‘U-turn’ has been the buzzword of choice for the national press over the past week, due to the government’s planned amendments to NHS proposals, prison reform, and, supposedly, the benefits cap. U-turns have long been blood to political sharks, but are the consequences as dire for companies? Should U-turns, in fact, be more widely incorporated into PR strategy?

Kraft’s iSnack 2.0 garnered a huge amount of news coverage back in 2009. After a campaign to crowdsource the name of a new spread by the company’s iconic Vegemite brand, iSnack 2.0 was revealed to be the winning entry. Cue an outcry by Vegemite advocates, reams of coverage about the absurd name and Kraft quickly holding the competition again. Other U-turns that spring to mind are Cadbury’s decision to bring back its Wispa bar in 2007 and Gap scrapping its new logo last October after poor feedback from customers.

Only those involved with the brands truly know to what extent these U-turns were planned, but the suspicion lingers that they may well have been engineered, dreamt up by PRs and marketers. Both Kraft and Cadbury’s U-turns achieved an excellent crossover between old and new media, the ‘democracy’ online generating a story of interest for the mainstream press; Kraft stuck with a dodgy name for its spread, Cadbury’s prepared to bring back its chocolate bar.

That the brands apparently bowed to public pressure also worked in their favour. Whereas governments are chastised for being weak, a U-turn often increases affinity for brands. They appear less faceless corporate entities, more companies that care about what their consumers think and willing to concede ownership to them. Of course this last point is an illusion. Consumers no more own the Vegemite or Wispa brands than they do manufacture them, but it is a powerful conceit.

Agencies are increasingly conducting listening exercises online so their clients stay responsive and avert crises, and rightly so. But this is reactive PR, what is being considered here is ways in which agencies and clients can exert control over the online space by second-guessing public sentiment. Kraft surely knew there would be uproar over iSnack 2.0, and Cadbury’s had little to lose either way – if nobody cared about Wispa the initial decision to drop the bar was right.

Perhaps a good rule of thumb for U-turns is the closer something is to the consumer, the more effective a U-turn will be. Companies never want to U-turn over an economic or internal business decision; Apple’s recent climbdown over its In-App subscriptions is a case in point. But a U-turn over something relatively unimportant to a company, only seemingly so to consumers can be an effective PR strategy for brands.

Image via Mykl Roventine

Tags: Apple, Cadbury's, hugh jordan, iSnack 2.0, Kraft, U-turn, Vegemite, Wispa