JD Group shows its marketing mettle

Investigations by Carte Blanche suggested that the JD Group was allegedly overcharging on debt recovery. A week later, on Sunday, 27 May 2007, in a full page ad in the main body of the Sunday Times, Sussman responded.

And just what did he do right?

First of all, unlike the usual corporate reaction, there was no hot under the collar denials and threats of litigation against Carte Blanche.

All investigated

He gave the assurance that every accusation by Carte Blanche would be investigated whether he believed there to be any truth in them or not. But then, he went a stage further and committed his company with the help of external auditors, to go beyond the Carte Blanche accusations and investigate even further.

He ended his statement with; “I want to say to the South African public that if there is a problem [with the JD Group] we will face it and solve it. We will do this because the only thing our business is based on is the trust we have in our relationship with you. This is something the JD Group and I will never compromise on.”

The message was extremely powerful and certainly sincere enough to allow Sussman to add one bit of promotion: “I have been in this business for 24 years and the only thing I believe matters above all else is integrity.”

Now, what makes this all good marketing?

Valuable asset

Well, for starters, we are now in an era of consumerism where the most valuable asset any company can have is trust in it by its customers. And customers today are sick of being perceived to be continually ripped off and patronised with assurances of corporates caring for them. So they will react positively to someone who has the balls to admit that if there is a problem it will be fixed.

And then, of course, the very nature of this statement means that it is virtually impossible for this incident to be given legs and made worse with more media exposure and controversy. Effectively, Sussman has killed any sort of negative follow-up stone dead.

And, if he has really been keeping up with marketing best practice, he will now see that this whole can of worms can actually give him a new promotional opportunity in the future.

Coming clean

Assuming he finds that there were problems. He can gain further consumer trust by making a further public statement once the investigations are over by acknowledging that there were indeed problems, coming clean about how widespread they were or weren't and then confirming that the guilty executives in his organisation had been at least fired.

Now, if he keeps his nerve and really comes clean this way, the JD Group can leverage an enormous amount of positive publicity from what might have seemed two Sundays ago to have been a very dark and ominous black cloud.

It is going to be fascinating to see the results of his investigations. The only pity is that he might not have gone far enough in terms of the makeup of his external audit team. Adding a completely independent and high profile referee is always a good marketing move.