The Waning of the CEO as Chief Pitchman

Even before George Zimmer was unceremoniously dumped as Mens' Wearhouse Chairman and chief marketing tool, the era of the CEO as an advertising icon was beginning to fade.

The Imperial CEO may have largely disappeared when Jack Welch retired from GE, but a few holdouts like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan carried on. Until his increasingly shrill attacks on regulators and central bankers ran up against the whatever billion dollar loss his bank suffered as a result of inadequate oversight and controls.

The issue is not that JPMorgan or Jamie Dimon were exceptional, but rather that they were not. That in the world of the 24/7 news cycle there is inevitably going to be something somewhere on someone. CEO tenures are declining and with that, so is their effectiveness as the face of the company. It's not so much that tenure is causally related to marketing prowess, but that the underlying loss of faith in executive infallibility makes the use of the chief an enterprise risk.

Furthermore, the fractionalization of the mass market has meant that in order for the message to have sufficient power these days, it must carry across a myriad platforms, channels and media. TV is simply no longer adequate to promote the message with sufficient scale and reach to make much of a difference. Nor, quite frankly, does the personal association work all that well on some of the required outlets. The avuncular presence that seems so homey on the 50 inch screen may seem rather pathetic on something smaller, edgier and mobile.

The company leader as face of the enterprise has waxed and waned over the years. He or she may well reappear when our ability to optimize image and message has improved. But for now, prudence and technology dictate that the focus home in on the product or service rather than the outsized personality. JL

Andrew Hill reports in the Financial Times:

In a world where tenure and credibility are less secure chief executives are not the obvious choice for a prolonged advertising campaign. TV commercials are still relatively expensive yet their effect is increasingly dissipated by viewers’ penchant for ad-hopping. If bosses appear onscreen, it will be on one of the multiple devices, from tablet to smartphone, that compete with the box. In this environment, omnipresence is far harder to achieve.

Caught in a traffic jam on his way to a gala in New Jersey this month, Sir Richard Branson bought drinks at a local shop and handed them out to frustrated drivers himself. So far, so Branson. As the Virgin founder explained last week in a blog post: “Those people who recognised me were happy to wind their windows down. Those who didn’t thought I was up to no good and kept their windows firmly closed!”
You can think what you like about Sir Richard’s antics but by projecting himself across all media he has become the world’s foremost frontman for his products.
Then there’s George Zimmer. If you have lived in the US at any time in the past 25 years and watched television, you will know his well-groomed beard and his gravel-voiced catchphrase for Men’s Wearhouse, the clothing retailer he founded: “You’re going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.” Last Wednesday his fellow board members decided they didn’t like the way he looked and fired him as executive chairman. The company didn’t explain its decision to ditch its pitchman, though Mr Zimmer said the company had “inappropriately chosen to silence my concerns [about its direction] through termination”. The reasons are likely to be complex. Not only was Mr Zimmer a former chief executive who kept the chairman’s role – often a red flag of potential governance problems – he was a founder with the sort of emotional attachment to his company that is always hard to disentangle. On one point, though, there will be little dispute. As the face and voice of the brand in TV adverts since 1985, Mr Zimmer was really good. I remember his catchphrase a decade after last hearing it. But he may be the last executive to make such an impact through a single broadcast medium.
Two qualities are essential to successful executive-led advertising. First, ubiquity. A recent study by Ace Metrix, a company that measures the effectiveness of TV and video advertising, suggests CEO-led television ads generally outperform those that don’t feature the senior executive. Commitment by the leading man is one key, which is why owners and founders are more promotable than paid managers. Victor Kiam’s ads for Remington, whose products he liked so much he “bought the company”, appeared in 31 countries in 15 different languages over many years. But most bosses limit the duration of the TV campaigns they appear in, or mix those ads with other more traditional commercials, reducing the risk of failure but also diluting the impact. Second, a telegenic leader has to appear genuine – or “authentic” in the favourite jargon of executive coaches. I happen to think “authenticity” is itself an act, but Mr Zimmer was a pretty good actor.

It requires incessant activity by the CEO-star, often backed by a team of blog writers and social-media monitors, and a greater degree of lateral thinking. In the Harvard Business Review, Thales Teixeira, a marketing professor, picks out for praise YouTube videos of DC Shoes’ stunt-driving co-founder Ken Block, or Blendtec’s “Will it blend?” clips of founder Tom Dickson feeding unlikely objects into its blenders.
Mr Zimmer is on YouTube, too. But his success was born in an era when it could be measured by quantity of TV viewers rather than the more qualitative yardstick suggested by Prof Teixeira of “cost per engagement”.
Even as TV’s power wanes, there will be executives vain enough, advertising agencies craven enough and viewers inert enough to support costly commercials featuring the man or woman who paid for them.
But to achieve the Branson effect – to convince strangers to “wind down their windows” – executives now have to do more than suit up and intone a catchline. If they choose to lead from the front at all, they will have to work harder just to stay visible. The success of such ads was always hit and miss, but these days – sorry, George – there is simply no way to guarantee it.