Branding and the international communityjyanet.com/cap/2003/1121fe0.pdf · 2003-11-21 · 6 W/S...

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CAP Print

Branding andthe internationalcommunityForeign policy with commercial lessonsBeyond BrandingIdeas to save businessBrand New JusticeWhy branding matters,by Simon Anholt

www.medinge.org

m TheMedingeGroup

Sanrio

Kiehl’s

CaféDirect

Max Havelaar

InfosysNatures &Découvertes

PatagoniaWhy are thesethe top brandsin the world?What of all those indices that put some hugemultinationals up top?

That’s all well and good, but a true brandstirs the emotion and generates passion. Ittaps into our consciousness and our collectivecauses.

In reality, many brands do not.The Medinge Group, a think-tank of the

world’s leading brand experts, chose its ‘TopBrands with a Conscience’ in November 2003based around principles of humanity andethics, rather than financial worth.

Evaluating on criteria including evidence ofan ethical programme, the human implicationsof the brand and considering the question ofwhether the brand takes risks in line with itsbeliefs, the group singled out these compan-ies for recognition.

As the most authoritative and global groupon branding in the world, the Medinge Groupbrings its top-level knowledge not only to itsbranding lists, but a select range of clientsworldwide.

To contact the Medinge Group, visit our website at www.medinge.org to learn what makesa true brand rise to the top.

4 Get the feelingby Jack Yan

6 Branding and theinternational communityNation branding could preventrealpolitik and promote harmony, byJack Yan

12 Brand New Justice:why brands countWhy nations can fast-track theirdevelopment using brandingtechniques, by Simon Anholt

22 Beyond Branding:a call to actionPreviewing the most internationalbook ever authored on howbranding can do good for our planet

26 Well Beyond BrandingThe changes in Beyond Brandingbegin with the individual and abetter world can emerge, byMalcolm Allan

28 Stefan of ArabiaStefan Engeseth as keynote speakerat the Dubai, UAE chapter of IAA

29 Typography supplementNew releases from JY&A Fonts

See <http://jya.net/consulting> fora listing of our team and offices.

For the latest on JY&A Consultingcurrent research anddownloadable papers, visit CAPOnline at <http://jya.net/cap>

Copyright ©2001–3 by Jack Yan &Associates and its licensors. All rightsreserved. Composed in Stone Print 10/12pt by Sumner Stone with headlines inLucire 36/38 pt by Jack Yan.

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CAP Printhttp://jya.net/capISSN 1175-7507s

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the print-format CAP, which we last published in 2000.The online medium is just so tempting. It’s relatively

easy to write an article, lay it out and export an HTMLversion, and providing you’re not using Microsoft Word,it can look pretty good. So since 2000, we’ve beenpublishing our monographs and articles on the web siteat jya.net/cap.

But a special occasion demands a special publication.This issue of CAP is probably the closest to the ideal Ipictured many years ago: a collection of writings fromsome of the world’s leading brand experts. Simon Anholt(Brand New Justice) and Malcolm Allan (Beyond Branding)have contributed to this, as well as myself, to give readersa more rounded view than just the of{cial voice of JY&AConsulting.

This month marks the {rst full month of publicationof Beyond Branding: How the New Values of Transparencyand Integrity Are Changing the World of Brands, which wasedited by my friend Nicholas Ind. This is a particularlyspecial book, with its essays dealing with how brandingshould take shape in the 21st century. The MedingeGroup, the entity that grew out of Thomas Gad andAnette Rosencreutz’s annual meetings at their manorhouse in Medinge, Sweden, announced its top eightbrands to coincide with the launch of the book.

Get the feeling

THERE’S THE OLD ADAGE that a great

Beyond Branding is not just another }eetingly fashion-able book, but a sincere, global attempt to detail what iswrong with branding and what the solutions are. Thisissue of CAP has a review of the title and I invite readersto visit BB’s web site at www.beyond-branding.com, atwhich there is a “blog” where feedback is regularlypublished.

Maintained by John Moore of Ourhouse in London,the Beyond Branding Blog has been added to since beforethe book was published. It contains thoughts aboutbranding and follows up the ideas behind the book. Moreimportantly, it follows Malcolm Allan’s “call to arms” in‘Well Beyond Branding’: if we are sincere about makingthe world a better place, we must action these principles.It begins with not whole entities, but us, as individuals.

I trust that you, like me, know what it feels like wheneverything goes right. I’ll leave you to go to p. 26 to readMalcolm’s thoughts and hope that after reading it, you’llbe as inspired as I am to put this in place where we work.There’s no reason the workplace cannot be as upliftingand as inspiring as the perfect date or the perfect familyouting.

Jack YanFounder and CEO,Jack Yan & AssociatesPresident, JY&A Consulting

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design {rm never has time to see to its web site,because it’s so busy doing everyday things forclients. That doesn’t necessarily hold true for aconsultancy like ours, but there have been a fewthings that have fallen by the wayside, namely

5http://jya.net/cap/

Reading Lucire cansave the world.We’ve had quite a year.

Lucire was New Zealand’s only nominee in theSeventh Annual Webby Awards—the onlysouthern-hemisphere title ever to be nominatedin the fashion category.

Proudly again this year, we’re the OfficialInternet Partner for L’Oréal New Zealand FashionWeek.

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From the Sharon Ng winter2004 range, in an exclusiveLNZFW shoot in Lucire

A JY&A Media publication. Lucire is a registered trademark of Jack Yan & Associates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Copyright ©2003 by JY&AMedia, a division of Jack Yan & Associates. All rights reserved. See more of Briar Shaw’s work at www.briarshaw.co.nz.


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ure Branding and the

international communityNation branding could promote a senseof the international community andprevent countries from following acourse of realpolitik at the expense ofglobal harmony.

Jack Yan1

Jack Yan is founder and CEO of Jack Yan & Associates.This paper was originally authored in December 2002 and{rst appeared in the Journal of Brand Management, vol.10, no. 6, 2003. This version contains most of the edits madeby the Journal with a minor update.

Now, its very idea, the Americannational image, globalization and thewar on terror seem to be converging.The solution, or at least the frameworkin which to make sense of some of this,can again be found in branding.

Pulling together the strands

The No Logo2 movement, which sawNaomi Klein put together some ofthe threads that were concerningparties prior to that—the oppositionto NAFTA by Zapatista rebels, forinstance; in the west, criticism of{rms like Nike in BBC’s Branded inthe late 1990s—really took shape inmid-2000, as the book becameadopted as a “bible” for anti-globalists.3 Those same protesterssame protesters descended uponMcDonald’s and other symbols ofAmerican-led globalization. Theauthor thought that the chargesstemmed from issues ranging fromnation envy to an absence of ethicalbranding, rather than any fault ofthe underlying structure of capital-ism.4

This remains the author’s view,but the caveats remain plentiful. Andthe American brand has become aneven more urgent inquiry since theUnited States began its war onterror. The country risks facingisolation, if not at governmental

THE INTERNATIONAL

community has come up foranalysis in the last few years.It was probably less prompt-ed by 9-11 than the growingconcern over globalization.


level, then amongst the citizenry ofsome countries. Talking to youngpeople in the autumn of 2002 for apaper in a special edition of theJournal of Brand Management oncorporate social responsibility, therewere the usual, expected common-alities—tastes, a sense of duty andvolunteer work being among them—but one gulf. Numerous AmericanGeneration Yers with whom theauthor spoke rejected a notion of aborderless world, while theircounterparts in New Zealandembraced it.5

This is in contrast to the overallmood of 1990s America, rapidlyglobalizing, happy to embrace the(commercial) internet as it left thefringes of computer science. Thegeneration, which saw War Games aschildren, grew up. Down the modemline was the world, as some of thenew economy’s whizz kids discov-ered, often in their teens.6

But it does not mean the inter-national community has disap-peared, nor does it mean it is someunde{nable concept dragged out bythe Bush administration to convincethe public there is global support forthe war on terror.

UN Secretary-General Ko{ Annanbelieves the community is there: weare all joined in the pursuit of abetter world:7

In the broadest sense, there is a shared vision

of a better world as set out, for example, in

the founding charter of the United Nations.

There is a sense of common vulnerability in

the face of global warming and the threat

posed by the spread of weapons of mass

destruction. There is the framework of

international law, treaties, and human rights

conventions. There is equally a sense of

shared opportunity, which is why we build

common markets and joint institutions such

as the United Nations. Together, we are

stronger.

… The international community does

exist. It has an address. It has achievements

to its credit. …

The international communityremains and is not a {ction, butcurrent events show that it could beeasy to switch back to what Annansaid of the past century:8

For much of the 20th century, the inter-

national system was based on division and

hard calculations of realpolitik. In the new

century, the international community can

and must do better. … [T]he world can

improve on the last century’s dismal record.

With the swing from optimism topessimism, not that much haschanged in the commercial world.Corporations still report, albeit inmodi{ed form, to investors whonever did much to earn dividends;the eventual consequence, asexplained elsewhere, is a gapbetween rich and poor.9 There arestill no {nancial incentives forcorporations to stop polluting, ifpollution prevention is seen as acost.

Meanwhile, brand image, whichcan build or sully an organizationbecause of its actions, can and doeslead to bottom-line results.10 Brandsare more than assets on the balancesheet to be valued by Interbrand and

Business Week in annual surveys.Instead, they can collapse a companybecause the very strengths of abrand—its ability to create imagesbased on recall of its symbol or itsname—can prove to be its weak-nesses. As 2003 begins, who can saythat seeing the logotypes of World-Com or United Airlines leaves thembrimming with con{dence? Howquickly did the Enron “E” symbol fallfrom grace? Investors can and dodesert them.

This simple fact has not reallybeen absorbed by organizations, andthat leads to extra problems when itcomes to the war on terror, whichwill be explained.

As the author and others have saidbefore, it is not so much globaliza-tion, but the absence of “moralglobalization”.11 Brand experts willtell you that it is not so much thatbranding is bad; more the poorpractice of branding.12

Indeed, the misunderstanding ofbranding prevails, while the numberof people actually involved in the{eld, who are not in a sales or strictmarketing function, is probablysmall. It is a dangerous situation,because it is an organization’sprimary connection to its audi-ences—but it explains why so manyof them are }ying blind. In a properform, it is absent in corporationsthat abuse workers or pollute theenvironment.

Another relatively recent develop-ment has been the growth inawareness of nation branding.13

Taking country-of-origin branding tothe next step, this topic centres


around how a nation itself canbecome a brand, either unitingcitizenry or attracting foreigninvestment. Slovenia, Chile andLatvia may be on paths to changinginternational impressions of what theyrepresent, while in the late-twentiethcentury, Wally Olins highlights in hisTrading Identities that Spain was asuccess story, abandoning Franco forthe image of a modern, culturallyvibrant country.14

The death of spin incommerce

These developments bring togetherbranding with national image and itsantecedent, nation branding. Thisoften relies on the skills learned in thebranding of products and services. Thelessons are valid, but the questionthen becomes: has the nationadopted branding, or something thatfalsely passes for branding?

If a nation adopts the brandingbehaviours of dull fast-movingconsumer goods, or worse, slaps ona branding department and lets it be,then it is no better off. This wouldhave the reverse effect: a departmentcut off from research communicatesto a foreign culture what it inde-pendently thinks is best, when theculture has already been disposed

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against it. Some businesses havealready shown this to be a path tofailure when failing to integratebranding. For instance, if Chryslerunderstands branding, then why areits passenger cars largely irrelevantfor Europe and the rest of the rangelacks cohesiveness? There seems tobe no accounting for consumersacross the Atlantic, even thoughEurope is a target market. Yetbranding demands that the consum-ers be accounted for.

This piecemeal method tobranding can be the case in interna-tional relations, writes MarkLeonard, director of London’sForeign Policy Centre which hadpublished Olins’s Trading Identities:15

Joseph S. Nye Jr., dean of the John F. Kennedy

School of Government at Harvard University,

has argued that the power of in}uence can

complement more traditional forms of power

based on economic or military clout. Such

“soft power,” he notes, can rest on the appeal

of “one’s ideas or the ability to set the agenda

in ways that shape the preferences of others.”

But governments have yet to remold their

own diplomatic structures to adapt to this

changed environment. Instead, most

diplomatic institutions have done little more

than bolt on a few new units or recruit a

couple of extra staff from NGOs—changes

that are essentially cosmetic.

Along these lines, there are signsthat the United States has not doneparticularly well on its nation brandsince 9-11.

If Generation Y consumers areanything to go by, then the UnitedStates has, for the immediate term,promoted patriotism domestically. Itwas an admirable, post-September11 fallback position, uniting acountry behind Old Glory, even ifselling Chevrolets using the sametheme might be a step too far. ThePresident has provided a directionon where he wants to take thecountry in the war on terror, onewhich has found agreement withcredible men such as George P.Shultz, who had warned Americaabout terrorist cells during his timein government as Secretary of Statein the Reagan administration.16 Butin this branding era, with cynicalconsumers, inquiries need to revealsubstance. Cynical electorates—Leonard cites an Environics Inter-national study that showed thatamongst 1,000 people in each of theGroup of 20 industrialized anddeveloping countries, only 45 per centtrusted their national governmentsto work in the best interests of society17

—are much the same, with access tomore information than before.

While Shultz also agrees on theremoval of Saddam Hussein fromIraq,18 the US has probably made amistake in linking the two matters tocapitalize on the opinion-pollsuccess of the former. Plain factsabout UN Security Council resolu-tions 687 and 1205 against Iraq mayhave instead been suf{cient, for theworld press, citizens and other UNnation states—there is substance tothese, otherwise the normally liberalWashington Post would not bedevoting op-ed space to Shultz. Thesame resolutions were used success-fully by President Clinton and can beused successfully by President Bush.

Nation marketing can sway whetherJordan and Syria give the US-ledcoalition bases to mount an attack,or convince Qatar to support one.Marketing wars are won on truth, notcover-ups to disguise how bad aproduct really is.


Meanwhile, in the media, Secre-tary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld istrying to link Iraq with Al Qaeda, butthe mass media and niche informa-tion sources are not accepting hisstatements without question as theyappeal to inquisitive consumers. Onthe Pentagon’s proof of an Iraq–AlQaeda link, former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent M. Canni-straro told The Washington Post,‘They are politicizing intelligence, noquestion about it,’19 claiming thereto be a rift between the governmentand the intelligence community.

Corporations have had to dealwith similar inquiries. They haveprobably learned from nations inthis “identity trade”, to borrowOlins’s book’s term, as they knowthat they face more questions fromthe public than before. In somecases, they have been able tomobilize programmes to deal withthem—and from observation, someof these programmes (H&Manswering charges of sweatshoplabour in one instance) have over-taken the skills of the best Hum-phrey Applebys by being based ontruth. The best practitioners knowthat very few things can be kept atbay once there is public fascination,as Enron, Andersen and even MrsCherie Blair and thrice-jailed PeterFoster have found out. Better truththan spin, for spin is the {rst cousinof deceit.

