Flashback: 1993, I applied to be the first professor of Brand in a European Business School. Being a practitioner who had worked on brands in 25 countries, I got pipped at the post by someone with more academic lineage. Still, it was a time when I first published some papers on Brand DNA and gravitational exchanges of productive & demanding human relationship systems. Since then I have realised there is a whole missing theory of markets and value exchange of service economy and valuation terms including intangibles and sustainability. The collage above may look complex; as a mathematician, I have to contend it's very simple indeed, as soon as you want to be transparent about systematically communing round deep context and connecting everyone's trust-flow to rise exponentially (instead of bubbling up and then crashing). Why any leader wouldn't be interested in sustainability just because connectivity's profitability fore everyone involves investing in a deeper more courageous and loving world than separation is a mystery to me. Because for 22 years now I have hosted debates wherever people will come on how our future in a networking age depends on loving connectivity and trust-flow. Some of us stay linkedin round such determinants of humanity's future as 1 2 3 4 5 - why not join us if one of these relects a mission in life you want to pursue. Let's flash forward to a practical debate .

So whose vested interests determine how the organisation of branding is done? What are the compound exponential consequences for market sectors over time?

A few years ago about 30 of us met for a 3 day retreat. Although we have worked all our lives on brands, we have a lot of sympathy with Naomi Klein's No Logo. When a global brand's master says it needs a billion dollars a years to spend on ads that promise a lot we wonder how much gets spent on the reality and trusts of keeping the promise.

Another way of putting our concern is that global brands as the biggest communications and inter-communal exercises of our time are huge powers, but are therefore as any historian will tell you always liable to be commanded for badwill ends

So what we did was postit up on a wall, the ways we know brands could be used. WE can guide people round a catalogue of methods to achieve these ends if anyone with power to exercise wants more details:

Brands unite people’s passions
numbers align wallets; brands align passions brands must connect to people’s passions and joys
passion and issues in life define good brand organisation
FOCUS
Too many cooks spoil the broth
Focus on the issue of the company instead of the numbers will increase business
Truth, authenticity, integrity, honesty, internal reference
WE believe branding is about delivering what you promise
Brand integrity is not just a phrase
Humble brands are great brands
Above all to thine own self be true
Brands are the responsible exchange of duties between organisations and their audiences
Honesty pays
Brands are organisation lie-detectors
Brands are courts in which value is judged
Good brands make people happy/satisfied
Jaw jaw is better than war war
Imagine a future without brands: global suicide
We believe that branding is about people
We believe brands can enhance people’s lives
The world need simplifying. Only transparent maps organise that
All true value is in relationships; relationships create more value when equal that when exploitative
We’d go nuts without brands that help us store the things we need to store
Brands are intended to make people happy
Branding is a way to make life more practical: it’s packaging trust and reliability and honesty
Anger- Finance is Broken
Money is only a poor snapshot of human value – it can’t be used as a tool to create value
The misuse of branding has been down to poor education of those who misapply it but the tools are fundamentally sound (eg semiotics Lawyers + accountants should be sent to emotional rehabs)
There is nothing wrong with brands, as such only with the ways we use it
Brands are not adverts
Brands are about acts not conversations
The word “leading” should be banned from all advertising
We believe that the traditional language of marketing is dead
We believe brands are about truths well told Brands have become masks. its time to return to take them off
Let’s stop all this promotional rubbish
Relationships & Humanity
Many brands make light work
Branding is the rallying point for the empowerment of all individuals connected with the organisation
Community and Brand are 2 synonyms for integrity of whom serves whom & why
We see true value in respectful conversation
WE can use branding as tool to exchange truths as well as lies
Brands enable people to fulfil their productive capabilities and social dreams
Branding is the most important tool to handle intangibly that play a more important role in all our lives (such as describing relations between people as a part of a service)
Brands allow relationships to flourish
Brands must unite all professions who care about what business does
Branding’s linkages are/must be real both within the organisation & toward the global/human society
Love makes the world go round
Brands only have value if they create and sustain positive human relationships
Brands are how human beings develop societies & cultures
Brands as system /community
We believe that branding can help alleviate poverty
Brands will only create value if based on positive human values
Brands are created by all the participants in a system
Brands matter to everyone not just customers
Branding must educate and reinforce the positive behaviours in society as part of a duty exchange
We believe branding is about building communities of interest
COURAGE
Vital brands will always put some people will always put some people off ; they are willing to polarise
CONNECTING
Brand exchange what is socially valuable with what has monetary worth
OUTLIERS
The world will blow up unless we discover how to make organisations accountable to desperate human needs