What We Can Learn from Bad CEO Quotes
The CEOs of Kellogg and Wendy’s recently caused a bit of public outcry.
From the Kellogg end:
We’ve got to reach the consumer where they are, so we’re advertising about cereal for dinner. If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do, that’s going to be much more affordable.
Meanwhile, at Wendy’s:
Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings
(That’s fancy talk for surge pricing.)
Shockingly, customers (or at least social media users) didn’t love these statements.
But those customers (and social media users) weren’t the target audiences. These were said for Wall Street—intended to juice stock prices, not excite customer bases.
Just like with supply chains a couple years ago, inflation and interest rates and market prices are hot topics right now. Which means a wider audience for statements like these—wider than the CEOs may be used to.
Contrast these statements with this approach from a CEO used to being in the public eye:
You can be sure this was intended to double as a call to investors about the quality and positioning of Meta’s VR product compared to Apple. Just like how “internal” memos at tech giants are written with the understanding that they’ll be leaked and become very much external memos.
So, uh, why am I quoting CEOs?
These statements (and the ensuing backlash) highlight that words and messaging matter.
People feeling the pinch of the highest food prices in 30 years don’t want to hear a CEO making millions of dollars a year say that people should eat his company’s cereal for dinner because it’s affordable.
Thanks to Uber and similar services employing surge pricing, “surge” or “dynamic” pricing feels negative because it usually means more expensive. I’ll quote Tyler Cowen because he covers everything I would have said:
I predict this will fail. For one thing, “we will have discounts for Tuesdays at 3 p.m.” would have been better marketing. Furthermore, many Wendy’s buyers are not wealthy, and they care a good deal about predictable prices.
(They even botched the walk back.)
Once you say something in public, you can’t guarantee which audience(s) receive it. The larger you become (in notoriety, headcount, etc) the fewer private communication channels you have.
Your content matters. And that content is a combination of words and tone.