First, in commerce, the prevalenceof sites such as Corpwatch.org hasensured that information reachesconsumers readily.20 The moderateSan Francisco-based web site reportson corporate misbehaviours. Bybeing more subtle than No Logo orthe New Zealand Green Party (whichhas been known to send in MPs tojoin international protests),21

Corpwatch.org has earned itselfplenty of respect as it deals withissues relating to climate change and

the abuse of commerce by Big Oil orBig Tobacco. People can forwardemails from such organizations, orpetitions. Some in recent years havetargeted Nike and sweatshops. Agrowing number in 2002 relate topublic policy matters, such aspreventing war or the stoning ofAmina Lawal, the Nigerian womancondemned to death after having achild conceived through adultery.

Secondly, commerce has competi-tion, a contest to win consumers’hearts and minds. Nations now havethis additional duty. The war onterror and the preemptive strike onIraq has opponents in the form ofnations. They compete for attentionbecause they realize there is a globalcommunity to sell to. Diasporas arevery in}uential, both targeted bytheir ethnic homes and import theirheritage to their newly adoptednations. This nation marketing cansway whether Jordan and Syria givethe US-led coalition bases to mountan attack, or convince Qatar tosupport one. Similarly, it may go theother way, as Europe and Asia haveaccess to the same global mediachannels. Marketing wars are wonon truth, not cover-ups to disguisehow bad a product really is.

What grabbed business headlinesin 2002, the US Governmentparading executives in handcuffsaside, was the hinting of sleaze inbusiness. This was the nationalmood, {nding corporations, stockprices, banks and accounting {rmsthe villains. Fortune advised us inSeptember in a cover story, ‘You

bought. They sold,’ indicating howchairmen and CEOs of corporationsleft the everyday investor out to dryas the bubble burst on Wall Street.22

The in-depth story stopped short ofaccusations and perhaps revealedlittle new information. After all, inmid-2000, it was not unwise to getout of stocks—the author’s companywas advising the same, from abranding context. But its relevanceearned the cover spot.

Commercial branding in the late1990s and early 2000s shows that theunderdog has an easier time workingagainst the establishment. McDonald’sis not the favourite of some familiesbecause they have the choice to gosomewhere more personal. LeviStrauss jeans are not the epitome ofcool when compared with trendyDiesel, which may be why theAmerican company had to create adiscount Signature brand for Wal-mart in October 2002. The UnitedStates’ mission in branding is toavoid being seen as the internationalbully, because of this very trend.

Third, it is not enough to sell;there has to be a psychographicalignment with, if not direct involve-ment by, the consumer. That directinvolvement explains why auto-makers have theme parks: forinstance, Volkswagen buyers can goto Autostadt, next to its Wolfsburgheadquarters, to collect their carfrom one of two glass towers inwhich newly-built vehicles are placedafter rolling off the factory }oor.They are no longer consumer goodsthat appear at retail outlets, but

Above: The twin towers at Autostadt, Wolfsburg, Germany.Volkswagen Group customers whose cars are built nearby maycollect their purchases from the towers at the German company’sautomotive theme park—an example of direct involvement thatnation states may wish to follow.

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Research might uncover such valuesas freedom and the ability for thebest minds to realize their highestpotentials by conceiving thoseinnovations that have driven theAmerican economy (at odds withcurtailing liberties and protectionism)

crafted items that come from afactory. While waiting, customerscan indulge themselves at theAutostadt theme park, with pavilionsfor each of the company’s brandsranging from Volkswagen toLamborghini. Over in Crewe,England, Volkswagen’s Bentleydivision promises unprecedentedlevels of personal contact with thecompany.23

Branding foreign policy

Branding is recovering from the NoLogo era. Many of the attacks on theprofession were deserved, even ifKlein’s writing style partially maskedher sincere aims. Advertising, oftenconfused with branding, presentedslick images that had little to do withbranding. Branding is aboutunderstanding consumers’ wishes,creating a long-term organizationalvision and generating an imagebased on fact. When any aspect ofmarketing communications presentsa non-truth, then the organizationhas not branded.

As one step for 2003, participants(including the author) at a retreat atMedinge, Sweden in summer 2002,which will have been followed by theChief Brand Of{cers’ meeting inAmsterdam, the Netherlands by the

time this piece is published, drafted amanifesto restating branding’spurposes.24 This document was thefoundation of the book BeyondBranding, edited by Nicholas Ind, onthe “humanization” of the {eld.25

The manifesto is a suitable placeto begin brand education, not justat schools but in the brandingprofession.

Branding, as a profession, has hadto come to terms with its attacks.There are corporations that haveacknowledged their critics, if notexpressly, then circumstantially.Nike has in place various pro-grammes pertaining to workers’rights. While some may regard thisas too little, too late, it is a step in theright direction. In June 2002,Volkswagen AG signed a workers’charter ‘that gives its 320,000employees worldwide the samesocial rights, regardless of wherethey live and work.’ While an-nounced after complaints that therewere wage differences between itsMexican and German plants, itpreempts potential inquiry aboutVolkswagen’s commitment toemployees. Suppliers would be heldto Volkswagen standards in time,said the company.26

While neither company imple-mented its policies in light of themanifesto, the eight “brand truths”

outlined therein form an effectivechecklist for organizations engagedin branding.

To get to a manifesto-friendlystage, an organization must under-stand its opposition, audiencedemands and competitive forcesbefore forming a clear vision aboutits direction. That vision isstrategized and operationalized.

The international community hasan equivalent of the manifesto. Itcomes in the form of the UnitedNations Charter. In the context ofinternational relations, the Charteris not a legal document alone.

Human rights have been en-shrined by the UN in its UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights.Following the Charter, manycountries, including domesticpolicies within some SecurityCouncil members, would fall foul ofthe minimum requirements.

1. Understand the gap. The {rststep is to understand and ac-knowledge the gap between desiredperception and reality and to beginaddressing those issues. It is impor-tant to understand one’s owncitizenry and their demands, whichis why Swiss referenda are sotempting a solution. An electedgovernment can use them to gaugeits direction, even from a brandtheory perspective. But even withoutthem, understanding the electorateis vital—power comes from it, notthe other way around. Yet politiciansdo not behave like servants of thepeople; quite the reverse.

That same understanding mustapply to the other target audiences.Why are they not being convinced?

Lea}ets dropped by the USgovernment on Afghanistan after 9-11 and shown by Leonard in hisOctober 2002 Foreign Policy article27

are hard-sell methods, as were {xed-frequency radios tuned to pick uppropaganda. These confront the


impression that Americanization isbad and there are signs of it every-where (McDonald’s, Starbucks),even if other countries have escapedthat wrath with similarly widespreadbrands (Toyota, Nokia). The battle is tosell an ideal, such a universal vision ofthe United States that it can easily {ndappeal with an audience. It is not aninformation war, because the sametheory that audiences are predisposedto certain beliefs applies even more soin foreign policy. To get audiences onside, as one does in branding,exceptional research about the targetaudience is needed. This researchmust be comprehensive and cannotbe emphasized enough.

Instinctively, the research mightuncover such internationally acceptedvalues as freedom (not something thatcurtailing civil liberties and encourag-ing wiretapping, pro{ling andrestrictions on movement seemcompatible with); and the ability forthe best minds to realize their highestpotentials by conceiving thoseinnovations that have driven theAmerican economy (at odds withdiscouraging those best minds fromconsidering the United States as ahome, the reduction of innovation infavour of protectionism).28

2. Check the vision. That vision canthen be formed and its strategychecked against the UN Charter. Dothis brand and communicationstrategies comply? How might theaudience interpret them, based onthe earlier research? Are there placeswhere the strategy offends theCharter?

The Charter is one of the strong-est, best-authored documents inpublic international law; thepreamble alone should be memora-ble to those who participate in theUN dialogue. Because it purports tobe universal, as is the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights thatshould also form part of this

analysis, the United States would dowisely to see if its current methodswork. Opposition suggests thecountry can do better. We have nottrusted the government to level withconstituents, so trust needs to berebuilt through branding.

Perhaps these questions can beposed: does this further the cause ofan international community,because that is what every nationshould ultimately be workingtoward? Are we analysing a régimeto the basic standard of innocent tillproved guilty? But most importantly,in view of today’s internationalcommunity, are our actionsconscionable in the furthering of abetter world?

The Charter and the UniversalDeclaration are as close to truths ininternational relations as one canget. Their relevance in not onlyinternational law but the foundationof the international communitysuggests they are living documents,possessing a conscience that mustnot be offended.

Therefore, aligning strategies withthem in the context of nationbranding and diplomacy would bean invaluable process.

If this does not happen, then thebrand becomes tarnished, alliancesfall and efforts using it fail—just asthey would in business when thebrand “attitude” is assaulted. Enron,which had awards or policies onclimate change and anti-corruption,is a prime example.29

If a nation fell short, how can it be{xed? It is through this that a statecan rise above inquiry, dealing withreasoned criticism and the risk ofanti-state emails and other commu-nications. It addresses the Zeitgeist,which sees people demandingtransparency not only from theircompanies, but their countries.Everything from Gore v. Bush andBush v. Gore to releasing evidence

about Al-Qaeda could have beenmanaged better without compromis-ing some sources, but too muchremains steeped in legal or politicaljargon. America is sick of politick-ing—the low voter-turnout rate is astrong sign.

3. Get them involved. Directinvolvement is valuable. The earlierresearch aside, this involvement canbe used to gauge how the public feelsabout the implementation of thebranding programme and whetherthere are changes to make to theearlier stages. If research is donewell, this “tracking study” shouldvalidate the vision and strategy.

For the right decisions to be made,people need honest information. Justas they do when selecting productsto buy. It presupposes an excellenteducational system in which values,awareness and responsibility areparamount.

So how were the communicationsto the publics? Has the audiencemoved closer to the desired percep-tion? Beyond the electorate, howabout other governments—have weaddressed what they thought waswrong about us? For if the 21st-century world is to move forward, itmust do so with cooperation, trustand transparency:30

Nurturing relations between politicians of

different countries makes diplomacy easier

by giving both sides a clear idea of the

political positioning of the other. Second,

such relationships open a channel for policy

exchange that renews the intellectual capital

of political parties. Third, exchanges help

develop an international outlook within

parties that are not in power, which can be

advantageous in smoothing the transitions

between administrations.

The potential for this involvementis great. When analysing one’s ownconstituents, online technologiescould be employed. This leads to an

continued on p. 41


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an important introduction to whatfollows.

Here’s how brands work: on myleft, a plastic bottle of sweet, {zzybrown }uid bearing the label ‘Cola’.It cost me around 50¢. On my right,a nearly identical bottle of sweet}uid bearing the label ‘Coca-Cola’. Itcost me just over a euro—or justover a dollar, if you prefer.

On my left, a good quality plainwhite T-shirt. Cost: around ¥10.

On my right, an identical white T-shirt with a small Versace logoprinted in black on the front. Cost:around ¥30.

It seems almost criminal, doesn’t it?Well, that rather depends on who

is doing it. Brand New Justice: theUpside of Global Branding exploresthe possibility that this phenomenonof branding, and certain otherrelated tricks of wealth creation,could be better distributed aroundthe world than they have been in thepast. It shows how marketing is, infact, a powerful tool for economicdevelopment, and might make a veryworthwhile contribution to the fairerdistribution of global wealth.

Value you can’t see

The ‘brand value’ which marketingadds to products and services is nottangible value: unlike sales, prod-

WHAT I’m about

to tell you issomething you

Brand new justice:why brands countSimon Anholt’s Brand New Justice is one ofbranding’s most influential books and the firstof two in 2003 addressing how brands cancreate global economic justice. In thisextract, he introduces its purpose.

Simon Anholt

This has been republished with the author’s expresspermission. Simon Anholt’s Brand New Justice: the Upsideof Global Branding, published by Butterworth–Heinemannin 2003, is available on Amazon.co.uk and other retailers.Simon Anholt is a well-known international branding andmarketing thinker, a director of Placebrands, and adviser tovarious government bodies. A web site and forum atwww.brandnewjustice.com, furthering the aims of the book,will be launched with Jack Yan & Associates’ help.

have probablyheard before, but

bear with me. It’s


ucts, factories, land, raw materials orworkforces, you can’t measure itvery easily, but it represents capitalbecause it enables producers andsellers to charge more money fortheir products and services. It is amultiplier of value, and as such,represents a substantial advantagefor its owner: it’s as good as moneyin the bank. You can borrow againstit, buy it, sell it, invest in it, andincrease or decrease it by good orbad management.

The concept of intangible value isa well-established one in ourcapitalist system, and doesn’t makebrands any more suspect or lessvalid than any other form of com-mercial worth.

This additional value is not atrivial phenomenon; it forms asubstantial part of the assets of thedeveloped world. According to someestimates, brand value could be asmuch as one-third of the entire valueof global wealth.

Being able to measure the value ofthese assets is clearly important, andInterbrand, a branding consultancy,have devised a widely acceptedmethod for doing this. According totheir latest survey of the MostValuable Global Brands, the intangi-ble assets of the top 100 globalbrands are together worth$988,287,000,000: just a shadeunder a trillion dollars.

To put this almost unimaginablylarge number in context, it isroughly equal to the combined grossnational income of all the 63countries de{ned by the World Bankas ‘low income’ (and where almost

half of the world’s population lives).Like me, you may {nd that a

slightly disturbing thought, eventhough you’ve probably heard thesekinds of statistics before. What can’tbe denied is that this elusive compo-nent of commerce is of greatimportance in understanding thedistribution of wealth in the worldtoday, and it is likely to have a role toplay when we are trying to work outways of balancing things better inthe future.

There is little that is likeable aboutthese mega-brands, the way theywork, the companies which ownthem, or the fantastic quantities ofwealth which they generate. But likeit or not, rich and poor, we all live ina money-based global economy, andthe lack of money is a primary causeof suffering: so it makes sense to takea closer look at how these brandsmultiply money, and see whethertheir genius for doing so might betransferable to some of the peopleand the places which really need it.

How brands create wealth

Selling products with well-knownnames, rather than bulk commodi-ties or generic goods, has long been asmart business to be in.

Everybody knows that brandedgoods cost more than unbrandedones. You pay extra for the well-known name on your food, yourclothing, your hi-{, your runningshoes, your car, and if you are one ofthose rather rare but very sensiblepeople who always choose the

supermarket-brand products, orproducts without well-known namesat all, you will end up saving quite alot of money.

