AIG Effect Still Hampering Meetings Industry

According to this article, the dreaded "AIG Effect" is still with us...

excerpt:

AIG’s spending spree at a St. Regis resort last September, just days after receiving federal bailout money, continues to send aftershocks throughout the resort and luxury segments of the industry. The opening session of the virtual Resort Conference—a webinar titled “The Voice of Customers”—gave resort owners and operators a chance to hear from meeting planners (corporate, incentive, etc.) earlier this week.

Moderator and HSMAI President and CEO Bob Gilbert called the current landscape “dismal” and talked about the media firestorm and the “collateral damage” still being felt after AIG’s junket. Some of the damage: $1 billion in U.S. company cancelled bookings in the first quarter because of outrage over AIG; 56 percent of corporate planners reported canceling at least one meeting or incentive trip; 40 percent less group business at Starwood during the first quarter; a $50 million estimated statewide loss for Hawaii. A bit of irony: The Resort Conference went online because of lack of attendance due to travel costs and cutbacks.

Read the rest here.

Death of a Brand: AIG

Here's part of a great post by author and communications consultant James Moore on AIG's diminishing brand. You'll recall our multiple posts about AIG and its effect on the events and conference industry.

excerpt:

There is an old saw in marketing and public relations that if you don't quickly brand your company's products and services the public will brand them for you. Whether that brand ends up being good or bad becomes secondary to the fact that you are not likely to ever get out from under the image the marketplace has provided.

The new adage we are likely to see adopted will say something along the lines of, "When the president of the United States starts bad mouthing your brand, it's not going to survive."
[...]
There is, quite frankly, nothing a crisis communications expert can do to mitigate AIG's situation, which is why you have seen the company and its executives remain decidedly silent. First, they run what amounts to one of the world's greatest financial scams and help send the U.S. economy into a state of collapse and then they ask taxpayers to save their company because it is so important to America and the world that it can't be allowed to die and then they use that bailout money to provide bonuses to the precise individuals who drove the company and the country off a cliff. How can that be fixed, either in reality or perception?

It can't. No matter what a communications expert advises an AIG executive to say, it is too late; actions have outstripped any ability to undo harm. Anything anyone says will be a bit like what Texans describe as "puttin' earrings on a hawg; there's some ugliness there ya just can't hide."

Check out the rest of his post here. Jim Moore really nails it.