Indians and foreign experts discuss brands and world futures that market sectors compound

chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk (...) — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 22:53:00 +0000

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

chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk (...) — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 15:02:00 +0000

we're co-editing the main methodolgy blog for organsiation-wide living and learning of Brand Architecture. This will celebrate the 10th birthday of this genre which we launched in Brand Chartering Handbook

if you wish to co-edit a section of this, please email me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk with some words of introduction on how your deepest interests connects with ours

we'll aslo relaunching ClubofDelhi after its google meltdown on Dec9 - one of 100 intercitizens blogs in the ClubofCity family

chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk (...) — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 09:11:00 +0000

Unfortunately, brandsindia was part of infamous google meltdown on 9 Dec of 100 blogs, I co-edit. A strange way for the world's number 1 brand, media, and leader of do no evil to collaborate. Below the line is a sample of what the blog's content scope was then. Not all links now work. If you need to know more about one, email wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

Since 1994 when I first started sharing brand ideas on the web, meltdowns have been a copnstant conflict. The website that continues most of my earliest work is now at www.allaboutbranding.com

Meanwhile can we all get on with the future of BrandsIndia?

There's lots to question and answer. I am just editing a ten year review of lessons from Brand Chartering handbook- the book that started the living and learningt genres of corporate brand architectures; previously in 1991, I wrote the first World Class Brands of what became 4 books questioning the transformation from local product brands (ever product using a different brand) to company brand architectures integrating world market leadership . My experience in the 1980s had taken me to help compile one of the first global databanks on what local societies most wanted from globalising corporate identities; I myself managed local projects in 30 countries including India and much of S.E. Asia but sadly for me not China.

Since 1988, as a mathematician I have disagreed vehemently with the brand valaution algorithm that was invented at that time. Separating the brand form other intangibles was a huge mistake if you want to connect trust (service delivery and sector future of brand leadership with image communications). If a company does not want to connect trust with what it claims, it compounds conflicts until it ultimately devalues all of its purpose and worth. There is more of this at our intangibles-valuation blog and at our web www.valuetrue.com

2006 is also the 30th anniversay of Entrepreneurial Revolution. This was a survey my father wrote for The Economist (which we are inviting people to share with us in re-editing around immediate future challenges) and also the start of a trilogy which explained how economics of nations would need to change as two new dynamics spun:

more and more value differentiation depended on differences human beings made instead of the industrial age's capital invested in machines

networks made every place interlinked with every other, as well as individuals able to co-mentor each other from opposite hemispheres of the world; a final test in integrity and ethics which by 2024 can only spin one of 2 ways: a world that unites all 6 billion beings in the most harmoniously and productive demanding centurt of mankind, or one that compounds wars, terrors, breakdowns of industry sectors that have become all image no reality, all externality and no collaboration in each sector's greatest compound brisk to life....

Probably no country plays a more important role on whether brands support humanity or power over people than India. Of all nations, India's fast growth future depends more on colaboration. This may be where Club of City can help. We co-blog netizens Q&A between city. For example, what wordwide sector's future does your city have most influence over and how transparently do all citizens contribute to the best that sector's future may compound for humanity and not the worst. see exponentials for this map. We can be sure that city brands with valuable futures will be thsope that enable their citizens to collaborate across cities and nations, not those that govern over their knowledge working peoples aims to make a difference. Another strand of this is project30000 which we predicted back in 1984 needed to be up and running with the support of hi-trust netizens by 2010. The cafe stages that citizens co-create are in my view more vital to value multiplication than all the ad spots in China or India. This also needs to connect with how public broadcasting can co-create a different future for the world than comjmercial broadcasting - a topic that Indian and British people have more to connect than anywhere else since we people are the largest public broadcast owners - see cityvalue and futureofbbc