But unless you’re one of the brandrejecters, what do you actually getfor the extra money you pay?

Well, although brand value isintangible, several aspects of thebrand are of real value to theconsumer; and as much as somecompanies would like it to be so, abrand is not just a trick for over-charging consumers. Consumersaren’t that stupid.

A product with a famous name isone you can usually depend on to dowhat it’s meant to do, one that’smade with quality ingredients orcomponents, and backed by asubstantial company which probablycares enough about its reputation towork hard to remedy any problemsyou may have with the product lateron. A branded service business, onehopes, invests constantly in the besttraining for the best people. You canfeel reasonably sure that a brandedcompany will stay in business, incase you do have a problem with itsproducts or service.

Spare parts for branded productswill be easy to {nd (although theywill also be more expensive than theunbranded ones), and if you’re reallyunhappy with the product, you canexpect the company to take it backand refund your money. A brand isas much an open invitation tocomplain as it is a promise to deliver,and companies which deal lightlywith complaints will soon erodetheir reputation.


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The branding mechanism keepsrunning and creates wealth. The factthat the system is so pervasivedoesn’t necessarily mean that it’smorally sound, but it does suggestthat it responds to something prettyreal in human nature.

So a brand also represents aconsiderable responsibility for itsowner.

Brand names save us time, effortand worry. Even though, in the richcountries of the northern hemi-sphere, it seems as if we spend rathertoo much of our lives either buyingthings or deciding which things tobuy, few of us actually have the time,patience or expertise to research allof the minute differences betweendozens or hundreds of competingproducts. To understand exactly whya BMW engine performs better orworse than a Mercedes engine, aNike running shoe cushions betteror worse than a Reebok, a Compaq isfaster or slower than a Dell, youwould need a degree in engineering.

A reputable brand enables us toshortcut this process: we feel we cantake the quality, sophistication andreliability of the product on trust.

The brand name is a promise thatvast resources have been poured intomaking the product perform as wellas the name implies. Most peoplefeel that buying branded products isa safer bet, and don’t mind payingwell over the odds for this peace ofmind: the higher price includes acontribution towards ensuring abetter product from a bettercompany.

In societies like ours, whichlargely revolve around acquisition,this ability of brands to re}ect suchattributes is so valuable that if themanufacturers didn’t help us out bycreating their own brands, we wouldquickly {nd a way of investing theirproducts with reputations ourselves.If, by universal decree, Mercedes andBMW were compelled tomorrow tode-badge their cars, name them ‘A’and ‘B’, and sell them at identicalprices, it probably wouldn’t be longbefore some of us were boasting toour friends that we drove an A, andthat this clearly made us ratherclassy—to the annoyance of Bdrivers, who would be equallyconvinced that their re{ned tasteand discernment clearly markedthem out as superior individuals.

Something like this once hap-pened in the Soviet Union, wherebrands were forbidden. Sovietcitizens quickly realized that theproducts in the state shops wereproduced in a variety of differentfactories, and each factory producedto its own quality standard.

Within a very short time, shop-pers had worked out how to read thebarcodes on the products and tellwhere each product was made, andwere thus able to exercise a kind ofprimitive brand selection.

It is often quite rightly pointedout in branding literature thatcompanies don’t invent or own theirbrands, consumers do. Reputation,after all, exists in the mind of theperceiver: it is not a quality of theproduct itself.

And of course there’s the emo-tional side to branding, too. Like itor not, buying a branded productsays something about you. At onevery basic level, it is a way of showingpeople that you have enough money topay more than strictly necessary forthe things you own. Depending onthe brand’s image, it may alsocommunicate something about thekind of person you are or would likepeople to think you are—yourtaste, your social standing, yourattitudes. People have always usedtheir possessions in this way, toexpress their wealth, taste andpower: the addition of brand valuesto possessions simply makes themmore expressive.

We are social animals with a keensense of hierarchy, and most of usare well prepared to pay extra forpossessions which, in addition to oreven instead of performing a usefulfunction, advertise our status or actas badges for our various allegiances.Some brands—especially clothingbrands—express our membership ofcliques, schools of thought, ways ofliving; they express our attitudestowards authority, our mental age,our tastes and our political leanings.

Rather usefully, the global brandseven do this in a language which isinternational.

On the whole, our weakness forthe way brands work as badges is notsomething which we like to admit to:it’s rather shaming to acknowledgethat we are prepared to buy socialstatus, or that we are foolish enoughto spend more than necessary on aproduct which simply makes us feel


or look a little better. Most of uswould rather not confess how wellour favourite brands pander to ourweaker side, how intimately theyknow our secret vanities: we ac-knowledge them by buying them,but if asked directly, we may deny allknowledge of our real motivations.For the same reason, the wholesystem of branded products is easyto criticize, and there is always aready audience for authors whocriticize the way that brands work onus (often missing the point thatthey’re only there because we wantthem to be).

And for the same reason, therehas been a healthy market since the1950s for fanciful books whichreveal the dastardly tricks used byadvertisers to coerce unwittingconsumers into buying productsthey don’t really want or need. Wehave always preferred to believe thatwe are being cynically manipulatedby unknown forces than simplyadmit that we enjoy spending ourmoney, and not always wisely.

Yet consumers for the most partsubscribe voluntarily to their pactwith brands, and their value instimulating commerce, funding themedia and generally creating wealthmeans that modern industrializedcountries would sorely miss them ifthey went away. (One example of thisis the calculation that if The Timescarried no advertising, it would costnearly £21 per issue instead of itscurrent cover price of around 60p.1)

The same cannot be con{dentlysaid about consumers in lessdeveloped countries, where the pactis less equal, and where people arenot so effectively “immunized”against commercial messages froman early age. But more on this later.

All this is basic stuff, and we livein an age where most people—atleast in the industrialized nations—

are familiar with the mechanisms ofbrand image. In fact, it’s interestingthat, even though we all understandvery well how brands work, and howat least part of what we’re payingextra money for is really non-existent, we are still perfectly happyto carry on doing it. Some say this isfoolishness; some call it decadence;some {nd it morally objectionablethat so many people in the richworld will happily pay hundreds ofeuros for a pair of elegantly rippedand stained Diesel jeans while othersgo unclothed in Africa for want of afew cents’ worth of cloth.

The real success story of brandingin recent decades has been the way inwhich companies have used theirbrands to turn the satisfaction ofcomplex and even spiritual needsinto commercial transactions. Oncea people have reached a level ofwealth where all their simple needsare fully met, where they lacknothing which is essential for thesatisfactory continuation of theirdaily lives, one might imagine thattheir surplus time and energy wouldthen be expended on ful{llinghigher, spiritual and intellectualneeds. One might also imagine thatcommerce has no part to play in thispursuit.

But as people in richer countrieshave moved beyond basic wants, socompanies have kept pace with theirincreasingly complex and intangibledesires, attaching the promise ofstatus, peer approval, tranquillity,happiness, wisdom, intelligence, sexappeal, long life, {tness, youthful-ness, to their branded products.Now that every desire in our wakinglives is ful{lled, brands manage tosell us our dreams.

Brands continue to exist andgenerate huge pro{ts because that isthe only way in which consumerswho own everything they want can

be stimulated to carry on consumingas if they still needed things.

There is rather more to achievingthese spiritual ends than owning theaccessories which go with them, orthe brands which re}ect the lifestylewhich matches them: so, likedrinking salt water when you’rethirsty, the brands do little morethan sharpen the desire without eversatisfying it. This may all sound alittle pious, but I think we all knowthe ache of wanting and wanting aparticular possession, at last buyingit, and then feeling the same empti-ness gradually return a few days orweeks later.

This may partly explain the rapidgrowth of FairTrade products andwell-marketed charity appeals: theyenable us to spend money withoutfeeling cheapened or impoverishedafterwards.

How brands distributewealth

So the branding mechanism keepsrunning, and continues to createwealth. The fact that the system is sopervasive and so durable doesn’tnecessarily mean that it’s morallysound or even healthy, but it doessuggest that it responds to some-thing pretty real in human nature.

Brands remain economicallyattractive because enough peoplebelieve that they are worth payingextra for: the companies which arelucky and clever enough to ownpowerful brands make more moneythan the companies which don’t, andsome of the extra money whichconsumers pay for extra brandappeal is pure pro{t for the brandowner.

This is why company bosses aresometimes quoted as saying thattheir brand names are worth more


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A visitor from another planet mightask, if poor countries want to catchup, why don’t they encourageindustries to sell finished, brandedgoods to consumers rather thanunbranded goods and materials tobrand-owners?

than the rest of their business assetsput together: you have to keepinvesting in your brand, and yourproduct and customer service haveto live up to the promise of thename, but when it’s in good health, abrand is a licence to charge moremoney for your products.

Although increased pro{tability isone of the main attractions of beinga brand-owner, it isn’t all aboutmargin. The large consumer brandsmay enjoy 15–20 per cent greatermargins than producers which aren’thousehold names, but the realbene{t for the brandowner occursover time. Brands represent sustain-able wealth: it’s the loyalty of theconsumer base, the ready acceptanceof new products launched under thesame name, and the relative cheap-ness of retaining loyal customerscompared to the cost of continually{nding new ones which really makethe difference, and enables brandedbusinesses to grow exponentiallyover time.

One survey has even revealed thestartling fact that brand leaders, farfrom getting locked into an ever-increasing spiral of marketing coststo sustain their brand images,actually spend less on advertisingthan their competitors.2 (Thecorollary to this, of course, is thatthe competitors need to spend more,so the advertising industry is in little

danger of doing itself out of a job.)In the longer term, brands create

wealth around themselves. Theadditional pro{t margin means thatthe company can invest more moneyin research and development tomaintain the }ow of innovative, highquality new products to market; inmarketing to maintain and enhancethe pro{le and power of its brandsand keep up with the market leaders;in people and systems to improve itscustomer service.

This enriches the substantialservice sector which surrounds themakers and marketers of products.As they grow, the companies employmore and more people, buy moreraw materials, use yet more services,build more factories and of{ces, andpay more taxes. Their distributorsand retailers bene{t from biggersales, and share in the bigger pro{ts,which means more companies hiringmore people and engaging moreservice businesses, retailers expand-ing their businesses to meet thegrowing demand from consumers,and all these companies paying moretaxes, too.

Research from the USA showing{gures for direct and indirectemployment by large companies3

suggests that the employment effectwithin clusters centred around amajor international brand can bedramatic: Dell Computer’s Texas

operations, for example, employ12,500 people directly, but areresponsible for creating some 30,000jobs in total; 3M directly employs20,000 workers in Minnesota,creating 54,280 total jobs; Monsantodirectly employs 3,800 people inMissouri, and creates 9,650 jobs. Inother words, each of these compa-nies is creating between two-and-a-half and three times as many jobs forthe local economy as actually appearon its payroll.

Gradually, wealth spreads out fromsuccessful companies, merges with thewealth spreading out from successfulsupporting and competing companiesin the same region, and it stimulatesthe economy of the city, the region,and ultimately the country in whichthe company is based.

Life on the lower tier

The brand effect is one of the ways inwhich the countries which hadalready generated great wealththrough trade and empire-buildingin the previous three or four centu-ries have managed to become richerstill during the last hundred years.

Today, many big corporationsacknowledge that their real expertiseis in product design and marketing,and this is where they invest mostheavily. The less pro{table parts oftheir enterprise, such as sourcing thebasic raw materials, manufacturingand {nishing the products, arefarmed out to wherever they can getthe required quality for the lowestprice—and it’s almost invariably inthe second or third world. NaomiKlein and others have written aboutthis phenomenon, and have donemuch to bring to light the injusticeswhich so often stem from it.4

These companies no longer needto produce or manufacture: all theyneed to do is brand and deliver, andthe money comes rolling in.


Companies in emerging and third-world countries, on the whole,haven’t been able to do this trick,and still make most of the foreignincome which is so crucial to theireconomies through supplyingcompanies in rich countries with theraw materials or basic manufacturedgoods and labour they need.

But these supplies, since they areunbranded, are generally identical tothose of their many competitors, areextremely price-sensitive, andgenerate very slender pro{ts indeed.

In addition to their Top 100 globalbrands survey which I mentioned atthe beginning of this chapter,Interbrand also publish rankingsand valuations of Brazil’s top 12brands (none of which havesigni{cant sales outside Brazil or areworth anywhere near a billiondollars, so of course don’t make itinto the Global Top 100).

The combined value of these localheroes is just over $4 billion (the top12 US brands are worth somewhatmore than 100 times as much).

Their value compares verydifferently to the country’s income,as well: Brazil’s top 12 equate to lessthan half a per cent of GNI, whereasAmerica’s top 12 are nearer 5 percent. Massive reserves of intangiblewealth would appear to be a charac-teristic of the healthy, moderneconomy. Whether this is somethingwe should be concerned about, Ileave to others to decide.

As it stands, most poorer coun-tries are enmeshed in variouspatterns of behaviour which keepthem poor, and one of these is sellingunbranded goods to richer nationsat low margins. Companies in thericher nations then add largeamounts of margin to the goods by{nishing, packaging, branding, andretailing them to the end user. Thepoor country’s part in this processoften helps to deplete its resourceswhile keeping its foreign revenues at

a break-even level or below.The margins on this kind of

transaction have been compressedeven further in recent decades asglobalization has advanced, makinglife as a “supplier nation” an increas-ingly unattractive proposition. Astime passes, the pro{ts at thebranding end of business grow, andthere is a tendency for the pro{ts atthe supplier end to shrink.

Before globalization reachedtoday’s levels, being a suppliernation did provide opportunities forreasonably stable foreign income,even if it was seldom a recipe forgreat wealth. But in a globally net-worked world, where brand-owningcompanies are free to shop around theworld for their raw materials, theirmanufacturing and labour, andinstantaneously locate the bestcombination of suf{cient quality andlow price, supplying them hasbecome an extremely risky business.

Instead of suppliers in poorcountries competing on a local levelfor contracts to supply rich companiesin the north, they are now in direct andconstant competition with othersuppliers all over the world.

Farmers in one country may havea less favourable climate with ashorter growing season; and a singlepoor crop may make it almostimpossible to win back contracts insubsequent years. An American orEuropean company can switch itssuppliers of raw materials from LatinAmerica to Southeast Asia overnightif the price is right. Suppliers inThailand can bid on the internet forcontracts against suppliers in Kenyaand Peru, and this creates a veryvolatile situation: in some countries,factories and producers may enjoymassive government subsidies,international aid or developmentgrants and thus drop their pricesway below anything the rest canafford, or they may have a cheaperlabour force and thus undercut the

rest. World Bank concessional loansfor supporting Vietnamese coffeeproduction, for example, have all butwiped out the robusta coffeebusiness of several African coun-tries: in a globalized world, it’salmost impossible to help onecountry without harming another.

