Quality and the Golden Rule (Craig Douglass On Consumers)

My brother and I grew up with the Coleman brothers: Walt, Bob, Charlie and Sherb. At Bob Coleman’s way-too-soon funeral two weeks ago, I fondly recalled spending many Saturdays with the Coleman boys, as our fathers worked at the “plant,” which is what we called the Coleman Dairy collection of buildings, then located on Asher Avenue. Dad’s family dairy, the C.S. Douglass Dairy, merged in 1948 with Coleman. Dad worked for Boots and Buddy Coleman for the next 30 years.

In 1960, Coleman Dairy joined the Quality Chekd dairy association. (The organization spelled “checked” Chekd.) The adoption by Coleman Dairy as a Quality Chekd dairy, along with other independent and family-owned dairies across the country, impressed me with its consumer trademark logo, package design, and advertising and merchandising program. As a grade-schooler at the time, I didn’t know anything about marketing and promotion, but remember being attracted to all the stuff of what would now be recognized as rebranding.

Quality as a distinguishing attribute attracts consumers to the brand, to the product or the service. And quality positively affects consumer choice when properly positioned, promoted, advertised and merchandised. Perceived quality is created. Objective quality is measured. Either way, quality begets value and value begets purchasing and repurchasing decisions.

The Quality Chekd device created differentiation between Coleman Dairy and its competitors. The idea, as I came to learn, was to promote to the consumer that Coleman products had a consistent degree of excellence not found in other dairy brands. In this context, Chekd (or checked) is an active verb meaning Coleman Dairy routinely and intentionally checked the quality of the products it produced to ensure their freshness, flavor and nutrition. The perceived notion was that someone actually checked on the quality, as if to demonstrate that the Colemans would not sell a product they wouldn’t use themselves. A moral principle.

The Golden Rule is a moral principle. It is often referred to as the ethic of reciprocity. And although this mutual obligation we have one to another is thought of as Christian, it actually can be found in ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek writings as far back as 2000 B.C., as well as throughout Judaism, Islam and Buddhism.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Treat others as you would like to be treated. What you wish upon others, you wish upon yourself. Never impose on others what you would not choose yourself. And there is one particular version from Hinduism that could be aligned with the corporate objective of product quality – This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.

On a recent Sunday broadcast of “Talk Business & Politics,” one former and two current Arkansas CEOs were asked by host Roby Brock what were the keys to leadership. Two of the three emphasized, first and foremost, to treat employees and customers as the CEOs themselves would want to be treated. This wasn’t part of some Harvard Business School checklist of strategic functions embodied in executive-level best practices. It was a simple recitation of what we learned as children and should return to as adults. (The third CEO was less elegant, saying of leadership, “You know it when you see it.” Not sure about that.)

Effective individual leadership, as in marketplace leadership, considers mutual respect, mutual understanding, and the aforementioned mutual obligation. Exercising mutuality between company and customer builds trust, develops a relationship and ensures loyalty. Family.

So it should not be a surprise that the idea of Quality Chekd was and is an effective consumer marketing strategy, as it clearly suggests an active Golden Rule. In the case of Coleman Dairy, the fact also that it was at one time the oldest family-owned company in the country, with continuous ownership dating to its founding in 1862 by Eleithet B. Coleman, made the rule personal. Quality was a promise from one family to another.

As I sat at that funeral, in that church, I thought on all this. And have thought of it often since.

Craig Douglass is a Little Rock-based advertising agency owner, and marketing and research consultant. Email him at Craig@CraigDouglass.com.