Published in CommPro.biz 2013.04.25

 

HSBC Scot Free?

In study after study there is nothing to support the idea that “C” Suite occupants are irreplaceable. There’s an occasional example of a corporate leader’s departure negatively impacting a company’s performance: Steve Jobs’s voluntary ten-year absence from Apple left the company floundering; the jury is out at this point following his death in the fall of 2011 but the company is certainly not going to collapse. However, in all but a few cases there is an able individual in the wings ready to take over.

That makes a Department of Justice decision to give HSBC a get-out-of-jail-free card so outrageous. Listen to Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month (2013.03.08) before a Senate Committee: "I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute -- if we do bring a criminal charge -- it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy," How dumb is that? What an insult to the tens of thousands of honest HSBC people to imagine that there are not lots of capable executives at HSBC who could step into the shoes of the boneheads who have turned an international financial giant into a gigantic criminal enterprise.

Let’s review: HSBC laundered carloads of money for the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, who are reported to have murdered thousands of people. HSBC created shams to help North Korea, Iran and others beat sanctions. HSBC financed Al Qaeda and a wide range of terrorist organizations along with mobsters in Russia, and they provided good old tax cheats a place to stash their earnings. That’s just a smattering of the flat-out criminal activity at HSBC. And the DOJ is letting them get away with it? Just have coffee in the same coffee shop as a terrorist and you’ll be grilled by the FBI. And HSBC gets a pass? Unbelievable!

Where does Holder think the “indications” of worldwide economic collapse if we jail these crooks is coming from? From the same HSBC lobbyists who pour bucks into the pockets of members of the Congress. Fortunately there are a few on the hill who are willing to stand up to these crooks, Carl Levin and Elizabeth Warren among others. Still, one estimate of support in the Senate for a break-up of the monster banks sees fewer than forty votes. Can you imagine how few members of the House would support such an action?

Everyone knows that’s what’s needed. The Dallas Fed chairman and at least one other Fed Board member have documented the need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks. These banks are the real threat to the world’s economic health. And until we treat criminal banksters for what they are, crooks, and put them in jail where crooks belong, they are going to keep right on breaking the law and risking another crash with their roulette wheel style of banking. Why not, when the top law enforcement officer in the United States gives them a pass?

Toothless Ethics
 
The PRSA (Public Relations Society of America), the largest membership organization for those engaged in this craft, does many things well. It does not do ethics at all. And that could explain why the public holds its practitioners in the same class as pond scum. Corporate leaders with a few exceptions pretty much agree with that assessment. So much for that treasured “Seat at the table” –never mind the seat at the right hand of the CEO.

Instead of whining about it, we need to examine why we're relegated to grinding out media releases and waiting for the roof to fall in. Crisis management too often sees us called in to fix something that we could have predicted had we been in the room when the idea was broached. Of course there are those among us who are afraid to object when we see a train wreck around the corner; especially when the CEO is pouring on the coal. 

One of the most successful members of our craft, Howard Rubenstein, founder of Rubenstein Associates, has done pretty well coming from an opposite viewpoint: “Feeding the client only what they want to hear is a form of ethical deception—and it happens every day in the agency world. That's too bad, because if a client thinks you're telling the truth—even if it hurts—they will value your opinion far more than if they think you'll say anything that will suit them. So I guess the take away here is that the best client service is being upfront and honest. That includes being aggressive in insisting that the client is accurate and ethical in all its dealings and messaging with the public.”

While few of us operate in the rarefied atmosphere Mr. Rubenstein occupies, we have every reason to follow his lead. That’s how to escape the bottom-feeder pond scum image we suffer from. That’s how to gain and hold the seat at the right hand of the CEO. We have to do our job and protect the most valuable asset any organization enjoys, its reputation.

That job is grounded in ethics. Unfortunately for all the good it does, the PRSA, our national face, does not require ethics, let alone the level Howard Rubenstein suggests. Yes they have a code; they even put out an app so you can look up the right thing to do if in doubt while afield.

Problem is, you have to be hauled before the law for the PRSA to kick you out. They whine about legal expense. Right, let’s visualize that: after several warnings and opportunities to straighten up and fly right, the PRSA quietly kicks some miscreant out. Would anyone in this business risk the damage a public airing of their dirty laundry that a lawsuit would trigger? Not going to happen. So the real scum in our craft continue to flaunt their membership in the PRSA and the credentials awarded by the organization. Unfortunately for those in the reputation trade, the courage to protect our own reputation is sadly lacking.

Published 2013.03.04 in CommPRO.biz

Bad Pharma, Trials & Travails

“Everybody’s doing it.” That lame excuse seems the only explanation of rampant bad behavior in the Pharma sector. However, it becomes more than bad behavior when it costs lives. Psychiatrist, journalist, author, Ben Goldacre, a Brit with more degrees and credentials than seem possible for one not quite forty years old, has a new book, Bad Pharma.

This quote from the book sums up his case: “Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer.”

Dr. Goldacre writes a weekly column, “Bad Science,” in the London Guardian. He has a history of well-researched work taking on the quacks and crooks in and on the fringes of medicine. His research on drugs and medical devices spills into America’s Pharma. The more of Dr. Goldacre’s work you read, the more horrified you become. Evidence that bad behavior is not an anomaly; it is common place, driven by the need to meet the quarterly profit marks Wall Street is looking for. And too often supported by doctors on Pharma payrolls who do not speak up publicly for a host of reasons.

How bad is it? This quote from Dr. Goldacre’s book nails it: “Sponsors get what they want. In 2007, researchers looked at every published trial that set out to explore the benefit of a statin. This study found 192 trials in total, comparing one statin against another, or comparing a statin against a different treatment. The researchers found that industry-funded trials were 20 times more likely to give results favoring the test drug.” When a sponsored trial does not deliver the results its sponsor is looking for, they bury it.

In a New York Times story* Johnson & Johnson, a communications community poster child for its response to the 1982 Tylenol nightmare, comes off practicing the worst of the worst. One of several memos from doctors working for J&J came to light in the first of more than 10,000 artificial hip lawsuits J&J is facing. The consultant was blunt in a memo sent to several J&J “C Suiters”. The doctor’s memo indicated that, “An artificial hip sold by the company was so poorly designed that the company should slow its marketing until it understood why patients were getting hurt.” 

This was not the only such report. Reports that languished for almost two years before J&J recalled the faulty hips. We’re not talking about recalling something simple; a hip replacement involves serious surgery. It would be unconscionable to put a single human being through the risks of this surgery once the dangers were known. To expose tens of thousands was criminal. The human beings –the J&J executives– who chose profit before ethics may have thought “Everybody’s doing it.” It’s time to offer a fitting remedy for such a deadly choice, a jail sentence.
*(02/15/13)