The consequence of this effect ofglobalization is more and moreintense competition betweensupplier nations, which meansgreater risks and ever tightermargins for the suppliers, and betterand better opportunities for thepurchasing companies in the west.It’s no business for the faint-hearted.

Isn’t it the poor world’sturn?

A visitor from another planet mightwell ask, if poor countries want to dosomething to catch up, why don’tthey simply play the same game, andencourage their industries to startselling {nished, branded goodsdirectly to consumers rather thanunbranded goods and materials tobrand-owners? If one-third of theentire world’s wealth is composed ofthis thing called brand value, whyaren’t poorer countries getting intothe branding business too?

After all, for an emerging market,branded exports would representprotected margin: unlike commoditiesand labour, which depend entirelyon price, quality and timely deliveryin order to maintain preference,successfully branded goods can—atleast for a while—keep their cus-tomer base even after all otherfactors have been erased. Buyersreturn endlessly, willingly, some-times almost automatically to thecompanies which produce theirfavourite brands, and will alwaystake an interest in and give prefer-ence to new, unknown productsfrom the same companies. Of


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In Britain, there is a feeling thatpublic affairs are about deeds andfacts; marketing is seen as a dirty,unprincipled business, dealing withsurface and illusion, vanity anddeception. Politics is about actions,marketing about hot air.

course, companies can also showpreference towards long-standingsuppliers with a history of ef{cientservice, and this is like a weak formof brand loyalty, but since theoffering itself generally has nothingto distinguish it from any other onthe market apart from price, thatloyalty may be short-lived if acheaper alternative appears.

If it is true that branding is simplyadding a range of attractions andservices to a quality product, andsince so many of the quality prod-ucts are already manufactured inemerging markets, there is littlequestion that graduating fromcommodities or unbranded manu-factures to brands would be a highlyeffective way for companies in suchcountries to improve their incomeand pro{ts—and, perhaps, if enoughcompanies did it, to improve thewealth of the entire country as well.

There is much simple justice inthis idea, and a simple formula isirresistible. I raised the followingpoint in my book Another One Bitesthe Grass: Making Sense of Inter-national Advertising (John Wiley &Sons, 2000) and it forms theopening thought of this one:

• if a company in a rich country sellsbrands to rich consumers in thesame or other rich countries,nothing really happens: money

simply circulates within a more orless closed system, and there’s littleto criticize on moral grounds;

• if a company in a rich countrysells brands to poor consumersin the same or other richcountries, there is a risk ofexploitation and a furtherwidening of the wealth gap;

• if a company in a rich countrysells brands to consumers in apoor country, the risk of exploi-tation is far higher;

• but if a company in a poorcountry sells brands to consum-ers in a rich country, the overallbalance begins to be redressed,and justice begins to be done.

So why doesn’t it happen?Conventional wisdom says that

companies in poor countries can’tget rich by exporting branded goodsand services for several reasons. Theseare the {ve most common ones.

1. They can’t produce highenough quality products or services.

2. They can’t afford to promote ordistribute them internationally.

3. They don’t have the expertise tobuild international brands.

4. Even if they did, nobody in richcountries would want to buy them.

5. Even if they did, and even ifpeople did buy them, the resultingpro{ts would never bene{t theeconomy as a whole, and would

simply disappear into the pockets ofa few corrupt individuals.

In the book are some responses tothese {ve objections, as well as anexploration of the consequences ofrejecting them.

Branding the exports,branding the nation

The starting-point of Brand NewJustice: the Upside of Global Brandingis that companies in many poorercountries can develop and sell theirown branded goods and servicesabroad. What’s more, they can sellthem not just in other poor coun-tries, but in many cases back to therich countries which until now havebeen their “clients”, and so controlmore of the commercial process—and the pro{ts—from conceptionthrough to sale.

This kind of business is also goodfor the country where such compa-nies are based. Companies withsuccessful export brands provide anexample and an inspiration to othercompanies, they generate nationalpride and prosperity in theirimmediate neighbourhood, andperhaps above all they make foreignconsumers and investors think againabout their country: a place which iscapable of producing attractive,desirable, high quality exports is aplace worthy of some respect. It mayeven be worth visiting; it certainlymakes other products from the samecountry worth a look.

More branded export business ismost certainly a step in the rightdirection for an emerging country.But unless the companies are big ornumerous enough in proportion tothe country to represent a meaning-ful slice of national income, andunless there are fair and reliableways to ensure that their pro{tsdon’t vanish exclusively into privatehands, then showing a few compa-


nies how to improve their pro{tmargins won’t have any major,immediate impact on the develop-ment of the whole country.

But branding has a far bigger roleto play than this.

If the development of these exportbrands is supported and encouragedby government, and written as a keycomponent into a consistent,imaginative and well-managednational brand strategy, it can makea real difference to the country’slong-term prospects.

A national brand strategy deter-mines the most realistic, mostcompetitive and most compellingstrategic vision for the country, andensures that this vision is supported,reinforced and enriched by every actof communication between thecountry and the rest of the world.

Those acts of communicationinclude the kinds of brands whichthe country exports; the way itpromotes itself for trade, tourism,inward investment and inwardrecruitment; the way it behaves inacts of domestic and foreign policyand the ways in which these acts arecommunicated; the way it promotesand represents and shares itsculture; the way its citizens behavewhen abroad and how they treatstrangers at home; the way itfeatures in the world’s media; thebodies and organizations it belongsto; the countries it associates with;the way it competes with othercountries in sport and entertain-ment; what it gives to the world andwhat it takes back.

If done well, such a strategy canmake a huge difference to both theinternal con{dence and the externalperformance of a country. Imageand progress unfailingly go hand inhand, and although it is usually truethat image is the consequence ofprogress, rather than vice versa, it isequally true that when both arecarefully managed in tandem, they

help each other along and createaccelerated change.

It is an approach which concen-trates as much on the representationof actions as on the actions them-selves. This is because the {rst lessonwhich marketing has to teach is thatother people are less interested inyou than you are, so if you care aboutwhat they think, it’s your responsibil-ity to make yourself properly under-stood. Marketing teaches us thatpeople are just as often guided by theirperceptions of things as by the realityof things. Good marketers know thatbeing in possession of the truth isnot suf{cient—people still need tobe persuaded that it’s the truth.

Marketing also teaches that peoplecan’t be deceived for long; that thehigher you raise their expectations, themore completely they reject youroffering when they are disappointed;and you can’t make people buy a badproduct more than once. So everygood marketer knows that his or herprimary responsibility is to ensurethat the product matches up to thepromise, because misleadingmarketing is ineffective marketing.

Edward R. Murrow, the Directorof the United States InformationAgency, echoed this principle whenhe testi{ed before a CongressionalCommittee in 1963:

American traditions and the American ethic

require us to be truthful, but the most

important reason is that truth is the best

propaganda and lies are the worst. To be

persuasive we must be believable; to be

believable we must be credible; to be credible

we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.

All this sounds to most people likepretty good sense, but in somecountries the vocabulary is sadlyin}ammatory. My own country,Britain, is an acute example of this:there is a widespread, strong,perhaps idealistic or even naïvefeeling that public affairs and

international relations are, or shouldbe, purely about deeds and facts;marketing, on the other hand, isseen by many as a dirty and unprin-cipled business, dealing with surfaceand illusion, vanity and deception:lies, in short. Politics is aboutactions, marketing about hot air.(The most frequently heard criticismof our present government is thatthey are too concerned about howthey are regarded. In many coun-tries, this would be considered arather mild complaint, but in the UKit is a serious charge.)

Rhetoric was never a highly prizedskill in the British culture: we like tobelieve that we always make up ourown minds about things, by weigh-ing up the facts, and the thought thatsomebody might be trying to swayus or in}uence our opinions isintolerable. There is a similarelement in the American culture, butmercifully counterbalanced by thefact that Americans are on the wholefar less snooty about commerce thanthe British, and don’t generallyconsider marketing such a demean-ing or worthless activity.

Wherever you go, branding placesis an emotive subject. As Wally Olinsobserves,5 people tend to get upsetabout the very idea of a nationalbrand. Somehow, when the {endishtricks of marketing are applied tosomething as sacred as the nation-state, all hell breaks loose.

Insults are heaped on the heads ofbrands, marketers and policymakersalike—‘spin’, ‘gloss’ and ‘lies’ are themost commonly heard in thiscountry. In my own work, helping toimprove the prospects of emergingmarkets through better branding ofthe country and its products, I amoften accused of ‘rewriting history’,‘social engineering’, ‘culturalpollution’, ‘exploitation’, ‘condescen-sion’, ‘neo-imperialism’, and worse.

But as Olins says, countries havebeen branding themselves systemati-


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The vocabulary is immaterial: onecan call these principles of softpower ‘marketing’ or ‘branding’, butone can equally call thempsychology, diplomacy, rhetoric,politics, the art of persuasion, orplain good sense.

cally and deliberately for manycenturies: what appears to botherpeople is simply the vocabulary. So Iam well aware that putting the words‘brand’ and ‘nation’ in the samesentence is guaranteed to raise hackles;and I am equally aware that myattempts to defuse the debate may, atleast in Britain, be a waste of breath.

Most intelligent observers ofworld affairs understand that thesuccess and in}uence of countries isalways composed of a balancebetween what Joseph Nye, a politicalscientist, calls ‘soft’ and ‘hard’power; and the two are not opposed.There are times when only coercioncan achieve the aims which agovernment, rightly or wrongly,wishes to pursue, and this is hardpower; other ends can only beattained through the exercise ofcultural, intellectual or spiritualin}uence—as Nye says, ‘a countrymay obtain the outcomes it wants inworld politics because other coun-tries want to follow it, admiring itsvalues, emulating its example,aspiring to its level of prosperity andopenness’.6 Soft power, he says, ismaking people want to do what youwant them to do. National brandingis about making people want to payattention to a country’s achieve-ments, and believe in its qualities. Itis the quintessential modernexemplar of soft power.

The implications of Nye’s theoryfor my argument are clear: you canonly wield hard power over countrieswhich lie beneath you in the hierar-chy of nations. For emergingcountries, which lie beneath the rest,the only power which they can hopeto wield is soft.

The vocabulary is immaterial: onecan call these principles of soft power‘marketing’ or ‘branding’, but one canequally call them psychology,diplomacy, rhetoric, politics, the artof persuasion, or plain good sense.

What matters is whether theywork or not. And they do work.

Global brands fromemerging markets

The export brands of emergingcountries are a good starting-point.

Experience shows that nation-branding programmes seldom achieveanything useful, or even get off theground, unless they are backed bysolid commitment by both govern-ment and exporting companies.

Brands also have a particularpower to accelerate and lead changesin the public perceptions of coun-tries: commercial brands, whetherwe like it or not, are increasinglyimportant vectors of national imageand reputation, even of culture.

Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been

trawling the developing world forexamples of companies which areexporting their own products undertheir own names, and have seenenough of them—nearly 200, at thetime of writing—to believe that thisphenomenon is rapidly spreading,and in some cases is likely to become,or is already, of great signi{cance tothe prospects of the country where thebrands are produced.

Some of the emerging marketentrepreneurs who, often againstgreat odds, are succeeding inbecoming brand-owners include thefollowing. In many cases, the rapidgrowth of their businesses tells itsown story:

• a Thai sweatshop which hasstarted to export its own brandedgarments (and making many timesthe pro{t it did when it manufac-tured for American brands);

• a Mumbai chemicals’ companywhich is taking on the Parisianfashion houses at the perfumegame, and winning;

• the Hong Kong businessmanmaking a global fortune out ofChinese chic;

• the Russian entrepreneur who hascreated a premium internationalvodka brand and now wants tofollow it up with banking servicesand become Russia’s answer toRichard Branson;

• Infosys, which is making Banga-lore the global capital of ITservices;

• the Czech furniture business whichmarkets itself with art, and istaking on the multinational giants.

Making it happen

One thing needs to be stressed at thispoint. The basic concept of BrandNew Justice: the Upside of GlobalBranding is aimed more at transitioneconomies in the “second world”


than at the least developed countries.It is certainly worthwhile debating

whether the same arguments can beusefully applied to the desperatelypoor and chronically indebtedcountries, and some interestingwork is being done which seems toprove that there are bene{ts to beachieved in this area, but it is not theprimary focus of the book.

In most LDCs, the companies ableto “fast-track” to becoming brandowners simply don’t exist, and theonly sensible national communica-tions strategy is to generate immedi-ate aid and investment. If a countryisn’t able to provide food and shelterfor its population, or if its mainproblems are disease, illiteracy andwar, then talk of enhancing theimage of its exports and of thecountry itself would be, to say theleast, misplaced.

Creating a branded exportbusiness requires many conditionsto be in place: companies which arecompetent to manufacture to thestandards required by consumers inwhichever market they are sold; alegal and {nancial system whichmakes manufacturing and exportingfeasible, enables the company tooffer reliable deliveries of its prod-ucts abroad, and allows people whomake a legal pro{t to hold onto it; anational IT and telecoms’ infrastruc-ture which enables the company to“plug in” to the global economy; astable and business-friendly govern-ment with fair and consistenttaxation policies; a reliable supply ofraw materials; a labour force withthe necessary skills and creativity; astable currency and a dependablebanking sector; access to sources ofcapital; and the list goes on.

Planning a national brandingstrategy also requires certainconditions: the political resourceand will to collaborate fully, fairlyand transparently with the private

sector; a feasible and coherent planof economic and social developmentwhich can form the basis of thebrand strategy; suf{cient goodwilland trust with companies, organiza-tions, local and regional govern-ment, city authorities, the civilservice, trades’ unions, the touristboard and the population at large tocreate widespread acceptance of thestrategy; and a degree of basic{nancial stability. Perhaps mostimportantly, the project needs thepersonal backing of the “chiefexecutive” of the country, whoeverhe or she may be, otherwise it isunlikely to achieve anything lasting.

Justice being done

Despite having worked for 20 yearsin advertising, marketing andbranding—or perhaps because ofit—I am not an uncritical admirer ofthe capitalist system or a wholesalesupporter of globalization in all itsmanifestations.

However, these techniques ofmarketing are the ones which I knowwell enough to appreciate their powerto do good, and my hope is that insharing these thoughts, some of thiswasted power can be harnessed.

Part of the reason why the centralidea of Brand New Justice: the Upsideof Global Branding appeals to me isbecause it also represents anopportunity for my own industry todo itself some credit, and undo someof the harm that it has done duringthe past century.

Until recently, by and large, thisharm has been done innocently. Butfor at least the last 15 years, anyonewho has claimed that helping {rst-world companies to increase theirpro{ts is just a job like any other,and has nothing to do with ethics, isbeing highly disingenuous, andtreading on rather thin ice.

