There is a business lesson to be learned from Dog the Bounty Hunter

There are whole bunch of lessons to be learned from the Dog The Bounty Hunter scandal going on right now.

The obvious one is:

If you ever find yourself on Larry King and you are looking for acceptance for your tearful apology you should take a few minutes and do up your shirt!

The not so obvious lesson is actually an important business lesson:

If you are trying to build a community of people who will love your brand or products and you decide to have a leader of the community....that leader has to be authentic and credible to that specific community. This means if you are after movie lovers, he/she better be a movie lover....food/food etc et.

What I am getting at is not that "The Dog" (and yes I feel silly for typing that) made racist comments and showed that his private persona may not match his public one but rather the words he chose for his explanation of his rant and apology.

As stated in the Herald Tribune (and this is the DOG speaking now) "I thought that I was cool enough in the black world to be able to use that word as a brother to a brother," he said. "I'm not. I didn't know really know until three or four days ago what that meant to black people."

When you are rallying the troops around a product or service you better get someone who is "cool enough" in that community or people will see through it and not get swept up in the experience as they would if the person chosen to direct the community is a real match with the demo.....or you or someone may just end up on CNN with your shirt open crying about how your company/empire has fallen apart.

saul