Brand trib­utes should be exe­cut­ed spar­ing­ly, if at all. If you must pay trib­ute, put your egos aside and thought­ful­ly con­sid­er your moti­va­tions.

When tragedy strikes, a pre­dictable pat­tern has emerged in dig­i­tal media: Brands roll out trib­utes, which are quick­ly fol­lowed by con­sumer indig­na­tion over shame­less self-pro­mo­tion.

Prince’s death was no excep­tion.

At this point, it’s almost like mass shoot­ings in Amer­i­ca. When­ev­er this hap­pens, we – or at least those of us in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try – look at each oth­er and ask, “Why does this keep hap­pen­ing?” But the pat­tern nev­er­the­less repeats.

I was talk­ing to a friend about this and he said, mat­ter-of-fact­ly, “This is what hap­pens when you hand the keys to social media to peo­ple right out of col­lege.”

He may very well be right. But as some­one prone to over-analy­sis, I couldn’t let it go there.

Let’s Consider September 11

Last year, I argued the best brand trib­ute is respect­ful silence. And I stand by that.

Have you ever heard of a brand that has sparked out­rage and/or alien­at­ed con­sumers by not mark­ing occa­sions like this?

Far more often, we see brands like Spaghet­tiOs apol­o­giz­ing for ill-con­ceived tweets and being held up as gold stan­dards of tact­less­ness for years to come.

Is Silence The Solution?

In my pre­vi­ous post, I posit­ed that brands were grap­pling with an entire­ly new form of media in the post-Sep­tem­ber 11 era in which there was no Emi­ly Post to guide them. And there still isn’t.

Look at the flur­ry of Prince trib­ute roundups from some of the most respect­ed names in mar­ket­ing news – even they strug­gle to define clear brand trib­ute rules and, at times, con­tra­dict them­selves.

For its part, Ad Age notes there’s a “fine line” between look­ing exploita­tive and being “seen as cur­rent and tuned into cul­ture.” Indeed. But where is that line? Some­where between Cari­bou Cof­fee and Four Loko, it seems…

#RestIn­Pur­ple #MNLove #Prince pic.twitter.com/hhJ0S6GxqG

— Cari­bou Cof­fee (@Caribou_Coffee) April 21, 2016

Mash­able, how­ev­er, said, “Min­neso­ta-based com­pa­nies, music brands and oth­er busi­ness­es with a clear con­nec­tion to Prince have a legit­i­mate rea­son to speak on his death.”

AdWeek, too, gave a pass to brands from Prince’s home state, along with Maker’s Mark.

pic.twitter.com/zytdEy7vfn — Mak­er’s Mark (@MakersMark) April 21, 2016

Medi­a­Post was more or less will­ing to give a thumb’s up to Min­neso­ta busi­ness­es as well.

Yet it was one of those very Min­neso­ta brands, Chee­rios, that they agree will like­ly be remem­bered as the biggest screw-up of this par­tic­u­lar tragedy thanks to a tweet the Drum said had an “appar­ent lack of gen­uine empathy…[and] came across more as a tone deaf attempt to thrust itself into the con­ver­sa­tion.”

Anoth­er Min­neapo­lis-based Gen­er­al Mills brand, Ham­burg­er Helper, which so recent­ly struck gold with its April 1 rap album, report­ed­ly delet­ed its Prince tweet, which AdWeek said “suf­fered from too much brand pres­ence.”

This is When It Starts To Get Muddled…

There’s St. Paul-based 3M, which received cheers and jeers for its pur­ple rain/tear logo, as did the exe­cu­tion from Chevro­let.

pic.twitter.com/y2EoqU9wYh

— Chevro­let (@chevrolet) April 22, 2016

To wit: Per Co.Create, the trib­ute from the lit­tle red Corvette par­ent “doesn’t feel tacky.”   In fact, Dan Solomon wrote, “It’s still cer­tain­ly safer – and often in much bet­ter taste – for brands to just let expe­ri­ences like ‘griev­ing’ and ‘sor­row’ be expe­ri­enced sole­ly by the humans they’re attempt­ing to engage with, but when brands cry in a way that’s as taste­ful and classy as this ad, we’ll allow it.”

Digiday’s Copy­ran­ter, on the oth­er hand, said the Chevro­let trib­ute is “awful in every way.”

He agreed, how­ev­er, that the best trib­ute tac­tic is to “shut up and say noth­ing.”

Oth­er Min­neso­ta brands like Tar­get, Hormel Foods, and Unit­ed­Health did just that on social. The lack of back­lash against them per­haps says more than Solomon, the Copy­ran­ter, or I ever could.

‘I Know It When I See It’

Tiffany Guar­nac­cia, CEO of Kite Hill PR and the founder of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Week, said she advis­es clients to jump into a news sto­ry only if they have skin in the game.

“If a brand does­n’t have a direct con­nec­tion to Prince, they should­n’t try to force them­selves into the con­ver­sa­tion. It feels inau­then­tic and can cause a neg­a­tive back­lash,” she said.