Yet many marketers do so, and itmay be one of the reasons why theindustry is having increasingdif{culty in attracting graduates ofthe quality who, 10 or 15 years ago,were queuing up at its doors. In thenew moral and ethical climate inwhich we {nd ourselves, a companywhich can only justify its existence interms of increasing shareholdervalue may well {nd that recruitingpeople who are good (in every senseof that interesting word) becomesmore and more of a problem.

Brand New Justice: the Upside ofGlobal Branding is not a solution toall the world’s problems, and it’scertainly not the only solution to anypart of them. But its implicationsare, I believe, signi{cant: sharingwealth means sharing the accessroutes to wealth, and it would be a{ne thing if marketing could help toshow the way.

The critics of globalization arerightly perturbed by the idea of richcountries using their brands tocreate “consumerist desires” inpoorer countries which the inhabit-ants of those countries can’t affordto satisfy. My modest proposal isthat we should seek for ways toreverse the model: let the entrepre-neurs and workers in poorercountries create the desires in theminds of consumers who can affordto satisfy them.

The fact is that we can’t have itboth ways. Either marketing works,and it is a powerful tool for change,in which case it must admit responsi-bility for the absolutely central role ithas played in creating the ever-widening inequality between richand poor during the last century; orelse it is nothing, and has enricheditself over the decades without givingany value in return, and can play nouseful part in the huge tasks whichlie ahead for humanity in the twenty-{rst century. •

continued on p. 42


Feat

ure Beyond Branding:

a call to action

TWO BOOKS this year

sought to answer thecriticisms of the brandingindustry raised most famous-ly in Naomi Klein’s No Logo.1

The {rst was Simon Anholt’sBrand New Justice,2 already reviewed inCAP Online3 and the subject of aforthcoming web site and forum atwww.brandnewjustice.com. Thesecond is the most internationalresponse to the criticisms: BeyondBranding: How the New Values ofTransparency and Integrity Are Changingthe World of Brands, due October 2003from Kogan Page of London.4

The books take the approach thatit is not branding that is the villain,but the misuse of the discipline. Justas the language of activism iscoopted by the establishment—oilcompanies, for example, markettheir environmental awareness

frequently—the techniques ofbranding have been taken, theirvalues cast aside.

Anholt’s approach, covered in thisissue, {nds great support because hehas used real-life examples to backup his claims. Branding can do, andhas done, a lot of good. Removing itwould result in furthering the reachof the corporate practices that Kleinopposed.

Beyond Branding has its roots inMedinge, Sweden, where leadingbranding experts have gatheredannually for several years. Hosted bywell known authors Thomas Gadand Anette Rosencreutz, the retreathas attracted those passionate aboutbranding—and who have provedthemselves to be actors, not bystand-ers, in putting the profession backon track.

With the profession having taken

a knock—and with those gatheredagreeing that in many respects, theway branding was practised itdeserved it—those assembled atMedinge decided that they wouldmake a statement about branding.

The {rst document resulting fromthese efforts was ‘The Brand Mani-festo’,5 jointly authored by thegroup. The manifesto’s eight points,{rst published in September 2002,reintroduced humanity into theequation. Branding had been lookinginhuman, and like much of business,had sold its soul to become a tool toincrease shareholder wealth and theDow Jones index.

Books such as Marjorie Kelly’s TheDivine Right of Capital: Dethroningthe Corporate Aristocracy6 alreadypoint out the inhumane way corpo-rations have departed from servingthe public, even though the roots ofcorporate duty were in the publicgood. Maximizing returns toshareholders was the obsession atEnron and Andersen. At Medinge,Chris Macrae (of ValueTrue.com,and author of World-class Brands7

and The Brand Chartering Handbook8)asked: how many more Enrons canthe world take?

With reforms in the United Statesless than adequate and with theDelaware corporate principles {rmlyintact, Macrae’s question can be

The second book this year showing howhumanity can be put back into branding is theinternationally authored Beyond Branding:How the New Values of Transparency andIntegrity Are Changing the World of Brands.

Authored by Nicholas Ind (editor), Malcolm Allan, SimonAnholt, Julie Anixter, John Caswell, Thomas Gad, Sicco vanGelder, Tim Kitchin, Chris Macrae, Denzil Meyers, AlanMitchell, John Moore, Ian Ryder and Jack Yan, BeyondBranding: How the New Values of Transparency andIntegrity Are Changing the World of Brands (ISBN 0-74944-1151) will be published by Kogan Page on October 3,2003. Visit www.beyond-branding.com for pre-ordering andmore information.


considered a forewarning. Ifcon{dence in the market weakens,then corporations might not be ableto raise capital. The system may haveconspirational, corrupt elements—but we also know numerous alterna-tives do not work. So how can it beimproved?

Kelly’s approach is to createeconomic democracy, arguing thatthe way we hold up shareholderrights is not unlike the antiquatedway we held up the aristocracy assuperior beings, or, more recently,the notion that men were superior towomen. Her belief is that corporatewealth should belong to those whocreate it (employees) and that‘community wealth belongs to all’.Employees should have propertyrights stemming from their produc-tivity. She highlights examples, suchas Brazil’s La Prensa publication,‘whereby the publication’s pro{ts aresplit evenly with employees, aftercapital draws its “wage”.’ A salary isset for capital, e.g. 10 per cent, so the{rst 10 per cent of pro{ts for theyear go to it.9 In the case of employeeownership, employees know thatthey can directly pocket theirgains—therefore, preserving purermarket forces.

She also writes of the WorldBank’s 1995 Wealth Index, where itwas shown that 60 per cent of real

wealth is in human capital such associal organizations and knowledge,20 per cent in environmental capital,and 20 per cent in built capital. Evensimply considering employees assetsand not liabilities is a start.10

The experts at Medinge agreed thatwith branding being the interfacebetween consumers and organiza-tions, it could be used as a tool forgood, approaching economic democ-racy from a different angle. It could be,for instance, a tool that would revealthe truth about organizations.

Edited by Nicholas Ind, alreadyknown for books such as the seminalThe Corporate Image11 and Living theBrand12, and a biography on TerenceConran,13 chapters in Beyond Brandinginclude topics on authenticity,transparency and sustainability—but not delivered to make the book atrendy, mid-2000s purchase.

Its aim is to identify these issuesand giving readers a choice. Ind’sopening chapter on enlightenedbrands is clear on this point.Acknowledging that many of Klein’sclaims are valid, he writes:

However, before we accept this view

completely we should also recognize that

brands can increase choice, enhance freedom

and provide enjoyment. This suggests there is

nothing inherently wrong with the concept of

branding itself, but that managers and

employees in an organization can act with

good or bad intent. To encourage the former

and discourage the latter, managers need to

understand that it is in their business

interests to promote the good. This will never

deliver perfection, but it can begin to change

the image of the brand at large and put the

brand back where it belongs—on the side of

the individual. Thus, this book does not aim

to refute the negative image of business in

general and brands in particular. Nor does it

seek to attack business. Rather it recognizes

that business can be a force for evil, but it can

also be a force for good. Brands can enrich

people´s lives or manipulate them. Employ-

ees can {nd ful{lment at work or entrap-

ment. The task is to create a culture and

system where the focus is more consistently

focused on the good.

So how does it accomplish this? Thebook, according to Ind, is divided intocategories of ‘self-correction,persuasion and pressure, democracyand transparency and legislation.’

Therefore, the authors argue thatindividual freedoms are paramountto determining the success of brandsand businesses. In a free-marketsystem, consumers have the oppor-tunity of rejecting misbehavingbrands. Branding allows them to beeasily identi{ed.

At a basic level, bad news travelsfast. It travels faster when it isbranded. Therefore, veri{able bad

Right: Beyond Branding gets to the rootof the problem. The book will bepublished in October 2003 by KoganPage.


Feat

ure

‘The humanity has been driven out ofmost programmes, replaced byjargon designed to manipulate ratherthan engage with consumers. Thecleverer these tools seem to be, themore trust is compromised and realhuman value destroyed.’

news about corporate misbehaviourscould damage a company, especiallyif it is disseminated online where oneemailer carbon-copies several dozencontacts.

In the early- to mid-2000s, mis-behaviours might include harming theenvironment or failing to live up tosocially responsible issues. As Indhimself identi{ed in his earlier Livingthe Brand, more people contribute toworthy causes today, to {nd mean-ing in their lives.

Secondly, persuasion and pres-sure from non-governmentalorganizations, as well as sharehold-ers demanding greater transparencyin the wake of corporate scandal, canhelp create greater good. Once again,these matters fall into branding’srealm. No one would wish to beassociated with a tarnished brandknown for corruption and greed—and it is hard to believe that share-holders themselves have greed astheir sole aim for investing in themarket. Nor would they wish toinvest in a brand which does notoffer honesty or is the subject ofintense scrutiny by other parties.

Perhaps the best example of thelatter this year is that of MarthaStewart Living Omnimedia. With thebrand tied closely to Ms Stewart,who has been indicted by the USSecurities and Exchange Commis-

sion (SEC) and the US Attorney-General, the company’s share pricehas suffered tremendously.

Thirdly, greater transparency canhelp organizations within. It isestablished in branding that anorganization can only {nd greatestsuccess when employees act inaccordance with the vision. Anabsence of transparency leads tosuspicions and a mistrust in thatvision. It is often discovered thatinternal communications helpstrengthen a brand. By focusing onthe relationships between people,brands can be strengthened, andorganizations can become moreresponsive in seeing to concerns—including, ultimately, those thatKelly highlights. Similarly, suchtransparency can persuade externalaudiences to accept an organization.Today’s companies often createcommunities—loyalty programmes,physical gatherings and onlineforums are all examples—where amember (who may be a customer)may only wish to be a part if one canunderstand the integrity of thosebehind them.

Finally, on legislation: each personcan be an active participant inchanging the status quo. Theproblems can be solved by demands,within our work-places and oursocieties. When organizations

understand these shifts, they cancampaign for greater good. Ind givesan example of Reebok institutingemployee democracy in its Chinesefactories. This strengthens its brand,having spin-offs in business per-formance as well as the moreimportant human elements ofemployee satisfaction, reciprocatedas motivation, loyalty and a potentialwillingness to help the company.

Individual authors have followedthese four themes closely. DenzilMeyers proposes a new frameworkto help corporations make sense oftheir modern environment. Brandsthen become freely entered relation-ships, not objects to control. Heconsiders the brand value scenariofrom the stakeholders’ perspective,including employees, consumers,NGOs, investors and developingcountries, all of whom have adifferent perspective than that ofmaximizing shareholder wealth.

John Moore writes of authenticity,where businesses, through brands,engage with audiences more honestlyand humanly. ‘The humanity has beendriven out of most branding pro-grammes, replaced by an ever-growinglist of clever-sounding jargon and“tools” designed to manipulate ratherthan engage with consumers. It seemsto me that the cleverer these toolsseem to be, the more trust is compro-mised and real human value de-stroyed,’ he writes. Moore looks atways that authenticity can berestored—and provides reasons acompany should follow his examples.

Chris Macrae’s chapter, ‘Brand,Dynamic Valuation, and TransparentGovernance of Living Systems’,highlights the danger of failing torealize the true relationships insociety. Macrae laments that thevarious disciplines seeking to createeconomic democracy and humanparticipation are not being con-nected, wasting the opportunities of


globalization and networking thatwe have today.

The logical outcome of this failureis excluding much of the second andthird world from decisions thataffect their own future. It sets thestage for more frightening globalprospects. Macrae’s father, NormanMacrae, one of the men instrumen-tal in building The Economist into theforce it is today, wrote, ‘by 2005 thegap in incomes and expectationsbetween rich and poor nations wasrecognized as man’s most dangerousproblem.’ He will probably beproved right, as he frequently has.This gap generates everything fromnation envy to violent con}ict. Andthe gap has not narrowed in recentyears as much of the planet contin-ues to be ignored.

By mapping transparency, Macraebelieves that the human elementscan become more evident as it canexpose potential win–win relation-ships. Organizations can then seewhere they can invest, for example,because they have identi{ed theconcerns of the people closest tothem, creating a win–win. Throughmapping, they can see how one areamight reinforce another. The idea isto minimize, if not do away with,win–lose and lose–lose scenarios.Without change, the “branding” thatKlein exposes may look like a short-term win–lose (short-term salesbecause consumers have beenduped) and long-term will emerge asa lose–lose (when consumers realizethey have been lied to).

Thomas Gad’s ‘Leadership Brand-ing’ chapter extends his and AnetteRosencreutz’s “Brand Me” principles(from their book Managing BrandMe14) to leadership within the organi-zation, bridging the communicationgap between management and thosepeople who are charged with executingstrategies. Gad does not approach thissolely from the management

viewpoint. He empowers individualsso that they can analyse whetherthere has been a mismatch betweentheir personal brands and that of theorganization. A match couldenhance personal satisfaction; amismatch could serve as a warningthat an organization is not what it iscracked up to be. And, as mentionedearlier, bad news can travel quickly.

While every writer introducesconcepts and implementationmethods, one chapter is particularlynotable in showing that BeyondBranding’s principles are achievable.

John Caswell, in ‘What’s BrandGot to Do with It?’, examines howthe complexity of the modernbusiness system can be managed,linking it back to serious andsustainable business agenda. Hisapproach is realistic: it doesn’tinterrupt the existing processes, butinstead creates frameworks to allowthe organization to understand whatis going on within.

Tim Kitchin deals with thedevelopment of a sustainable brand,realizing that governments are notgoing to come to their sensesovernight in solving many of theearth’s problems. He argues, for astart, that the notions of brandequity are antiquated, based aroundthe concepts of advertisements that‘inscribe messages in the mind ofcustomers.’ In reality, brands aremanaged by all their stakeholders.

This argument is highly persuasive.Citing Andersen, Kitchin writes:

Stakeholders make their ultimate af{nity-

decisions about a brand (to support or not to

support) based upon the clarity and

consistency of purpose that a brand declares

and exhibits to others. They mentally resolve

the gap between how a brand is talked about,

and how it appears to treat others. This is

their commitment gap, based almost entirely

on second-hand evidence. To truly commit to

a brand, stakeholders try to assess the

authenticity with which that brand acts

across its entire relationship network.

Because that network is largely invisible to

them, they use proxies (analysts, media,

friends and family) and symbolic gestures

(philanthropy, leadership declarations,

physical ambience) to assess the honesty of a

brand they are committing to.

As a consequence of this delicate

interdependence, comprehensively failing

one stakeholder may ultimately bring down

relationships with all the others. Even when no

direct transactional promise has apparently

been breached this fragile impression of honesty

can be destroyed overnight.

