We love a fun feel-good story, and this is certainly that. After a month-long search, Aflac has finally chosen the voice to bring its famous duck back to life. Dan McKeague of Hugo, Minnesota has accepted the challenge after impressing top Aflac executives who called him personally with the good news. There are two especially interesting takeaways from this story. First, it absolutely confirms the importance of the brand icon to a company’s image. Not just anyone could have filled these shoes, or webbed feet in this case. Secondly, it gives a very great example of an excellent crisis communications strategy. If you remember, the duck’s original voice was played by comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who was fired after making insensitive jokes about the Japan tsunami. It could have been easy to keep the search for a new voice under wraps in order to diffuse the negative situation. Instead, Aflac chose to not only face it head on, but actually build a campaign around the search that ended up gaining a lot of positive buzz. All in all, a job very well done.
