Let us encourage Brand Activism

How decent, healthy and authentic are our brands? Are we sufficiently activist about those which are dishonest or even harmful? This debate applies, of course, to the quality and integrity of the brand internally as well as externally.


A misalignment between the two is already a target for activism.
 

In this debate we need to see a brand as an open system, the complete supply chain including suppliers, distributors and retailers. This includes all out-sourced services. Ignoring a more holistic brand approach has already landed many brands in a reputation crisis; for example, when some brands claimed separateness from their manufacturers who were using child labour, harmful glues and unacceptable working conditions. Whatever the recent platinum mine strikes were about, they are ultimately a manifestation of brand failings.

Passive consumerism makes us complicit. For example, it is my personal view, that the on-growing growth of cigarette brands is an indictment of weak to non-existent brand activism. You may ask on what criteria we should become activists.

We can consider a continuum, at the one end of which are authentic value adding and sustainable brands and, on the other end, are brands with flawed products and or deceitful marketing and communication campaigns.

On the extreme end of this side of the continuum are terminally sick brands whose plug should be pulled. I would include tobacco brands in this last category and the argument is not about people's right to smoke. Let me briefly also debate the free-market argument. Unfortunately, brands and businesses cannot be left to their own devices and require a regulatory environment. After all, companies are not closed systems. Thank goodness for the public sector - consider imposed age restrictions, health warnings and packaging disclosures. All these are a result of government intervention to better protect consumers.

Brand activism can take many forms. It starts by us asking critical questions of brands such as those posed by brand thinkers like Neumeier and Olins:

Who are you?

What do you do?

Why are you here?

Why do you matter?

Other platforms for activism include demanding a full disclosure of product content, the supply chain and all testing procedures. It includes scientific assessment of side effects (think of some of the damage caused by hair products and skin lighteners) and also evidence to support claims such as free-range chickens and meat; amazingly, there is still no agreed upon standard as to what we mean by this in South Africa.

Brand activism should agitate for the banning of brand products causing irrevocable harm and should demand action to improve those capable of being fixed. We must also challenge communication trickery like Kentucky taking the Fried out of its name but not out of the product. We must also question bizarre associations like alcohol brands with sports events and sports stars.

We have entered what brand guru Wally Olins calls the New Zeitgeist. Think of the old short and long term insurance brands with products that added little or no value whatsoever; brands that over promised and under delivered.

Brands on the wrong side of the continuum are aware that the writing is on the wall and are scrambling to diversify. Tobacco brands are spending fortunes on developing and launching e-cigarettes (electronic cigarettes); fizzy sugar drink brands are buying water, diet and sports drink brands.

However, we are also seeing CSI being used to balance wrongs. This is another debate. While there is at least an implicit link between fizzy drinks and obesity, we are now seeing more proactive brand management. For example, Coke has recently launched a TV advert addressing obesity. Another one of their ads features activities that add up to burning off the "140 happy calories" in a can of coke.

I concur with Olins's hunch that "if the mood of the times is towards authenticity, then Coca-Cola and other brands are going to try and offer it. They well move into it in a big way. But it’s a bit late".

"... a huge group of brands... have lost touch with what’s going on in the world." My point is that activism must remind brand owners of what is really going down.

Complicit in much of the blindsiding by unhealthy brands has been clever communication campaigns and CSI diversions.

I submit that we need far more robust professional codes of practice for communication agencies and CSI practitioners. This is another debate!

Be a brand activist!

Some brand lessons from the World Cup

Some brand lessons from the World Cup

Aside from witnessing some remarkable soccer we are also seeing a complex portfolio of brands playing out.

These brands include FIFA, the World Cup, Brazil the host country, South America, the stadium cities, the country team brands and the individual super-stars. We then have the different networks of association such as the official sponsors.

It is as a result of this portfolio of emotionally-charged brands within the soccer category, that we have substantial revenue streams flooding into Brazil, FIFA and the national teams and players. This is perhaps the first lesson: brands cause business. If a brand has no magnetic attraction, and no consistent and expected standard of delivery, fans won’t support, corporates won’t sponsor and without revenue, there can be no profit.

Perhaps the second lesson is that brands are made up of many parts and it is debatable whether the more visible and audible components are even the most important. Perhaps they are indeed, just the tip of an iceberg. Making up this tip then are the iconic country flags, jerseys, the national anthems and merchandise worn by the fan tribes.

The third lesson is that the real substance of a brand is in its purpose, its values, its distinctiveness, its history and stories. Ultimately a brand is about its expected behaviour and performance.

As Shakespeare suggested, life is but a stage and we all have our entrances and exits (Spain). On stage we are required to give a compelling performance and every actor must know their part. In a great production there is a brilliant theatre director / conductor and some star actors. If the performance clicks, and goes per the script, there is a standing ovation.

We have witnessed remarkable brand leadership and management in some of the teams like Germany. On the other end of the spectrum, we have seen dysfunctional brand behaviour and an absence of disciplined performance. The best example of this, must be in the 4 - 0 loss by Cameroon when playing Croatia. Aside from the red card for punching an opponent, Cameroon team mates got into a brawl and had to be separated from a punch up and head-butt. Maybe the most important lesson for a great brand is how its team behaves when servicing consumers.

