Siemens Polishes Image

With its most extensive advertising campaign, Siemens AG wants people to remember the company's past -- but also to forget its past year.

The German engineering conglomerate, still grappling with a massive corruption scandal that emerged last year, is hoping that the image campaign will shift the public's attention back to Siemens's technological prowess. It plans to shell out more than 100 million euros ($148 million) annually over the next three years on the campaign, a big shift for a company that has long spent heavily to develop medical scanners and high-speed trains but traditionally has set aside little for advertising.

It also represents a gamble that the expensive marketing effort can reverse -- rather than become overwhelmed by -- a stream of negative publicity as the corruption case continues to unfold.

The scandal triggered the departures of Siemens's chairman and chief executive, and last month, the company paid a 201 million euro fine in connection with bribes paid in Nigeria, Russia and Libya. Prosecutors in a number of countries are still pursuing allegations that company managers paid off officials in those places to win infrastructure contracts in recent years.

Ronald Focken, an executive at the independent German advertising agency Serviceplan Gruppe, believes Siemens was wise not to launch the campaign earlier this year, when the bribery case was almost daily fare. 'If you have lots of negative headlines, people will believe the press reports more than the advertisements,' he says.

The 'Siemens answers' campaign, which is being launched in major markets around the globe over the next several months, began last month in Germany with print ads featuring a black-and-white photograph of Werner von Siemens, who founded the company in 1847. The ads announce that Mr. von Siemens asked the pressing questions of his time, such as whether streetcars would be better than horse carriages, and answered them with important innovations.

Subsequent newspaper and magazine ads, rolled out in the U.S. starting this month, ask readers questions such as 'How can disease be detected before it strikes?' and then highlight technologies being developed by Siemens. The ads feature health-care, energy and industrial automation, the three areas of focus for Siemens under a new restructuring program.

The campaign, developed by WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather, makes no mention of the bribes-for-business probes. That represents a departure from how some other companies have addressed scandals in the past, most famously Johnson & Johnson's decision in the 1980s to tackle the bad publicity from the Tylenol-tampering incidents head on.

Advertising executives say bribery cases require different tactics because they don't have as obvious an impact on the end-consumer.

Siemens has been able to point to some good news in recent months, helping to blunt some of the impact of the scandal. Sales for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 rose 9% to 72.45 billion euros. Operating profit leaped 70% to 6.56 billion euros. The company's share price has risen more than 30% since the scandal erupted in November of last year. This fall, the company hired a new general counsel and chief compliance officer as part of a broader overhaul of its compliance system.

The company says it was working on the new global campaign -- its first since 2001 -- before the bribery scandal. It later put the plan on hold for a few months as the scandal developed and a new chief executive joined the company in July.

The new campaign will also utilize the Internet, including keyword-based marketing through search engines and banner advertisements, as well as television and outdoor ads. Management says the campaign will help Siemens regain the public's trust.

'It does give a more balanced and broader perspective of Siemens at a time when the editorial focus might be on one issue,' says Jack Bergen, a company spokesman in New York.

Siemens says that it is hard to measure the impact of the scandal on its reputation, but acknowledges that there has been damage. The company's image already had been slipping in Germany as management sold money-losing businesses and slashed jobs. In the three years before the scandal, Siemens fell from the No. 1 most-respected company in its home country to No. 10, according to an annual study by the market-research firm GfK.

Siemens is also swinging into action after some of its rivals launched new marketing campaigns in recent years. General Electric Co.'s 'ecomagination' campaign publicizes the U.S. company's search for 'innovative solutions to environmental challenges.' Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands has a campaign called 'sense and simplicity' highlighting how it is developing products that make sense and are easy to use.