But the prob­lem is that it’s up to brands them­selves to define where and when they have skin in the game. Which makes bad brand trib­utes sort of like Supreme Court Jus­tice Pot­ter Stewart’s def­i­n­i­tion of porn: “Which makes bad brand trib­utes sort of like Supreme Court Jus­tice Pot­ter Stewart’s def­i­n­i­tion of porn: “I know it when I see it.”

In oth­er words, I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think every brand that tweet­ed about Prince was moti­vat­ed sole­ly by the almighty dol­lar. But I do think they tend to have an over­in­flat­ed sense of self-impor­tance in sit­u­a­tions like this and need to more care­ful­ly con­sid­er what actu­al­ly defines skin in the game before pulling the trig­ger.

Brands Are Not People

Because here’s the thing: Like Solomon, Mike Gre­han, CMO of intent-based dig­i­tal firm Acronym, not­ed brands are not peo­ple. That means any attempts to con­vey human emo­tion at times like this can eas­i­ly be cheap, tacky, and insin­cere.

For his part, Andrew Bolton, vice pres­i­dent of strate­gic part­ner­ships at mar­ket­ing plat­form Crowd­tap, said it’s only nat­ur­al for brands to com­ment on cul­tur­al moments like peo­ple do since they use social to human­ize them­selves. At the same time, how­ev­er, he not­ed that part of being smart in social media is know­ing when to stay on the side­lines.

“Not every con­ver­sa­tion is ripe for brand commentary…ask your­self: ‘Is this a con­ver­sa­tion that relates to my brand in an authen­tic way – mean­ing is this a good fit, or is it a stretch?’

If it’s a stretch, don’t hit send and wait for the next oppor­tu­ni­ty,” he said. “It only takes a moment to lose the respect of your audi­ence, and when you con­sid­er how hard you fought for that atten­tion in the first place, it’s sim­ply not worth the risk.”

In fact, Gre­han said a bet­ter way for brands to pay their respects to Prince would have been to make a dona­tion to a music char­i­ty or to invest in music edu­ca­tion.

“Does Prince need a trib­ute from Chee­rios? He nev­er endorsed them when he was alive. What if he nev­er even ate them? What if he hat­ed them? What kind of trib­ute is that?” Gre­han said. “A brand that has no con­nec­tion to the per­son who passed, no con­nec­tion to the music indus­try, is giv­ing noth­ing and prob­a­bly doesn’t have a mem­ber of staff who knows more than one Prince record.

Here’s the question…If you think Prince is so great, why did you wait until he was dead to pay him a trib­ute?”

Brand Tribute 101

While I tend to agree with the Copy­ran­ter, I’m reluc­tant to take as strong of a stance because some of the exe­cu­tions above arguably work for the brands in ques­tion.

But I will say that if lack of clear-cut dig­i­tal eti­quette is to blame for the brand trib­ute prob­lem, I’ll step in as an Emi­ly Post here:

Brands need to think of trib­utes like salt – they should be used spar­ing­ly. Or think of a brand trib­ute like mar­riage – you don’t want to do it too many times.

When the next sad event inevitably comes to pass, mar­keters need to put their egos aside and thought­ful­ly con­sid­er the strength of their con­nec­tions, as well as their moti­va­tions for chim­ing in.

If there’s no doubt memo­ri­al­iz­ing the event is the right thing to do, god­speed. Hope­ful­ly you don’t become the next AT&T, Spaghet­tiOs, or Chee­rios. But if you aren’t absolute­ly cer­tain, it is per­haps a sign you should save your per­spec­tive for a per­son­al account.

The Google Exception

That being said, Google’s Prince Doo­dle is one trib­ute that seems to have been uni­ver­sal­ly well-received, which Dana DiT­o­ma­so, part­ner at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Kick Point, says is because Google cel­e­brates so many things.

“If [Google decides] that Prince pass­ing away is a major event, then it feels right for them to have a trib­ute,” she said. “Oth­er brands are jump­ing on the band­wag­on because they don’t reg­u­lar­ly cel­e­brate peo­ple out­side their brand sphere. It’s anoth­er exam­ple of why you need to rely on your brand and make a call that makes sense for the brand over­all, not just jump on every trend that comes along, hop­ing you’ll get pop­u­lar.”

Gre­han agreed Google’s Doo­dles are gen­uine, reg­u­lar trib­utes and Google “didn’t just do it for Prince.”

“Chee­rios does­n’t have the his­tor­i­cal con­text of using this trope and they did­n’t con­nect with our emo­tions cor­rect­ly,” added Rebec­ca Brooks, found­ing part­ner of mar­ket­ing research agency Alter Agents. “That sub­tle dif­fer­ence made [its] trib­ute seem like cap­i­tal­iz­ing on tragedy, while Google’s emo­tion­al con­nec­tion made us all feel clos­er to its brand.”

What’s your take on brand trib­utes?