My last visit to India was to Delhi in December 04. I was ther for 5 days at the extraoridnary networking event co-hosted by Global Reconciliation Netowrk, Indira Gandhi National Centre of Culture and Bhasha research for Indigenous and Nomads. I hope to return in 2007 for the centanry celebration of Gandhi and all alumni who try to practice his truth-testing and peaceful commitment to grassroots community-rising chnage.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

We are at a crossroads in the valuation of purposeful brand relationships, trust-flow and intangibles of knowledge work, transparency and sustainability. Unseen Wealth researchers (2000, Washington DC) have found that up to 90% of future value is compounding up or down in ways that are neither measured or governed by.In this weblog, Indian and international brand experts will discuss cases of interest globally and from an Indian Perspective. The new valuation is all about how conflict-free (upward future exponential) or conflicted (downward future) is your total investment in the brand system. Component conflicts to debate any brand's future around include:-are there conflicts in serving the brand's essence/promises to different stakeholders and investing in people's learning of core competences? if so unique purpose will be eroded, and passion/pride in the brand will be deflated-are any of your network partners conflicted in ways that may erode transparency of you sector or local impacts on society? (Some brands have lost all their bvalue becasue of what a networked parner did.)-mapping back future environmental and other changes- is your brand's sustainability win-winning with what societies want to sustain or in conflict?- does this vary locally and globally? As well as debating cases, we'll include popular methods for looking at the brand systemically- ie taking the brand leadership job beyong managing a function to enabling everyone to celebrate participating in and rebewing a hi-trust identity. The dividends over a generation of sustained investment in brand are huge, but this involves asking very different -and contextully deep questions - from some algorithic standards of computing brand valuation which are looking very 20th century (out of touch with compounding futures people need)
posted by macrae.nets @ 1:33 AM 0 comments
Saturday, December 30, 2006

Consider Coca-Cola
For most of the 20th C, brand valuation rated this the most valuable brand. Even today it is the most identified brand in the world in terms of many ways in which it proimpts almost universal recognitionHowever in certain parts of the world it is involved in deep conflicts, and as young people hear vabout these its frindly image is being damagedHere are some of the conflicts:Transparency problem: with some partner bottlers: in some relatively small and poor countries, Coca-Cola chose partners whose ethics and labour practices turn out to be abismal; when this was raise at the 2004 shareholders AGM , a shareholder was knocked to the floor by Coke's security staff for raining the criticism; perhaps because of this Doglas Daft (quite an honourable CEO) felt the need to resign over the coming monthsSustainability problem: in some countries where there are local water shortages, including India, there are controversies as to whether Coca-Cola is destroying the human right of local people of access to waterAmericana problem: in global branding terms , American image has been popular almost everywhere until the last decade; now Americana's appeal is much more segmented (even hated in some places). One way of looking at this is to go back to one of the most inspiring campaigns in branding history: I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. This was also one of the first time that a world favourite pop song had conveyed a brand's campaign (peacemaking with the world in those times confirmed the mission that Coke's number 1 brand leader had fashioned since the 1920's of being the world's friendliest product- bringing uplift and helping to create friends wherever peope saw each other drinking it)Category problem: in countries where obesity is an increasing health problem and cost for society, sugary soda water is not going to be a growing category -how much share of stomach can we take among fat people does not make fashionable sense. Coca-Cola has not convincingly evolved an alternative category across countries. This is just a sample that shows that Coca-Cola leadership have various challenges on their hands. If these conflicts compound more, its valuation will slump, and its fame may get polluted. This is not to say that students of branding should ignore the extraordinary learnings that can be drawn from Coca-Cola:achieving universal product recognition is extraordinary; having so many universal identfiers is without parallel;also one of the most valuable things Coca-Cola did for countries was to help them develop their whole ditribution infrastructure; without Coca-Cola's goal to be distributed within arm's reach of deaire, other fast moving consumer goods would also have been much slower to increase markets and infrastructure and development of retail and distributionTo end with, note 2 more facts about Coke's conflicts:these are creative challenges that have nothing to do with ad agencies or image-making, they go to Coca-Cola's reality-making and gravitational goodwillglobal advertising may itself be part of the problem as broadcast media costs go up in real terms every year; it is our view that within 10 years, the 20th C fashion of correlating global brand with size of budget (do you spend over a billion globally a year on executional messages) will have been turned on its face. Such a high cost is a conflict with delivering value to consumers in mass market categories. The new bottom line maps a brand's human relationships as spinning. Purposefully if brand trust, brand transparency, brand sustainability are win-win-winning. Viciously if not. So systemic valuation by organisiation-wide leaders of great identity, service, knowledge working is all about transparently raising internal communications attention on how to remove just-in-time conflicts from the future (an innovative and value multiplying process). This is not the 20th C job description of brand valuation as wanting to write up a snapshot number that separates historic performace from waht will happen next.
posted by macrae.nets @ 1:53 AM 0 comments
Friday, December 29, 2006

