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Debris in All Directions
By Mitchell Beer | February 17, 2009
O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ now.
Is it a prepaid surprise, or C.O.D.?
The Music Man
Lyric by Meredith Willson
1957
The Wells Fargo Wagon is beginning to look like a train wreck in all directions.
Meeting professionals have been hearing all about the pushback Wells Fargo ran into, in the media and in the U.S. Congress, until it cancelled an incentive trip to Las Vegas after receiving billions in federal bailout funds. The ricochets have become a threat to a far wider range of meetings and events and, as reported on this blog, our industry has been paying close attention.
But cranky members of Congress may be only one half of the story.
On my way home Wednesday from MPI’s MeetDifferent conference in Atlanta, I was stranded in Detroit due to a cancelled flight. Early Thursday morning, I shared a shuttle ride to the airport with someone who had tried to negotiate a home mortgage with Wells Fargo. He gave up, after realizing that any other bank would have offered him a lower rate. When he pointed that out, the Wells Fargo rep encouraged him to take his business elsewhere.
Maybe I suffer from a tragic lack of strategic vision…but if my company’s solvency, our ability to meet payroll, depended on a $25-billion taxpayer subsidy, I don’t think I’d be turning customers away.
The rest of this is pure, speculative commentary, fuelled by too much caffeine and not enough sleep. It’s based entirely on a single story, and the plural of anecdote is not evidence. But the conversation pointed to the possibility that Wells Fargo’s problem is bigger than it might have seemed, for the company itself and for meetings and events.
Until the Las Vegas trip was cancelled, legislators thought they were paying for it, customers thought it was built into their interest rates…and they were both partly right. (What they may not realize is that they’re still, almost certainly, paying the cancellation fees.)
If the work of organizing meetings has been linked to a company whose products and policies earn it more critics than friends, it will be that much harder for our industry to make a convincing public argument for the phenomenal economic impact we bring back to local communities.
And for Wells Fargo, if the fundamental problem is with the product, the world has yet to create a glitzy enough incentive to keep sales reps successful against a rising tide of consumer disdain.
Topics: Business Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Economic Impact, Meeting Professionals International, Meetings ROI |