西门子公司(Siemens AG)发起了规模浩大的广告宣传活动，希望人们能记住它历史上的辉煌──同时忘记它过去一年中的经历。

这家德国设备制造巨头仍然深陷去年曝光的大规模腐败丑闻中，寄希望于通过这场公关活动将公众注意力拉回西门子的技术优势上。该公司计划未来三年每年在这项活动上投入逾1亿欧元（合1.48亿美元）。西门子长久以来在开发医疗设备和高速列车方面不惜重金，但在广告预算上却锱铢必较，这次活动可谓一个重大转变。

这番举措也是想放手一搏，希望大规模的宣传活动能扭转腐败丑闻进一步曝光所带来的大量负面宣传，让公司摆脱被动局面。

腐败丑闻导致西门子董事长和首席执行长下台，上个月该公司还因在尼日利亚、俄罗斯和利比亚的贿赂行为而被罚款2.01亿欧元。多个国家的检查机构仍在继续指控该公司的管理人员近年来一直向这些地方的官员行贿以获得基建合同。

德国独立广告公司Serviceplan Gruppe的管理人员罗纳德•福肯(Ronald Focken)认为，西门子没有在今年早些时候发起公关攻势是明智的，那会儿有关贿赂案的消息几乎天天见报。福肯说：“如果负面新闻很多，人们更会相信新闻报道而不是广告。”

这场名为“Siemens answers”的形象战役于上个月在德国开始，其平面广告展示了1847年创立西门子的维尔纳•冯•西门子(Werner von Siemens)的一张黑白照片。未来几个月这一宣传活动将在全球各主要市场展开。广告宣称冯•西门子提出了他所在时代的一些紧迫问题，如汽车是否会比马车好，并以意义重大的新发明解答了这些问题。

接下来，从这个月开始在美国集中推出的报纸和杂志广告向读者提出诸如“如何在发作前检测到疾病？”之类的问题，然后重点宣传西门子开发出的技术。这些广告突出了西门子重组计划中的三大领域：医疗卫生、能源和工业自动化。

这场由WPP Group旗下的奥美公司(Ogilvy & Mather)策划的公关活动丝毫没有提及商业贿赂调查。这跟以前一些公司处理丑闻的方式不同，其中最有名的是强生公司(Johnson & Johnson)上世纪80年代决定直接面对滥用羟苯基乙醯胺事件带来的负面宣传。

广告业人士说，应对贿赂丑闻所需的策略不一样，因为这类事件对终端消费者没有那么明显的影响。

最近几个月，西门子传出了一些好消息，减轻了丑闻的影响。截止9月30日的本财政年度销售额增长了9%，达到724.5亿欧元。营业利润猛增了70%，达65.6亿欧元。自去年11月丑闻曝光以来，西门子的股价上涨了逾30%。今年秋季，该公司雇请了新的法律顾问及首席执法长，这是对其遵纪守法体系进行全面改革的组成部分。

该公司称其在贿赂丑闻之前就在酝酿新的全球形象宣传活动──这是2001年以来的第一次。后来由于丑闻爆发、新的首席执行长7月加入公司，该计划被搁置了几个月。

新的宣传活动还将利用互联网（包括搜索引擎的关键字宣传和网站的广告条）以及电视和户外广告。管理层表示，此次的宣传活动将会帮助西门子赢回公众信任。

西门子驻纽约发言人杰克•贝尔根(Jack Bergen)说：“在媒体的关注重点都集中在一个事件上时，这样的宣传活动的确会让人们从更为平衡、更广泛的角度来看待西门子。”

西门子表示，很难衡量丑闻对公司声誉的影响，但公司承认这损害了公司声誉。由于管理层出售亏损业务和大规模裁员，西门子在德国的形象已经出现下滑。市场研究公司GfK的一项年度调查，德国最受尊敬的公司排名中，西门子已从第1位下滑到第10位。

近年来，随着竞争对手开展新的市场宣传活动，西门子也行动起来。通用电气公司(General Electric Co.)的“绿色创想”(ecomagination)活动大肆宣传这家美国公司寻求“环境危机的创意解决方案”。荷兰的皇家飞利浦电子股份有限公司(Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.)推出名为“精于心，简于形”(sense and simplicity)的宣传活动，强调其如何开发富有内涵又便于使用的产品。

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