Google & Branding the commons future of the net
By any standards of the economics school of future exponentials (which grew the Economist between 1950s-1980s0 and valuetrue auditing, Google has become the world's most valuable brandBut only while it returns 100 fold more to societies worldwide than it does to investors (who temselves are on the best large company stockmarketed exponential of this century to date)Google's sector is the future of the net as transparent economics multipier for all societies at once This is quite a co-creative opportunity. So where might you tour first to understand it:1 Prime Minister Singh's 50 year economics on why nations must not compound underclasses in a globally networked world of waves2 Prahalad's cases on why people at the bootom of the pyramid are as preneurial as the other 4.5 billion beings if they are goven an open chnace to co-create and sustain, not left digitally divided by global empires or local dictators of top-down that fail to understand context systemic "gravitational" needs for bottom-up3 Global Reconciliation Network which linked its annual conference in Delhi Dec 2004 with chief guest as India's minsister of Public Broadcasting & Techology, whose members hope to return for the Gandhi centennial in 2007, and who applaud the first nationwide meeting of Nomads convened in Delhi earlier this year4 After this we all at CLUBofNET maybe need to learn how to get networking- ask google.org what is doing in every politely deep way we can find; ask omidyar for links; tell us if clubofnet misses any guided tours to humanity from your neck of the woods; lobby DD and BBC to get together to do a 30000 projects for humanity tv treality show- the globe's heavens knows there are so many wave lessons from this first 5 years of century 21 that we need to make the world's largest 1000 corporations joint apprentices of by inspiring them with what water and other angel networkers do. Now the world's most valuable brand is the commons one of the internet, and the best that 6 billions can collaboratively multiply. Have fun by being the greatest for all the community around you, both tied by geography and flying now by net.
posted by macrae.nets @ 4:27 AM 0 comments

Brand India -on an upward exponential for everyone
India has always had the potential to be the most cooperative big nation on earth. You cannot superpower over partners in a network for long. You need transparency between organisational borders and purposeful trust-testing around each organisational or communal gravity. Unlike any other nation, Gandhi’s trust-testing logics have been planted across Indian Cultures for many decades. Your leaders need to audit for conflicts ahead of time and this makes resolution simplest.The exponential growth of the world’s most cooperative nation can be expected to compound more sustainably than any value multiplying economy, just as Gandhi still connects ever increasing alumni unlike anyone of the 20th C. Mother Theresa remains the story that love-flow professionals can serve and develop deep human contexts which monetisation professionals cannot. Organisations can return 100- fold to investors who remain as loyal to progressing the organisational purpose through a generation as best employees and best customers. However the secret is that the sustainable shareholder’s win is tied to a higher order of return for societies. This is the newest of Entrepreurial Revolutions which we have been tracking for 30 years.Note how Drucker is respected by Indian management more that US management. Note how Robert Friedman explains his voyage around The World is Flat was inspired first by a visit to India. Note how Indian programmers achieve more community for the buck than others. Vote for how India Integrates productive and demanding relationships in ways that connect people (inducing knowledge sharing and maximising discretionary energies.)