9/11/01 and Marketing

On the Seventh Anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the US, including the World Trade Centers, it reminds me of the intense marketing experience we went through at Ericsson at the time.  I was heading Marketing for BU Multiservice Networks and we had worked for the past year or two on creating a brand for ENGINE, which was our brand for next generation networks.  It had been a massive uphill battle against the mobile part of Ericsson and we had succeeded in getting a large advertising budget and hiring one of the leading PR firms in the world, Publicis out of London.  In March of 2001, Ericsson announced a profit warning, and we scaled down the campaign to more about Internet, direct mail, banner ads, telecoms media, events and a wrap-around for the Herald Tribune and other world newspapers that would be a 4-page color ad that would be on the outside of the newspaper.  Ericsson was (and is) a B2B brand, other than the handsets, and we wanted to reach our target customers rather than the general public.  So, we were going to put these wrap-arounds in telecoms offices, business buildings and other places where executives would get their newspaper in major cities around the world.  The total campaign expenditure was around $20MUSD.

In a previous campaign, we had used the images of children to put a face on the technology, and this was largely due to the perserverance of my marcom creative manager, Christina Soderberg.  For this campaign, Publicis had (eventually) come up with a campaign around “Dangerous Business Decisions Made Safe”.  Remember this was a time (almost like today), when business were struggling post internet boom, stocks were falling and companies were scaling back on their capital expenditures.  The images we chose were all gone through with great care and depicted people who made their livings putting their lives in danger. These included firemen, policemen, rescue workers and the like.  This was as opposed to people who did dangerous things like skydiving, mountain climbing or other self-induced, self-pleasuring activities.

We did a soft-launch on September 6th with the internet site going up and planned grand opening was set for September 11th.  The key wrap-arounds featured firemen entering burning buildings and policemen saving people from life-endangering situations.

I was of course living and working in Stockholm and had been there for almost 4 years.  We were also going through a reorganization at the time and I had called for an all-staff meeting together with a new big boss (David King), the meeting was set for 3pm and the group size at that time in Marketing was about 140 people.   At about 2:59 as I was walking to the podium (we had taken over the cafeteria in the building for the meeting), Linda called me and said that a small plane had with the World Trade Center.  She did not seem worried and the first reports were of a light plane.  I said, oh gosh, gotta go back to my meeting.  We proceeded with the meeting, but throughout people started getting phone calls and text messages about the disaster that was taking place.  We ended about 430pm (around 1030 am New York time) and by then we were aware of what was taking place.  We all gathered around my PC in my office or by the TV’s in the common areas and were as shocked and amazed as anyone.

I was supposed to meet a friend/customer from MCI that evening, and he still wanted to meet, but I wanted to be home with Linda and Nick and be safe and watch TV.

It was not until evening that I and we realized that the campaign and newspaper ads and wrap-arounds featured firemen entering burning buildings and policemen, and by then we knew that hundreds of firemen had lost their lives and were heroes of the terrorist attacks.

We of course decided to immediately pull the ads and get the newspapers out.  I still have several copies with the 9/11 date and the shocking campaign.  Here is one of the relevant emails from that evening:

From Roland Klein to Ericsson Executive Staff, dated September 11, 2001, timestamp 19:11

Henrik,

I just got information from Mitch Lewis that we stopped the ENGINE campaign as it includes themes like fire and rescue that might offend parts of the public and media. Whilst this should only be communicated to media if there are specific questions, please inlcude this in internal memos so that staff is informed about this action.

Thanks

Roland

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Another email from the following morning referencing our print ads in Telecommunications Magazing and other trade magazines:

Hi!
The vision ad (fireman) is in the following issues in September (already out!)

Europe
Telecommunications International
Broadband

US
America’s Network (in this issue we have two ads: Fireman and policeman)
Telephony

Asia
Asia Communications

Latam
Telepress

I am looking into the October issues and will have an answer soon!
Br
Christina

————–  Another email on September 12th from our PR agency: ————————–

—–Original Message—–
From: John.Morris@Publicis.co.uk [mailto:John.Morris@Publicis.co.uk]
Sent: den 12 september 2001 11:45
To: Christina Sahlberg (ETX); Michela Fazio (ETX)
Cc: Simon.Dodson@Publicis-Dialog.co.uk; Rebecca.Roberts@Publicis.co.uk
Subject: Ericsson Engine – Urgent

Hi Guys

In light of conversations this morning, we’re pursuing the following course of
action:

- all printing of materials are on hold
- ascertaining what ads have been supplied to publications and what we can
change
- ascertaing what imagery/text we would need to change for the brochure/roll
fold CD-Rom

We are continuing to get all the translastions in and the database information
we are expecting back today/tomorrow.

At the moment the course of action is based around the use of the Fireman ‘Safe
Exit’ however, some of the other imagery may also be deemed sensitive at this
time e.g Policemen ‘Back Up’.

On a quick analysis we beleive that we could change the Fireman imagery in
brochure/roll fold and adjust the text with a delay of about a week and a half.
The biggest problem we face however is around the CD-Rom and changing imagery,
it may be that we would need to have a complete rethink of this project.

Given the amount of investment that has gone into this campaign in both time and
money, one question that needs to be raised is can we afford to put the whole
thing on hold?  We could aim for an early November start and take a call on that
within the next 2 weeks.

Please feel free to call me to discuss.

Kind regards

John

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So what happened next: over the coming weeks, it turned out that we were right about the public’s reaction in that these people were heroes and we had captured the imagination of the public, just prematurely and it would have been wrong to take advantage of this in light of the casualties.  We did go forward with the campaign but took a low key approach to taking advantage of what had happened.

I have thought about the events of that day for some time, but watching news reports as this is written and video from 9/11 have brought up the feelings again.  Even as I type this, i still get goosebumps and nerves thinking about that time and what it was like to be living in a foreign country and to be launching a campaign that was so close to what had happened in many ways.  By the time war had broke out in 2003, we were living in a Muslim country (Malaysia) and dealing with the aftermath of anti-American sentiment.

Even 7 years later, I would like to recognize the efforts of many people to make the campaign successful, but specifically Christina who kept her head and calmly lead the efforts before, during and for the restart of the campaign.