Tone Deaf

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

Today Honestly Lay Bare looks to the world of celebrity (of which it has been cruelly and unjustifiably excluded) for a process – that applied appropriately to the world of business – could seek to quantify the previously unquantifiable: the tone at the top of an organisation.

The Davie Brown Index (DBI) http://www.daviebrowncelebrityindex.com/ is an independent index for brand marketers and agencies that determines a celebrity’s ability to influence brand affinity and consumer purchaser intent.

Developed by the talent division of Davie Brown Entertainment, the DBI provides marketers with a systematic approach for quantifying the use of celebrities in their advertising and marketing campaign.

The DBI, goes a step beyond the decades old Q rating approach which is based on two factors, how many people have heard of Celebrity X and how many people name him or her as one of their favourites

The DBI surveys 1.5 million Americans to score on eight key attributes: “appeal,” “notice” (their pop ubiquity), “trendsetter” (their position as such), “influence” (do they have any?), “trust,” “endorsement” (spokespersonability), “aspiration” (do we want his or her life?), and “awareness” (expressed as a percentage).

The scores are then cross-referenced in a database that supposedly will help advertisers decide who among a list of more than 1,500 celebrities will help them hawk their wares.

Access costs $20,000 a year.

Tiger Woods - whose dalliances are of such that they are not within the family classification of Honestly Lay Bare – has recently felt the sting of the DBI.
Prior to his car crash, Woods had ranked as the sixth most valuable endorser according to the DBI. After the car crash and subsequent revelations, he has now fallen to 24th on the list.

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It is the quantification of a celebrity’s “it” factor that has really got Honestly Lay Bare thinking.

Investors, Boards, employees and a myriad of other stakeholders have often had to rely on gut instinct when it comes to determining whether to install, support or reject Chief Executive Officers and other C suite members.

We know that such key Management have an impact upon the tone of an organisation yet we have never really sought to quantify or understand how that is the case.

Imagine then if there was a corporate version of the DBI.

A C Suite member would be ranked by key stakeholders on attributes relevant to the assessment of the tone at the top – walks the talk; holds people accountable; is accountable for decisions; rewards good decisions; addresses poor decisions; is trusted by the employees; is likely to be one day involved in some form of scandal.

If this exercise was conducted within an organisation this would be invaluable information for a C suite member to review and ignore at their peril.

Perhaps, however, the greater use of a corporate DBI would be if there was a central repository of the rankings so that there was an unequivocal assessment of a C Suite member that current and future employers could reference in determining whether the person just about to be employed / considered for a new role would be good not only at the competency elements of their role (something that a corporate DBI could not measure) but the tone at the top issues.

Imagine how such transparency would impact upon the attention that the C Suite gave to the attributes upon which they were now being measured.

Food for thought.