Andersen fell not because of legalaction, but because stakeholderexpectations were unful{lled. Hissolution is the introduction of {veprinciples of brand sustainability inwhich all stakeholders can collabo-rate, managing intangibles in theorganization.

Similarly, Julie Anixter’s ‘Trans-parency or Not? Brand Inside: BrandOutside’ takes a stakeholder ap-proach to brand creation, calling forthe participation of all individuals.But there is a twist to this. ‘Throughparticipation in a true value ex-change, the individual’s talentdevelopment, future and opportuni-ties are not only enhanced, butintertwined with the values of thebrand. Tight controls are trumpedby the individual desire to evolve andto create meaning.’

This is nearly a spiritual agenda.Instead of a top–down approach,Anixter advocates co-creation so thatan organization doesn’t fall foul ofexcluding those within. One of themost naturally voiced chapters, shewarns against the possibility that ‘co-create’ could get ‘pegged as bullshit’,but ‘Transparency or Not?’ comesacross as good sense.

Simon Anholt and Sicco vanGelder’s jointly penned chapterposes a ‘What if ?’ question at its core:

continued on p. 42


Feat

ure Well Beyond

BrandingBeyond Branding is more than a book: it is areal call for change in the way business isconducted. That change does not start withbranding departments, but with you as anindividual.

Malcolm Allan

Wbranding when it is aligned withtransparency of decision-makingand operations, authenticity of beliefabout self and the purpose of ourorganizations, and the need torecognize that our people—youincluded—are our organizations’true brand. This is about whatorganizations do and say in theirinteractions with each other, theircustomers, suppliers, stakeholdersand the media.

We are not just arguing forbranding to “clean up its act”; we arearguing for branding and the otherdisciplines, functions and profes-sions involved in organizations’operations—business in particular,but also including government andthe public sector—to reconsiderseriously their current modusoperandi and modus vivendi, the waythey operate and the way they think,and ask themselves if it is as trulyeffective and of value as they hope itmight be.

The issues we tackle in BeyondBranding affect the core of ourorganizations: how we see theirpurpose, their “cause”, their reasonfor coming into existence, how theygo about their business, how theytreat their customers, how they liveout their values, how they deliver ontheir promises and how thosepromises are framed. These are allcontributors to their brand andaffect it.

ITH THEpublication of

Beyond Branding,we have com-

menced a debateon the real value of

Malcolm Allan, Dip.TP, M.Sc. is himself very well beyondbranding. He is the founder and a director of threecompanies: Inergy, which specializes in the creation ofintellectual capital through creativity and innovation;atLeadership (Authentic Transformational Leadership), acompany which enables individuals and groups to realizetheir leadership potential and the development of people asthe true brand of organizations; and Placebrands, a companywhich, as its name suggests, enables places to develop theirbrand, which he created with Simon Anholt, Sicco VanGelder and Niclas Ljungberg.


On the web site of one of mycompanies (www.atLeadership.com/customers.html), I have set out a listof the characteristics of the type oforganizations that we wish to workwith, summarized below. Thesedescribe the kind of organizationsthat are going beyond branding aswe currently experience it, beyondthe derisory treatment of employeesand customers that we all too oftenobserve and experience, moving intoa state of “well-being” that is basedon a clear “cause” for their existence.They do so with a clarity of vision onhow they will live up to that cause,making it easy for both employeesand customers to relate to them,through being entirely transparentabout who they are, what they doand what they can do for you. Theyare organizations that:• are led by individuals who truly

know themselves and what theywant to do, who are aligned to thevision, cause or purpose of theirorganization, and whose beliefsand values are in line with thoseof the organization;

• are led by individuals who taketheir responsibility for leadershipseriously, recognizing that it isdifferent from management andthat it is a crucial determinant ofhow their organization and theirpeople perform;

• recognize that their peoplematter and that they are theirtrue brand in that all that they sayand do conveys what the organi-zation is about to customers andstakeholders;

• know that the potential of theirpeople is the real source of theircompetitive edge or their serviceprovision;

• invest in their people, in theirskills and competences, to enablethem to produce fantasticproducts and provide exemplarycustomer service;

• value learning and encouragetheir people to constantly learnthrough all that they do, sharingwhat they know and the lessonsthey learn with each other,customers and stakeholders;

• value what their people know anduse it as the basis for innovationto develop new products andservices;

• value creativity and innovationand create cultures in which theyare supported as the basis forimproved or new products andservices;

• effectively manage their knowl-edge of their people, what theydo, their products and services,their customers, their competi-tors, the markets and the envi-ronment in which they operate;

• recognize that in addition to theirresponsibilities to their people,their customers and theirshareholders, they have responsi-bilities to stakeholders and thosearound them where they operatein a wider community;

• recognize that they can make acontribution to improving theenvironment and communities inwhich they operate.

Is this too much to ask of organi-zations? Is it too much to ask of ourinstitutions in the public sector? Is ittoo much to ask of self?

Just imagine how it must feel towork in line with your own values, tobe working for an organizationwhose values re}ect yours, forcustomers who truly value what youprovide to them or make for them,for a community which values yourbeing in its midst and for a societythat regards you as value-adding inall that you do.

Can you feel what it might be liketo be a responsible person, in aresponsible workplace, with aresponsible organization, one that isopen, transparent, true to its values?

Can you feel how well you would bein that situation? Feel the energy, theintent to add value, the desire to addto the sum total of the world’sachievements, the satisfaction of doingso, not in some smug way but inknowing you have made a differenceof value. Of course you can. We haveall felt like this at some time in ourlives. We can remember how well wefelt in doing so. The power of thehuman imagination is phenomenal.

So, ask yourself this: why do I notfeel like this all of the time or a lot ofthe time? What can I do to begin theprocess of creating this feeling? Ifyou have ever doubted the effect thatone well intentioned, thoughtful,committed and purposeful person canhave on the world, think again. Youare capable of change and of changingthe part of the world you inhabit.

Whether or not you are involvedin the functional activity of brandingdoes not matter. You are part of thebrand of your organization. How youoperate within it, what you say aboutit, what you believe about it, getsconveyed by you to its customers,shareholders and others.

You are also brand you. How youoperate, how you treat your fellowworkers and others re}ects upon thebrand of your organization. So,given this closeness of associationand of potential alignment, if youcare about your brand, and that ofyour organization, you can takeaction to go beyond the currentlimitations of deed and thought inhow branding is practised, and takeaction to change it and the actions ofothers who in}uence it.

Please let us know (visitwww.beyond-branding.com/contact.htm) about who you are andwhat you are doing to go well beyondbranding. Share your experiencewith others who may be motivated tofollow your example and build onwhat you are doing. •


Th

e Fr

on

t D

esk Stefan of Arabia

Stefan Engeseth—JY&AC’s man in Stockholmand author of Detective Marketing—wasrecently keynote speaker at the InternationalAdvertising Association Dubai chapter’sconference on relationship marketing.

STEFAN ENGESETH hasbuilt much of hisreputation on bridgingthe gap betweenconsumers andorganizations—making

him an ideal choice as keynotespeaker and seminar leader at theInternational Advertising Associa-tion (IAA)’s Dubai chapter’s confer-ence in the United Arab Emirates onJune 10, 2003.

With his topic ‘From masscommunication to be one with yourcustomers’, Stefan communicatedhis ideas of being “one” withconsumers—and relayed ways that itcould be done.

With the third edition of his bookDetective Marketing now out—a bookthat has been called everything froma ‘Swedish business bible’ (BrandStrategy) to ‘thought-provoking’(Brand Republic)—Stefan hopes tocommunicate more of his ideas atfuture seminars, including one withJack Yan in Stockholm on September18–19, 2003.

“One” comprises techniques tobring organizations to the level ofconsumers. The principle is thatorganizations have traditionallymarketed in a “them and us”fashion. “One” proposes thatcompanies move their boundariesoutward to include consumers as acommunity. His book details readyways Ikea, for example, can bring apractically Napsteresque exampleinto its organization (without piracy,of course).

Earlier this year, Stefan’s advicefor Saab—hot on the heels of GMannouncing that Saab’s car R&Dwould be moved to Opel in Rüssel-heim, Germany—included uniquelynumbering 70,000 Saab cars for acompetition that could involvepeople spotting the cars and touringSweden. The article was published inCAP Online at <http://jya.net/cap/2003/0124fe0.shtml>. •

Below: Stefan Engeseth autographshis latest Detective Marketing.Bottom: In action in Dubai, UAE askeynote speaker, delivering hismessage on “One”.


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TypographysupplementJY&A Consulting’s sister company, JY&AImaging (incorporating the JY&A Fonts label),prepares to launch its new typefaces. Weexamine these and a few earlier releases.

MANY a typo-grapher will tellyou that typogra-phy and typefacesare fundamentalto branding. On

the Wireality discussion list run byGrapefruit Design in Romania(www.wireality.com), conversationsfrequently turn to type. Granted,Wireality may have been moreheavily frequented by designers—it’squite different from the strategic andpolicy issues being discussed at theBrand Hut (groups.yahoo.com/group/brandhut) , but operationally,typography can never be taken forgranted in this profession.

When CAP began as a publicmagazine in 1992, it was a mouth-piece for all of Jack Yan & Associates,not just JY&A Consulting. Thisspecial feature—really an adver-torial—is a throwback of sorts tothose earlier days.

But why would fonts—as they arepretty much always known in today’svernacular—be of any signi{canceto branding experts? The simplestexample is one we often give: thechances of internal staff havingcontact with the brand are fargreater when it comes to memo-randa and internal newsletters. Andif these are typeset in Arial or TimesNew Roman, then how does all that

identity development expenditurehelp?

Therefore, it becomes little surprisethat some major corporations spendtens of thousands, if not more, ongetting a corporate typeface that isnot shared with anyone.

Getting things printed with thelogo in full colour splendour is anexpensive business—too expensivefor memoranda around the of{ce.Yet organizations wish to reinforcethe vision and impress it on theirstaff. An investment made in anexclusive corporate typeface thenbegins to make perfect sense,because the expenditure amounts tomere cents per employee.

JY&A Fonts has worked onnumerous accounts internationallysince its beginnings in the late 1980s.Jack Yan’s initial designs wererejected, which turned out to be ablessing in disguise when thecompany began digitalizing thework—there were no intellectualproperty con}icts. After that,obtaining distributors becameeasier. It seemed it wasn’t that thedesigns were bad, but that somecompanies, themselves experiencingdif{culties as Adobe’s PostScriptlanguage began to make theirproprietary systems obsolete, didn’twant the expenditure of publishingan unknown’s work.

Since its {rst internationalcontracts in 1993–4, JY&A Fonts hashad a steady release programme.New typefaces have included JYIntegrity, the most “pointed-at”design in the range. Jure Stojan’s JYKoliba (2000–1), JY Raj (2002) andJY Klin (2003) have brought a moreyouthful European mentality to theonce exclusively antipodean range,while display typefaces from AntonioGonzález de Santiago, DavidPhilpott and Greg Bastin have addedvariety to the label.

New typefaces are awaited not justfrom this typefoundry but fromothers, as they offer those chargedwith translating visions and strate-gies into workable designs moreoptions. Since every organization isdifferent, it should be uniquelyexpressed typographically (if it canafford it). There is some sense insaying that a design conceived in the2000s will be better suited to a branddeveloped in the 2000s—a knowl-edge that keeps the type designprofession humming.

In the mid-1990s, JY&A Fontsparticipated in the development ofApple’s QuickDraw GX, a formatwhich did see the light of day butnever caught the public’s imagina-tion. The Adobe–Microsoft Open-Type technology, however, has. Thisyear, the {rst two OpenType fontsmake their début: JY IntegrityRoman and JY Klin.

Both fonts have additionalcharacters that can be accessedthrough menus in OpenType-compliant programs such as AdobeInDesign.

On the following pages are apromotion on JY&A Fonts’ mostrecent typeface designs. Many of thebranding {eld’s possibilities arecovered: from classy (JY Koliba) tocheerful (JY Boomerang, shapedlike—what else?—boomerangs). •


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hy

JY KlinJure Stojan, designer of JY Kolibaand JY Raj, has created a new fam-ily of display typefaces: JY Klin.Along with JY Integrity Roman, ithas been released in OpenTypeformat as well as PostScript Type 1and TrueType.

In addition, Klin is available withalternative letterforms. JY KlinAlternatives is more }owing, withinventive cursive features but is aroman. The letters can be mixedwith the roman effectively, thanksto the same skeleton and x-height,or it may be treated as a secondarytypeface for emphasis.

Says Stojan, ‘It was born out myfrustration with layout [artists]and their taste for messing withdecent fonts (making the headlineoccupy the entire column width atany cost, for instance).

‘Therefore, I designed a “heavyduty” display font—it can beextended up to 120 per cent with-out any loss in quality (it is fairlycondensed, so no one could thinkof squeezing it any further). I evenused the font, stretched by thevery 120 per cent, for 10 pointtext and the result was surpris-ingly legible (given some peculiardetails prominent at display size).’

TM


It is possible to put Stojan’s

claim to the test. At a text

size (here set as 10/12 pt),

and falsely stretched by an

extra 20 per cent, JY Klin does

indeed remain legible. With

some designers choosing to

break (or not knowing) the

rules about display and text,

Klin is a refreshing solution.

Stojan also points out that

he wanted to create a low-

contrast typeface. There is

only an optical correction of

the horizontal–vertical ratio.

‘I designed one weight only(my experiments with boldercuts were rather unsuccess-ful), aligning and OSF, andalternative lowercase letters.’

While JY Klin can be adapt-

ed to text sizes, it is perhaps

a better complement to JY Raj

(used below), an earlier

typeface family by Stojan.

Elegant andrestrained 123JY Klin

Elegant andrestrained 123JY Klin Alternatives

JY Klin OpenType has characters from both the Regular andAlternative fonts.

What does klin mean?

A word no longer used in itsoriginal, denotative form, klin isstill in use in everyday Slovenian,including in some popularexpressions. There are de{nitionsincluding wedge, peg, pin andspike, but Stojan believes mostSlovenians know the word to beakin to the in{nitives to give upor cures—used in the sense ofdrinks cure hangovers.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÆŒ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzß{}æœ

1234567890 (‘!$£¤¥&%?.,:;’)

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÆŒabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzß{}æœ1234567890 (‘!$£¤¥&%?.,:;’)


JY KolibaJY Koliba is one of the mostelegant sans serif familieswe have ever seen. Inspired byarchitecture and hand-letteredposters of the 1940s, Koliba makesa statement that is very 21st cen-tury. When we {rst laid eyeson designer Jure Stojan’s workin mid-2000, we were hooked.Fine-tuned with between 2,800and 3,330 kerning pairs perfont, a full Latin glyph comple-ment and TrueType kerning sup-port for Stojan’s Slovenianmother tongue, Koliba is set tobe one of the foundry’s bestloved sans serifs.

