That blazing hot place would be the hot seat in front of President Obama. Because the executives of AIG have decided to give themselves a nice little present of a $165 million. And that has caught the intense anger of our President, who has rightfully called the act “an outrage.”

This makes me wonder what it must be like to be a marketing manager at AIG or on the agency side representing that company. Quite an unenviable position, wouldn’t you say? After all, I assume one of the qualities you want to convey is an ability to relate to the common family’s economic situation. However, when your executives feel they deserve $165 million in bonuses during the worst economic period since the Great Depression, you’re going to have an impossible task for the foreseeable future of spinning AIG into anything positive in the view of the American public.

But you can’t spin corporate greed. Sure, perhaps branding is the least of AIG’s worries…such as answering to the aforementioned President of the United States and the American people. But I surely hope that all financial and insurance brands will take note of this occurrence and keep in mind that the distrust of your industry is increasing by the day. You may very well be lumped in with the AIGs of the world, fair or not. You may very well be lumped in with the shady subprime mortgage lenders, fair or not. But your ability to counter the steady flow of information that is negative about your industry with a steady flow of positive information about your company has never been more essential. Blogs, press releases, podcasts…the tools for disseminating information about your company are there. But your standard message no longer is. Customers have trusted you for years? Whoop dee freakin’ doo. Show those customers now how you plan on retaining their trust going forward.

Stating what your services are, how big you are and that you’ve been doing it for years doesn’t cut it anymore. AIG did that. Lehman Brothers did that. Bear Stearns did that.

Say, anybody know how those guys are doing these days?

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