 78, by positioning Biden as senile: "It's not about age, it's about mental competence," said Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, arguing that voters can see the contrast between Biden and Trump, whom she described as "sharp as a tack with elite stamina."

Both candidates fervently wish this issue would go away but neither news channels nor a worried swing voter base will let them. Neither candidate will go anywhere without addressing this squarely and consistently in what is sure to be a narrowly won election.

Culture and Commerce

The phenomenon that was “Barbie The Movie” last year was one of the uncanniest and bravest brand marketing moves I’ve ever seen by a company.

Mattel, in the face of Barbie's rapidly declining global sales–the result of being a stereotypical and outdated notion of girlhood that no parent wanted in their homes–approved a script and movie that entertainingly owned up to the damage that Mattel and Barbie had historically wrought on society and women/girls respectively.  

It was that honesty and heads on approach that has allowed them to restore Barbie as a positive symbol of “the limitless potential of girls everywhere.” An uptick in sales quickly followed.

I’ve heard some amusing stories of big brands rushing to Hollywood in order to mimic Mattel’s success and in order to be “part of the cultural conversation.” But Mattel’s success, in large part, is precisely because they used their IP and a global entertainment channel to address the main issue impacting their business and brand in a warts-and-all fashion. Few brands will be that brave, that bold or, as a result, that successful.

Marketing’s best practice in the face of a big business challenge should be no different.

Marketing

Samsung’s infamous Note 7 crisis with the exploding phones made them a daily cautionary call out on airplanes all over the world as well as the subject of a million brutal memes. It posed a financial and reputational crisis that threatened to sink one of the largest companies in the world. At that time, I was part of the global team in South Korea leading the brand recovery and got to witness events from the inside out.  

To be sure, there was an army of people globally who helped the business ultimately recover but what stood out to me–especially then–was Mobile CEO, DJ Koh’s immense bravery in how he tackled the crisis.

The sales impact to the Note 7 was severe and immediate but far more troubling was the impact it had across the whole mobile business as all sales stalled (at that point over 70% of Samsung's total revenue) as consumers grappled with how far this issue carried over to all other Samsung products.

The losses to the quarterly bottom line and stock value were in the billions–amounts that would sink most other companies. The internal pressure to just “sweep this under the rug” was immense so why didn't we just follow suit?

Because DJ insisted on addressing the crisis head on. 

A lesson in being a bison in a storm and, for me, a front seat training on how to handle an existential PR/Marketing crisis. There were three things he did that struck a chord with me that are also great life and business lessons in general:

• Take Accountability: “Yup, this one’s on us. We packed the batteries too tightly trying to pack in more innovation–hence the issue.” He also famously did the “deep Korean bow” of apology in front of the country’s press which shocked many because no Korean executive ever did that but endeared himself to the whole nation as a result with his humility. 
• Take Action: “These are the steps we’re taking to fix it.” Samsung announced a rigorous investigation phase along with an 8-step quality assurance plan across all its mobile products to ensure it never happened again. DJ kept a vigilant watch over all this.
• Be Transparent: He didn’t just say “we’ll get back to you” to the press. He set a target date for the official Samsung solution to the Note issues; then stood on stage in one of the biggest company auditoriums I’d ever seen and almost single-handedly fielded questions from an unrelenting and aggressive world press on how the issue had been resolved.

When we launched the Note 8 the next year (with nervous, bated breath) he opened the event with a moving video to all Samsung Note fans (1-3 minute mark) with an acknowledgement of the Note 7 failure. A full 2 minutes of an apology before launching into the new product. 

If you think that’s easy, try having your management, let alone your CEO, acknowledge their failure as the opening salvo to a board meeting, global product launch or press event. 

Yup, won’t happen.

Within a year, Samsung was back in the green. Consumers had forgiven, forgotten and most importantly remained with us. YouGov tracking showed a huge upsurge in consumer trust because of the way the crisis had been handled. Sales across mobile mirrored a corresponding upswing.

Samsung was back.

Lessons Learned

There’s two simple takeaways from all this that I’d love to leave you with:

1. The obstacle is the way.  There’s a great quote from one of the most famous Caesars of all, Marcus Aurelius: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." So befriend your obstacles.
2. Have courage and a big set of balls.  People internally and externally will doubt you precisely because walking into a shit-storm is counter intuitive to our desire to run away or avoid the pain entirely. It takes more courage to withstand the short-term hard but you will be on the path to long-term easy much quicker by doing so.

So whenever you threaten to buckle, remember:  Be a Bison.