The Martha Stewart problem is twofold: too smart by a half and branding.
Too smart by a half is the English translation of a French phrase. It means that really smart people, high I.Q.s, can have sufficient problems with their ego so that they can’t see clearly. That is not Martha’s personal problem. The problem is that she lives in a milieu, successful New York financial people, where she relies on advice from many people who are too smart by a half.
I am not a Monday morning quarterback. I said and wrote this in January 2002. What I said then was that she should admit to having made a mistake in the timing of her sale of Imclone and publicly atone by giving $2 million to breast cancer research.
The world would have moved-on and left her alone with that kind of contrition. Instead she got advice from lawyers who told her they could easily win any case the government could make. They told her to be strong and forceful, the government would fold in the face of good lawyers. Too smart by a half.
Branding is the stupidest idea in the business marketplace. It is a euphemism for broad-based advertising, invented by ad agencies. I would never be willing to take a job as a brand manager.
A brand is a certification of quality. Think of the brands that collapsed when quality was challenged and the response was pathetic: Gerber, Evian and E.F. Hutton.
When you put your own name (or photo) on a corporation, you are the brand. Anything you do is an immediate threat to the brand. Remember the photo of Marilyn Chambers on the Ivory soap box and O.J. Simpson in the Hertz commercial.
Martha Stewart was five times as risky as either of those. There is no way a brand, based on veracity, could survive a public legal challenge of lying and insider trading.
A brand manager has to be able to guarantee the way a brand is handled in the most difficult times of a corporate debacle. Only the CEO can guarantee that. That’s the reason I would never be a brand manager.
Martha was a unique brand problem. A CEO who is the brand is invariably going to have trouble making a good decision when a debacle arrives. Martha couldn’t think big enough, she thought like a person, not a brand.
Watch out Donald Trump.