JY Koliba Ultra Light

JY Koliba Ultra Light Italic

JY Koliba Roman

JY Koliba Italic

JY Koliba Bold

JY Koliba Bold Italic

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Typ

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rap

hy


Elegant and restrained 123 JY&A FElegant and restrained 123 JY&A FontElegant and restrained 123Elegant and restrained 123 JYElegant and restrainedElegant and restrained 1

‘K OLIBA initially started asan experiment in naïvelettering and exaggeration,’

says its designer, JureStojan. ‘The design was inspiredby various display alphabets, asshowcased on book coversdesigned in the 1940s by Sloven-ian architects.’

Unlike Eaglefeather, Tekton andITC Rennie Mackintosh, based onthe hand-lettering of Frank LloydWright, Francis Ching and CharlesRennie Mackintosh respectively,Stojan’s Koliba brings a taste ofsouthern Europe to the typo-

graphic palette. It is also notcrafted after any one architect’slettering, but a style whichprevailed in the 1940s. Its charac-teristics were carefully studied byStojan for Koliba.

‘The architectural drawing ofthat time was meticulouslyprecise and well organized, atendency also re}ected in letter-ing.’ The era did not see post-modern forms, rather a stricteradherence to Vitruvius’s de{ni-tions of modernist architecture.

The lettering has a certainmodernism to it, re}ecting the

moves that had seen the rise ofsans serifs in Germany and theevolution of functional anddemocratic design taking place inSweden in the early twentiethcentury. But there is also classi-cism in Koliba’s design.

The German in}uence onSlovenia is no surprise, not leastdue to geographical proximity.After the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian empire after WorldWar I, many Slovenian scholarsreturned from Germany. Architec-ture bene{ted from this, with IvanVurnik, who had worked under








Otto Wagner in Vienna, and JozePlecnik forming the architecturaldepartment of the University ofLjubljana in 1921.

Plecnik was interested inexpressing his architecture with amodernized classical style, whichimpacted on the university.

This newfound romanticismwith Slavic architecture wasshared with a move towardfunctionalism in the between-the-wars’ period. Students at theUniversity expecting Plecnik toespouse modernism—and {ndingthat he now favoured classicism—went to the Bauhaus in Weimarand other institutions. AugustCernigoj, one of the alumni, iscredited with bringing back themodernist, functionalist ideals.Others studied in Vienna underPeter Behrens.

Even after World War II, withthe advent of the SocialisticFederal Republic of Yugoslavia,architecture continued with amodernist–functionalist ideal.

Thus, certain letters show atension between (neo-)modernismand fussier, classical detailing:witness the g in both roman anditalic, one of the most dif{cultglyphs to create and in Koliba’scase, one of the most joyful tocontemplate.

Like many with an appreciationof the typographic form, Sloven-ian architects eschewed thelettering of commercially availablestencils and developed their owntypefaces.

‘The letters were geometricallyconstructed in two weights; todaywe would call them Thin andBold,’ says Stojan.

‘The thin letters were mostlyused in titling, whereas the morecomplicated bolder forms signi-{ed sections in constructionplans.’

Even today, two weights can beseen in plans where hand-letter-ing has been used. Expectedly, thestyles are personal to theirscribes.

As with graphic and fashiondesign, 1940s Slovenian architec-ture could be seen—at least from

the viewpoint of a writer in the2000s—as an adaptation of aZeitgeist, or the mood of thetimes. It is something that cannotbe readily said today, when tasteshave become more evidentlypluralistic, even though countriesin the developed world aregrowing closer technologically.

Would it then be fair to place apostmodern label on Koliba, withthe reference to classicism,particularly in the italic, and itsintent for twenty-{rst-centurycomputer usage? Its varying

angles, one for uppercase and asecond for lowercase, are reminis-cent of the model serif italicforms of centuries past.1 The tagmay not be unwarranted.

If it were not for postmodern-ism we might not have Koliba, atypeface family that does notreally separate past and present,instead treating all moments oftime as relevant in a moderntypographic dialogue.

Therefore, Stojan rightly insiststhat Koliba is not a revival. Theletters are simply ‘constructed in

Typ

og

rap

hy


MN

Koliba: otherweights &settingsFrom these pages, it’s clear thatJY Koliba is suited to text and dis-play work. JY Koliba Ultra Light isan excellent titling font when anartistic, gentler look is demanded.When italicized, another feel arises:personal, script-like and free fromthe obliqueness plagueing sans ser-ifs such as Linotype’s Neue Helvet-ica 26.

The bolds are legible, thanksto clever features such as inktraps. Though they are part ofthe book designs, too, they aremore greatly needed when de-signers tackle heavier weightsto maintain maximum legibil-ity.

JY Koliba Bold Italic, mean-while, has a very contemporarylook. The body means it main-tains substance even at lowerresolutions and works well onscreen. Despite the hand-letter-ing origins, it works well as aheadlining typeface. With theextended Latin support, JY Koli-ba is }exible in more ways thanone.

Notes1. Koliba Italic shares this trait with JY&A Fonts’

Décennie Express Italic, which was adapted from aserif design. CAP, vol. 4, no. 3, winter 2000.Garamond-based Claude Sans Italic, in acompetitor’s range, also has this feature.

For ordering, see http://jyanet.com/fonts/for online and of}ine retailers.

the manner of the ’40s, usingarchitectural templates featuringellipses.’ This is particularlyevident in that distinctive letter, g,in both roman and italic, in p andq, and equally so in all the numer-als. The straight-edge charactersshow a rigid design: A, K, M, N, V,W and Y have a strict, unbendingfeel to them.

The designs were completed oncomputer by both Stojan inSlovenia and JY&A staff, includingfounder Jack Yan, in New Zea-land.

With type design moving into amore personal and “crafted”realm in the 2000s after a decadeof chaos, Koliba is very much acreation of, by and for its time. Itis regimented and structuredtechnically yet retains a friendly,warm, personal feel.

The relatively wide body of thebook and bold weights suggestexcellent use for text. Koliba UltraLight, re}ecting the titlingtypeface made by an architect’spen, is narrower and true to hand-lettering habits (the larger the

letter, the narrower it is, and thethinner the strokes proportion-ally).

The typefaces will {nd favourwith designers who seek a warmyet disciplined style. Koliba willsell internationally through JY&AFonts’ network of distributors,on- and of}ine.

g g456 7890

Geometry and ellipses are seenbest in the letter g, shown at left.The letters also have a certainclassical quality about them thatdoes not re}ect strict modernism.Ingeniously, numerals for theroman are lining, while the italicsare oldstyle.

škratšola

Among the 2,800–3,300 kerningpairs in each Koliba font isTrueType support for Slovenian.Kerning pairs for caron-accentedglyphs are included as well assome for common Slovenian lettercombinations.

To aid legibility at small sizes, JureStojan has designed ink traps intonumerous glyphs. These are thesmall notches where ink can “run”in less-than-ideal printingsituations.


JY RajJure Stojan began Raj as a probono project for a studentmagazine. His aim: to produce areadable sans serif typeface thatstill made a statement. We thinkhe has succeeded.

Stojan said that he wanted the typefaces to still havea rounded feeling, but that he did not want to turnthem into clichés. ‘Lowercase stems have, therefore, atriangular ending, unlike the “cut-off” logic of Bell Gothic orMeta. The effect, thought, is similar: the x-height line is lessstatic, which improves readability. This design principlegives the Extra Bold weight a certain comic }air,’ he said.

JY Raj

JY Raj Italic

JY Raj Extra Bold

JY Raj Extra Bold Italic

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Typ

og

rap

hy gt

gtLeft: Stronger weight contrast betweenregular and Extra Bold has unexpectedconsequences: the heavier weight has aslight comic }air.

GMNRST

gyp abdAbove: More classically designed but carrying on the “rounded” theme, thecapitals are designed for text use.

Below: A characterful italic from Jure Stojan. Raj Italic has adistinctive and memorable lowercase—here the “round”theme can be seen. The overall forms demonstrate that Stojanmanaged to avoid using clichés such as following geometricforms like ITC Avant Garde Gothic, Futura or Helvetica.


Elegant and restrained 12Elegant and restrained 123Elegant and restrainedElegant and restrained

ONE of the reasons wewere drawn to JY Rajwas its distinctivestyle. There was a

mixture of both rounded andsquared forms at the same time,accomplished in some cases bythe use of fairly round counterswhile the overall shapes tendedto be contrast that more “natu-ral” form.

Arriving in December 2001, wenoticed some of Stojan’s style:there was the elegance and,

perhaps coincidentally, distinc-tive lowercase gs, while theuppercase tended to be moretraditional. However, the designwas more contemporary, espe-cially when typeset. It bridgesthe gap successfully betweentraditional design and moreadventurous ideas of what wemight be reading in the 21stcentury.

The extra bold weightremains legible at text sizes,too.

As with JY Koliba, Jack Yanand his team completed thecharacter sets (so there would beextended Latin characters) withStojan critiquing the processfrom Slovenia via email.

Released in 2002, JY Raj is one ofthree families designed by Stojanthat has brought a more contempo-rary feel to the JY&A Fonts range atthe beginning of the new millen-nium.


JY ARTS &CraFts

JY Arts & Crafts wasdesigned by Todd Hallock,

based loosely on themediæval, fairy-style

illustrations and decorativelettering of Jessie Marion

King (1876–1949) and theScottish style of Charles

Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928)of the Glasgow School,

from which Jessie receivedher training. The Scottish orGlasgow school style was a

countermovement tomainstream Art Nouveau.More complex characterforms are found in the

UPPERCASE positions.

JY B

oome

rang

Out

line

JY B

oome

rang

Med

ium

JY Circles DisplayJY Circles BookJY Circles, designed byDavid Philpott, was his firsttypeface family which hedeveloped while a student atMassey University.

Meant to reflect inte-grated circuitry, Philpottcreated display and book

versions in record time,complete with kerningpairs.

The text and displayfonts are clearly related,with the usual adjustmentsof x-height, character widthand stroke contrast made.

Typ

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It’s interesting that JY&A Fonts—which, for many years, relied onits Australasian origins in itsmarketing—actually lacked atypeface that paid tribute to itsorigins. That changed when GregBastin, a Melbourne-basedgraphic artist, submitted JYBoomerang.

Existing as individual glyphs,Bastin had used Boomerang ongreeting cards and personalprojects. David Philpott, whocreated JY Circles and has workedwith Jack Yan on numerous typeprojects, turned BoomerangMedium and Outline into twofonts based on Bastin’s designs.

Bastin continues to be activein art. He paints and draws andrecently held a solo art exhibi-tion. His painting has led him toan interest in wildlife art, which‘led to a greater appreciation ofAustraliana in general.’

His greeting cards have thisAustraliana }avour, using Austral-ian icons. When he couldn’t {nda typeface that was “Australian-looking”, he decided he wouldbase his own on the shape ofthat quintessential Ocker tool, aboomerang.

OpenType arrivesA second ypeface now available inOpenType is jy InteHiy Roman. Jy&a Fontshas ensured that its OpenType o\eringshave more fea^res. In InteHiy’s case,there are small caps, alternaIve characers(that would normally be found in theAlternaIves font), fracions and otherglyphs.

0e plan to make InteHiy an OpenTypefont has been around since the days ofQuickDraw 1. It was originally designed forthe format—but lack of market acceptanceof the {rs 1 releases put paid to that idea.

OpenType, with a Heater suite offea^res, {nally allowed jy InteHiy de-signer Jack Yan to realize his original planFom 1994–5 for what has proved to be oneof jy&a Fonts’ bes sellers.

Jy Klin’s separate PosScript andTrueType fonts, as with jy InteHiy, retailat $39, with OpenType at $49.

DisplayfontsDisplay fonts present nov-elty, particularly for indi-vidual advertising cam-paigns where a distinct}avour is called for. Twodisplay packages from JY&AFonts, priced at US$105(each with {ve fonts), makethese more accessible thanever.

jy ÆtnaRoman LF/OSFItalic LF/OSFMedium LF/OSFMedium Italic LF/OSFBold LF/OSFBold Italic LF/OSFRoman scosf

Medium scosf

acsivemR Roman Alternatives

acfsSemn Italic Alternatives

!@#/456UIOasdzxcBNM Roman Fractions

Roman Expert

JY Arts & Crafts

JY BoomerangRegularOutline

JY CirclesBookDisplay

jy COMIC PRO

jy DécennieRoman LF/OSFItalic LF/OSFBold LF/OSFBold Italic LF/OSFRoman scosf

Roman Expert

Italic Expert

JY Décennie TitlingRomanItalic

JY Décennie ExpressRoman LF/OSF

Italic LF/OSFBold LF/OSFBold Italic LF/OSFHeavy LF/OSFHeavy Italic LF/OSFRoman scosf

jy InteHiyRoman LF/OSF/OpenTypeItalic LF/OSFMedium LF/OSFMedium Italic LF/OSFBold LF/OSFBold Italic LF/OSFacfgHhkPrstyRRoman Alternatives

acefgHkmnszItalic Alternatives

!@#/456UIOasdzNZcbVm Roman Fractions

Roman scosf

JY KlinRegular/OpenType

Alternatives

JY KolibaUltra LightUltra Light ItalicRomanItalicBoldBold Italic

jy PinnacleRoman LF/OSFItalic LF/OSFBold LF/OSFBold Italic LF/OSFRoman scosf

ace hkls_Roman Alternatives

acefklp0s=Italic Alternatives

LaCtrcHJQR

Cap and Small Cap Alternatives

JY RajRomanItalicBoldBold Italic

jy RebecaRoman LF/OSFItalic LF/OSFDemi OSFDemi Italic OSFBold OSFBold Italic OSFRoman scosf

jy TranquilityRoman LF/OSFItalic LF/OSFDemi LF/OSFDemi Italic LF/OSFBold LF/OSFBold Italic LF/OSFRoman scosf

!@#/456UIOqwezxbnZXC Fractions

!@#/456UIOqwecbnZXCN Italic Fractions

Yan Series 333 jyRoman LF/OSFItalic LF/OSFBold LF/OSFBold Italic LF/OSFBlack LF/OSFBlack Italic LF/OSFRoman scosf

Bold scosf

acfjksry Italic Alternatives

The JY&A Fonts range.

Samples shown at 12/14·4 pt. All fontsavailable in PostScript Type 1 and TrueType,for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.

