ING cops heavy fire over NYC Marathon

The cancellation of the New York City Marathon in the wake of Hurricane Sandy has turned into a branding nightmare for ING bank.  Sadly, it was mostly avoidable.

Both bank and the Bloomburg administration were heavily criticised for not only dragging their heals in canceling the race but in vociferously defending an earlier decision to hold the race.  This in light of the fact that many of the city's Burroughs were still suffering from a lack of services.  

The hue and cry was particularly rabid in Staten and Coney Islands the residents of which were still suffering from power outages days after the Hurricane.  As one resident pointed out - the generators that were brought into Central Park to power the race media tent could have substantially alleviated the burdens of people in those hurricane stricken areas.

The stand-off led to a flurry of hate speech on ING's facebook page and though the bank pledged a $500,000 donation to aid victims of the hurricane it was a case of too little too late.

It is fairly obvious to me that the delay in cancellation was a case of sponsor duress on behalf of ING.  And though the bank subsequently made a sizable donation to hurricane relief, it could have been reaping a significantly greater reward.

How could ING have handled the situation?

• The bank should have been close enough to the target consumer - and to the citizens of NYC in particular (a fiercely close knit bunch in spite of their inherent diversity) - to take the lead in canceling the marathon.  The event cancelled was, at least in my books, as valuable as the event taking place.  All the bank needed was a contingency plan.

• The event not happening was as valuable for ING as the event happening.  ING could thus have traded on the new generation of sponsorship practice which seeks to contribute to the experience either by amplifying the good or, (in this case) eliminating the bad.

• ING could have gone public with the following message or similar:  "We know the Marathon Unites the 5 Burroughs - but now we must all unite against Hurricane Sandy" - The bank could quickly have turned on a scheme whereby runners race fees were matched or multiplied into a powerful donation initiative.  The $500 000 donation - blood money under the circumstances - would have gained significantly more goodwill.

Instead, ING was looking at the NYC Marathon purely as a mechanism to build headline awareness.  It was too locked into a visibility paradigm than the opportunity the race gives the sponsor to forge deeply meaningful relationships with target consumers.

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