The question is whether the delivered service aligns with the expected traditions and meets the expectation of its consumers or fans. Is the performance even adding something innovative and distinctive which then provides a memorable WOW factor? This is what great brands do.

Finally, all decent brands should have some sense of class and behave within the rules and norms of the game category. We have seen this displayed by some teams who played their heart out but, even in losing, showed respect for the winners at the end of the game. Some teams just sulked and sobbed.

We will pick up more lessons as the tournament unfolds. Perhaps you would like to share some of the brand lessons you have learnt from the World Cup?

Celebrating activism.

1916 - 2014 -  MaMbeki - A Life of Activism

This topic is inspired by the life of MaMbeki and my re-listening of the Bob Dylan song: Only a Hobo. It is also informed by recent media coverage on Tuberculosis in South Africa.

We work hard at Vega to immerse our students in the different ways of imagining and thinking. We then encourage them to do. To implement.

In a broader sense, we emphasise the importance of considered and relevant activism within a social context.

I believe that if we can think, then there is a collateral responsibility to act. Do we think enough? Act enough?

We have the capabilities and resources to resolve most of our worlds wicked problems and issues. TB in South Africa is an example. The experts say we can get rid of it like we did with polio. But we don't.

Is it because we don't think enough, or if we do, do we lose our resolve when we face down the work needed to fix things? We then then divert our gaze onto - it must be someone else's problem? Or is the issue that we, who can think and consider broader issues, are too satisfied with, and caught up in, ourselves?

Satisfaction, is in my view, the soporific that anesthetises and paralyses action.

It is my experience that chronic dissatisfaction is what leads us to action. Consider the following:

asleep                                                  awake
static                                                   dynamic
answer                                                question
comfort                                               discomfort
satisfied                                              dissatisfied
passive                                                active
dying                                                   living
dead                                                     alive

Activism is about embracing the right column. The upside, is that while this is challenging, it does make us feel more alive.

Activism means we do not accept the so-called current reality because, in human terms, our reality is often too narrow, too exclusive and too selfish.

Increasingly we must break out of these reality bubbles and rather engage from a human-centric position. The driver or fuel to help us achieve this is, I submit, chronic dissatisfaction. While this is not an easy space to live in, it affords us the correct perspective and demands that we ask better questions and to push ourselves to find answers.

In the last poem written by contemporary American poet Raymond Carver, just before he died of cancer, he asked himself whether he got what he wanted from his life. He answered:

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Can any of us be satisfied in our lives while the majority of us do not feel beloved? Or is our immediate response that this is not our problem. It is their problem. I suggest we must re-contextualise and consider this a human issue and therefore we are inextricably part of it.

The reward is that engagement with others, beyond our immediate circle, makes us feel more alive. It has taken me a long time to realise that without this, we have our heads buried in the sand pretending, denying and dying as human beings.

May you escalate your dissatisfaction. As the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas implored us:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage rage against the dying of the light.

With acknowledgement to the photographer

...the half-brained, half-baked, maths and science debate

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet - Karl Fisch, educator

Maths and Science is the clarion call for our schools to heed. We are wringing our hands about South Africa’s low global ranking in Maths and Science performance.

It seems this focus is because we believe that better ratings will make us more competitive and better prepare our youth for the workplace.This is barking up the wrong tree on a number of levels.

Firstly, Maths and Science does not maketh man or woman. If we study history we learn that most of our greatest leaders have been neither mathematicians nor scientists. As Sir Ken Robinson argues, there is a much richer conception of intelligence and ability available to us than is promoted by conventional education.

Secondly, we must re-calibrate our thinking in school education to focus on graduating whole-brain thinkers, whole-people performers. Es'kia Mphahlele correctly proposed that education should be seen as a process of self-discovery, a search for self.

Thirdly, schools should not be preparing people for careers. That comes much later.The great educationist Piaget argued that the principle goal of education is to develop people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; people who are creative, inventive and discoverers.

What we require is a fully rounded education in our schools. We need the humanities as much as we need maths and science. We must unleash the ability within our learners to think both creatively and critically. 

Most importantly, we should unlock the confidence to pose questions and to moot different possible answers. A fixation on the right answer is damaging (because this is a world without absolutes). 

Ultimately we should enable our learners to marshall and present an argument. To be able to absorb and have some grasp of the fundamental issues facing us both as a species and within the context of our society and continent.

In short, I believe we need schools to graduate well rounded and confident thinkers. An education that fosters respect for the human imagination and the vital need to innovate and experiment so we can improve our condition.

We can select more career directed programmes in tertiary institutions but even here, I would argue that all university programmes need to consider a mix of analytical subjects and the humanities.

I recently heard that some South African schools are dropping history as a subject and on the playgrounds the message is, if you are not cutting maths and science, you then do art and drama - the sub-text being - shame, at least we can keep you busy.

Unless we make dramatic changes in our approach to giving a full education, I would have to agree with Dr. Stephen Heppell who said it would not be the end of the world if schools don’t make it. It would be, if learning doesn't make it.