For the latest info and online purchasing,visit http://jya.net/fonts/.

inevitable, rhetorical question: ifconsumers can become moreinvolved via the internet andin}uence product developmentprogrammes, can voters sway policythrough electronic means wheretheir say has some binding, legaleffect? It is a mere, quantum leapfrom the idea of binding Swissreferenda—but that may be a long-term aim.

The nation brand ininternational relations:parting ideas

As with branding in commerce, theuse of branding principles in therealm of international relations mustnot fall into the same traps.

First, any such programme mustbe tied to a comprehensive nationbranding system. Secondly, thismust be top-driven. It must exhibitcooperation between departments,be properly resourced and possesscommitment from the state. Thirdly,it must be participative, buildingupon democratic notions and takingthem further. If there is a threat tocurrent western democracies, it willnot come from new ideologies, butgrass-roots parties that claim to actas the servants of the people, ratherthan their overlords. This essentialtruth—listening, then acting, on theelectorate’s wishes—is conceivablywhy the New Zealand Green Partyhas won more support amongst thecynical 19- and 20-year-old voterthan the major two parties.31

More often than not, nationbranding is done half-heartedlybecause there is no clear authority orbudget. In 21st-century inter-national relations, there is littleexcuse not to practise it and toprovide adequate resources. TheUnited States, meanwhile, would bewise to take a lead in addressing itscritics using internationally recog-

nized conventions and understand-ing its audiences. It has a melting-pot population which provide it withan advantage in proper nationbranding, something that somecorporations themselves have beenslow to realize. Winning hearts andminds with the truth is compelling;it could bring not only one’s ownnationals on side, but alliancepartners in the form of nation states.

With superpower status comessuperpower responsibility to take alead, to legitimize the UN Charterand Security Council declarationsunder which it, and other nationswho are UN members, operate. Thetools are present in branding, readyto be used for both introspectionand external communication.

Ignoring these concepts does theinternational community, somethingcited by every administration inaddition to Ko{ Annan’s comments,no favours. It would be hypocritical(or worse) to go against its con-science through spin or unwarrantedaction; it would offend the value weplace on human life and basic rightsto resort to realpolitik at the expenseof everything else. •

Notes1 LLB, BCA (Hons.), MCA. Editorial

board member, Journal of BrandManagement. Acknowledgementsto the Journal of Brand Manage-ment.

2 N. Klein: No Logo: Taking Aim at theBrand Bullies. New York: Picador2000.

3 As described by J. Hari: ‘Whateverhappened to No Logo?’, NewStatesman, November 11, 2002, pp.20–2.

4 For instance, J. Yan: ‘The moralglobalist’, CAP Online, May 2, 2001,<http://jya.net/cap/2001/0502fe0.shtml>; J. Yan: ‘Fightingglobalization with globalization’, CAPOnline, February 21, 2002, <http://jya.net/cap/2002/0221fe0.shtml>;J. Yan: ‘Brands transcend econom-ics (and The Economist)’, CAPOnline, September 25, 2001,<http://jya.net/cap/2002/0925fe0.shtml>.

5 J. Yan: ‘Corporate responsibility andthe brands of tomorrow’, Journal of

Branding and theinternational communitycontinued from p. 11

Brand Management, vol. 10, nos. 4–5, 2003, pp. 290–302. Meanwhile,young Canadians are behind theactivist site TakingITGlobal, foundedby a 19- and a 21-year-old. Thedemographic there is globallyminded enough to take a lead andattend the World Summit onSustainable Development inJohannesburg in 2002.

6 For some (mostly American) cases,see M. Lewis: Next: the Future JustHappened. New York: W. W. Norton2001. An interesting case was thatof Justin Frankel, who sold hiscompany, Nullsoft, which wasbased around programs hedesigned as a student, to AmericaOnline for somewhere between $70million and $100 million. Ibid., at pp.112–13.

7 K. Annan: ‘Problems withoutpassports’, Foreign Policy, October2002, pp. 30–1.

8 Ibid., at p. 31.9 M. Kelly: The Divine Right of Capital:

Dethroning the Corporate Aristoc-racy. San Francisco: Berrett–Koehler2001.

10 See J. Yan: ‘The business ofidentity’, CAP Print, vol. 4, no. 3,winter 2000, pp. 4–10, 22.

11 J. Yan: ‘The moral globalist’, op. cit.12 J. Yan, based on T. Gad, S. van

Gelder, N. Ind, T. Kitchin, C. Macrae,A. Moore, J. Moore, A. Rosencreutzand J. Yan: ‘The brand manifesto’,CAP Online, September 9, 2002<http://jya.net/cap/2002/0909fe0.shtml>; q.v. J. Yan: ‘Brand2010’, Agenda, no. 13, June 2003,pp. 4–5.

13 See the special edition on this topicof the Journal of Brand Manage-ment, vol. 9, nos. 4–5, April 2002.The topic may have been mostwidely encouraged by a BBC MoneyProgramme special on brandingBritain.

14 W. Olins: Trading Identities: WhyCountries and Companies AreTaking on Each Other’s Roles.London: Foreign Policy Centre2000; q.v. for specifics Gilmore: ‘Acountry—can it be repositioned?Spain—the success story of countrybranding’, Journal of BrandManagement, vol. 9, nos. 4–5, April2002, pp. 281–93.

15 M. Leonard: ‘Diplomacy by OtherMeans’, Foreign Policy, October2002, pp. 48–56, at p. 50, adaptedfrom M. Leonard, C. Stead and C.Smewing: Public Diplomacy.London: Foreign Policy Centre2002.

16 G. P. Shultz: ‘Hot preemption’,



Hoover Digest, no. 3, 2002, pp. 9–15, adapted from remarks by Shultzat the dedication of the George P.Shultz National Foreign AffairsTraining Center, Arlington, Va., May29, 2002.

17 Leonard, op. cit., at p. 54.18 G. P. Shultz: ‘Act now’, The Wash-

ington Post, September 6, 2002.19 B. Graham and D. Priest: ‘Pentagon

team told to seek details of Iraq-AlQaeda ties’, The Washington Post,October 25, 2002, p. A24.

20 As discussed by the author in anaddress to the Marknadsföreningeni Stockholm (MIS), Stockholm,Sweden, June 25, 2002.

21 Yan: ‘The moral globalist’, op. cit.22 M. Gimein: ‘You bought. They sold’,

Fortune, vol. 146, no. 4, September2, 2002, pp. 64–74.

23 S. Cropley: ‘Off the leash at last’,Autocar, October 23, 2002, pp. 58–9.

24 Yan et al: ‘The brand manifesto’, op.cit.; Yan: ‘Brand 2010’, op. cit.

25 N. Ind (ed.): Beyond Branding: Howthe New Values of Transparencyand Integrity Are Changing theWorld of Brands. London: KoganPage 2003.

26 ‘VW signs workers’ charter’, TheDominion, June 10, 2002, p. 19.

27 Leonard, op. cit., at p. 51.28 See also comments by R. Mathews

and W. Wacker: The Deviant’sAdvantage: How Fringe IdeasCreate Mass Markets. New York:Crown Business 2002, at p. 73.

29 M. Kelly: ‘The next step for CSR:building economic democracy’,Business Ethics, summer 2002, q.v.the summary by S. Waddock: ‘Fluffis not enough—managing responsi-bility for corporate citizenship’,Ethical Corporation, February 2002,<http://www.ethicalcorp.com/NewsTemplate.asp?IDNum=178>.

30 Leonard, op. cit., at p. 55.31 A. Laxon: ‘On the Green

rollercoaster’, The New ZealandHerald, July 22, 2002.

Notes1 Universal McCann, quoted in

Industry as a Partner for SustainableDevelopment: Advertising. Brus-sels: World Federation of Adver-tisers (WPA), European Associationof Communications Agencies(EACA) and United Nations Environ-ment Programme 2002.

2 IMD/PIMS: A Virtuous Cycle:Innovation, Consumer Value, andCommunication. Brussels: AIMEuropean Brands Association 2000.

3 ICF Kaiser: Company Interviews andBureau of Economic Analysis,quoted in Scottish Enterprise:Global Companies Enquiry.Glasgow: Scottish Enterprise 1999.

4 Naomi Klein: No Logo. London:Flamingo 2001.

5 Wally Olins: ‘Branding the Nation:the Historical Context’, in Journal ofBrand Management, vol. 9, nos. 4–5, April 2002, pp. 241–8.

6 Joseph Nye: The Paradox ofAmerican Power. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press 2002.

Brand new justice:why brands countcontinued from p. 21

But just suppose that those powerful

corporations and brand-owners were

distributed around the world a little more

evenly. Suppose that some of the global

mega-brands were actually produced by and

owned by companies in much poorer

countries. How different would our concerns

be today if the companies whose products

were manufactured in the sweatshops of

Puerto Rico and China were actually Puerto

Rican or Chinese? How would our corporate

social responsibility agenda look if Nike were

Nigerian or Pepsi Peruvian?

The shift is already happening, saythe authors. Dealing with nationbranding and the forms of socialresponsibility, they examine whatcould result. And while the chaptersounds conceptual, once again—asexpected from the very practicalAnholt and van Gelder—it isfounded {rmly in reality and what ishappening today.

Ian Ryder’s chapter similarlysounds conceptual at {rst glance,dealing with anthropological issues.But he warns readers that ignoringhuman history is dangerous. Ifbrands do not evolve, then they arein trouble. They are social constructsand to be relevant, they must beresponsible and transparent, andaligned with society.

Jack Yan’s ‘The Brand Manifesto’almost brings the book full circle toits roots. Restating the manifesto’seight points, he looks at the emerg-ing consumers and their demands.They are socially responsible now, asevidenced by the {rms alreadyfounded by young enterpreneurs.And if companies choose to survivefor the long term, Yan gives a similarwarning to Ryder: brands have toalign themselves with these values asquickly as possible.

But not all the brand sins havebeen covered at this point. AlanMitchell’s ‘Brand Narcissism’ attackshow brands are super{cial, used forself-glori{cation. If a narcissist doesthe following:

Beyond Branding:a call to actioncontinued from p. 25


… they so routinely use people for their own

narcissistic ends they want as friends. In fact,

precisely because use other people for their

own ends, they have a habit of hurting and

disappointing, turning many a friend into an

enemy along the way

then brand narcissism is very similar.Narcissistic brands say they are theconsumer’s friend and turn out to be‘super{cial, exploitative, manipulativeand even dehumanizing.’

In the context of narcissism,Drucker was right when he regardedmarketing—and branding—a subsetof selling. It’s a reality that manymarketers don’t want to hear.

Mitchell traces why narcissismhappens and like a doctor dealingwith an illness, discovers the roots ofthe problem and prescribes a cure,in this case involving re-engineer-ing the relationship between buyersand sellers.

Have the authors ful{lled Ind’sintroduction? While the book itselfis not divided into four discretecategories, they are addressedindividually. However, in case onehas any doubt about how the themeshang together, Malcolm Allanconcludes the book with a {nalchapter with a challenge for readersto go ‘beyond branding’.

By taking it to the reader, Allanleaves the book with an activemessage: branding can create theworld you want. Involve the commu-nity you are in, collaborate withstakeholders, use the objectives youhave transparently declared—theseare ways a brand can move humanityforward. He does not believe theseare ‘warm and soft’ ideals, butnecessities for creating a trulysuccessful business today.

One could sum up this {nal call asthe quest for meaning in our world,rather than the quest for luxury—which partially sums up the purposeof the book.

Brands have tried to line thepockets of corporations for manyyears, especially in more recent ones.In doing so, they contribute to thelifestyles of only a privileged few in a

soulless fashion. Meaning, however,can be created from the techniquesbrands now have: a meaning forconsumers, who may buy more; ameaning for employees, who {ndgreater af{nity with the brand; ameaning for society, which brandscan truly connect to, help and grow.

And as Beyond Branding alsoshows, this meaning need not be atthe expense of robbing the rich togive to the poor.

Its recommendations can mean acomplete shift upwards for the wholeplanet so that the income gap isnarrowed, while real incomesaround the world rise.

Allan maintains, echoing thesentiment of many of his co-authorsafter writing their contributions, ‘Nowhaving had the time to properly readand digest those of the other authors, Iam strengthened in my view that wecollectively need to emphasize toreaders and reviewers that this book isa call to action for individuals, teamsand enterprises large and small. It hasto start with individual readersdeciding that they are with us inwhole or part and that they are goingto do something in their sphere ofin}uence as a contribution.’

It would almost seem imprudentfor people to ignore the collectivewisdom of some of the world’sleading branding experts in thediscipline’s most internationallyminded book, not just because of thehuman (and humanitarian) aims,but because the formula for a success-ful, 21st-century business is con-tained in, and clearly annunciatedfrom, its chapters. It is no surprise, afew months out from publication,that it is already generating a buzz inthe world of branding. After itspublication in October, the authorshope to both hold and share withreaders this collective responsibilityto do literally a world of good. •

Notes1 N. Klein: No Logo: Taking Aim at the

Brand Bullies. New York: Picador2000.

2 S. Anholt: Brand New Justice: theUpside of Global Branding. Oxford:Butterworth–Heinemann 2003.

3 J. Yan: ‘Social justice throughbranding’, CAP Online, March 17,2003, <http://www.jyanet.com/cap/2003/0317fe0.shtml>.

4 N. Ind (ed.): Beyond Branding: Howthe New Values of Transparencyand Integrity Are Changing theWorld of Brands. London: KoganPage 2003.

5 J. Yan, based on T. Gad, S. vanGelder, N. Ind, T. Kitchin, C. Macrae,A. Moore, J. Moore, A. Rosencreutzand J. Yan: ‘The brand manifesto’,CAP Online, September 9, 2002<http://jya.net/cap/2002/0909fe0.shtml>; q.v. J. Yan: ‘Brand2010’, Agenda, no. 13, June 2003,pp. 4–5.

6 M. Kelly: The Divine Right of Capital:Dethroning the Corporate Aristoc-racy. San Francisco: Berrett–Koehler2001.

7 C. Macrae: World Class Brands.Reading, Mass.: Addison–Wesley1991.

8 C. Macrae: The Brand CharteringHandbook: How Brand Organisa-tions Learn ‘Living Scripts’. London:Economist Intelligence Unit andReading, Mass.: Addison–Wesley1996.

9 Kelly, op. cit., at p. 115.10 Ibid., at pp. 103–4.11 N. Ind: The Corporate Image:

Strategies for Effective IdentityProgrammes. London: Kogan Page1990.

12 N. Ind: Living the Brand: How toTransform Every Member of YourOrganization into a Brand Cham-pion. London: Kogan Page 2001.

13 N. Ind.: Terence Conran: theAuthorised Biography. London:Sidgwick & Jackson 1995.

14 T. Gad and A. Rosencreutz:Managing Brand Me. London:Momentum 2002.

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