Who's Redder? Crosser?

When the news broke that Johnson <&> Johnson had filed a civil complaint in a U.S. District Court against the American Red Cross, Jack started sniffing. Why so? After all, $176-billion corporation shouldn't stand a chance in a PR throwdown with a refugee-saving philanthropy, right? Particularly over an icon with roots that long-preceded Robert Wood Johnson discovering that he could make money selling surgical supplies?

Probably not. But J,<&>J is a long-time corporate role model with a credo that's been featured in tens of thousands of mind-numbing CSR PowerPoint presentations. While the ARC, on the other hand, has had enough self-inflicted image hits to start Clara Barton rolling bandages in her grave.

So Jack did some parsing over the weekend.

Looking at the chronology of releases and coverage, Jack guesses the ARC triggered the breaking of the story, with an early-evening statement on Wednesday. J<&>J followed a couple of hours later. Both statements came so late in the day's news cycle that the first substantial reports lagged until the early hours of Thursday.

Thus, neither got the drop on the other guy. That's understandable for the ARC, which presumably did not have advance notice of the suit (though the unproductive conversations with J<&>Jsurely tipped them off that such a move was imminent). J<&>J, on the other hand, blew a big opportunity to put the ARC on defense by not issuing a release shortly after lunch.

The two statements took completely different approaches. The ARC release played the indignance card by contrasting the inherent goodness of their work versus the profit motivations of J<&>J, with ARC president/CEO Mark Everson ensuring widespread pick-up by using the word "obscene" to create a genuine money-quote. The J<&>Jrelease took the rational-explanation route, detailing the century-plus relationship between the two parties and each of their rights to one of the world's best-known graphic icons. Because the J<&>J release provided stronger narrative details, most of the coverage told their story, and offered Everson's quote as the obligatory balance.

Perhaps sensing that a comms strategy of sheer self-righteous pique was not going to hold up as the story developed, the ARC then unfolded a 1,600-word release that painstakingly picked away at the legal details of the J<&>Jcomplaint. That probably made the ARC lawyers feel better, but the legalities of the feud are arcane and effectively defy a simplified explanation. Apparently, dropping a legal brief on the PR wires 20 minutes before 5:00 on a Friday afternoon turns out not to be the best means for catching reporters' attention.

By the time the workweek ended, the story had already begun shifting frames, with several reports leading with the PR angle, resetting the conflict by asking why J<&>Jwas taking the risk to its image by attacking a non-profit. Because reporters and editors feel huge pressure to push the original story forward, they often move away from the crisis and begin reporting on the handling of the crisis.

Thus, as the legal process grinds along, both J<&>Jand the ARC will be judged increasingly on how they are playing the PR game.

So why did J<&>Jresort to suing the Red Cross for using the, uh, red cross?

Based on his own experiences with brand-devoted companies, Jack assumes that the J<&>Jlawyers presented management with the legal-world assumption that failing to challenge the ARC's use of the icon in commercial practices would eventually be interpreted as "consent," a slippery slope in the world of intellectual property rights. Given the near-generic nature of the icon, J<&>Jsurely feels the need to keep its trademark turf clearly staked. Unfortunately, almost anything that makes the lawyers' lives easier makes the flacks' lives harder.

For its part, the ARC probably also assumed things would never get this far, and thumbed its nose at J<&>J'srequests to stop making two (paltry) million dollars on the behemoth's commercial turf, presuming J<&>J didn't have the stomach for a public fight.

While this is unbecoming activity for J<&>J, it's not particularly good for the ARC either. The longer the story plays out, the more scrutiny will come to the ARC's licensing agreements. Trumpeting your own piety eventually goads reporters into digging deeper. After all, if the mission is serving humankind, then why is the ARC and its licensees making any money at all on selling those red-crossed items?

While the ARC has obviously drawn first blood on the Wiki-front, history's take on this saga is still up for grabs.

Jack's advice?

The artful solution would be for J<&>J to buy out the agreements between the ARC and its licensees, and then secure a long-term agreement to be the ARC's sole supplier of commercial merchandise. Such a deal will never happen through the organizational apparatus of the two parties. Instead, it would require a top-to-top phone call between Everson and J<&>J CEO Bill Weldon to break through all the inevitable barriers to common sense.

In the meantime, Jack assumes the good people at Swissair will remain neutral in the fray.