Establish a unique indentity in today's marketplace is a challenge. So how does one create a lasting impression?
On an island off the Japanese coast, anthropologists arrived to observe the habits of monkeys who were the sole inhabitants of this island. The monkeys, the exclusive inhabitants of the island were living in harmony on a diet of root vegetables, berries, nuts and seeds. One day, one of the monkeys, called Susan by the anthropologists was scurrying deep in the earth and happened on a sweet potato. Normally the practice would be to eat it straight away without washing it. The anthropologist, by mimicking the action, showed Susan how to wash the sweet potato. One day they observed that Susan actually took the sweet potato to the ocean and washed it. Before long, her family had included the washing of the sweet potato as part of their daily routine. After a few months, the whole island was scurrying beneath the earth, searching for sweet potatoes and washing them. This is where it gets interesting.
A sister island quite some kilometres away was also inhabited solely by monkeys.
They too started incorporating the washing of sweet potatoes as part of their daily routine. Now how did this happen? Monkeys didn’t swim to the first island and see
what their neighbours were up to. Nor did birds land and inform the monkeys of this sensational new way of eating sweet potatoes. So what’s the answer?
Rupert Sheldrake PHD called it the Hypothesis of Formative Causation, or the 100th monkey principle to us normal mortals. In other words, when enough members of a population incorporate a pattern of thinking or behaviour into their lives, then suddenly there is a quantum leap in consciousness and those habits are inbred into the system,
so to speak. For example, crystals of a given kind are influenced by all past crystals
of that kind, date palms by past date palms, giraffes by past giraffes, etc. In the human realm this is similar to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.
If you equate this observation to the human population, there is cause to believe that society is moving to a higher level of consciousness, awareness and sophistication. Consumers are saying “no” to being constantly sold to by advertising agencies. Consumers are saying “no” to being lied to – witness the demonstrations against the
Iraq War in the UK and to the collapse of Enron and the subsequent enactment of the Sarbanes Oxley Act which forces companies by law to tell the truth on their balance sheet or face punitive consequences.
The rise of blogs, podcasts, email, videocasts, digital diaries, personal video recorders, text messages and the imminent convergence of telecoms and media are providing a powerful voice for consumers to say this is what we want, or not. Companies and their communication agencies have to move with it, or be superseded by more self-actualised brands who understand that the power is now in the hands of the buyer.
Furthermore, communication of the brand, given the fragmentation of media has to reside at the customer touch points, which means your staff have to be the brand ambassadors -not just by paying lip service, but truly by enrolling in the Vision, Mission and Values and expressing it through their everyday contact with the customer.
So the question now is how does one motivate staff to fully endorse and believe as well as communicate the brand values to customers? Especially when one takes into account that in a recent survey of 1000 school leavers, 82% said that they were looking for a job that was “personally fulfilling”. Furthermore, 62% said that they were looking for more of a “balance between work and life”, i.e. more time for themselves. So the days of offering more rewards by way of money, status or perks are just not working anymore with an increasingly educated, aware and sophisticated population.
These days more and more people are working from home, increasing numbers of people are leaving corporate life to set up on their own or take a sabbatical and do some worthwhile charity service. The days of working for one company for 35 years to get the gold watch on retirement are over. In our increasingly fast-paced, global world, “meaning” and “being” are taking centre stage in our lives.
What we mean by this is that companies need to stand for something that is more than just about the money or product or service on offer. They must embrace a value system that resonates with our desire for “meaning” or “being” – a sense of purpose. If one looks at Maslow’s Hierarchical Principle of needs – (see picture 1), Level 4, which is where most of the developed world is at, is about outer directed self-validation and justification. We want to show the world and for the world to see that we are a success. But how many Porsche cars or designer sunglasses is it going to take to make us happy? This is where the backlash is occurring as we move up the scale towards a more “inner directed” value system. Here we are looking for honesty, integrity, and a value system we can believe in that resonates with our desire for meaning, fulfilment and self-actualisation.
The quantum leap takes place when we realize that brands are the single greatest gift that commerce has ever given culture. Brands are a shorthand for expressing who we are, what we’re like and they reflect our needs and aspirations. And people, you and I are using brands to define who we are or want to be. Companies are realising that brands are the only key differentiator between their offer and their competitors – as the saying goes: “a hotel without a brand is just a bed for the night”.
So the all-important “values” are taking their rightful place as companies embrace their responsibility to give something back – whether it is by way of charity, work in the community, adding value to their offer, or providing their staff with training programmes, flexi-time work structures or crèches for their children.
So branding is much more than a logo on a piece of packaging. It is the essence of who you are as a company and what you stand for. And the communication of it has to be holistic and consistent – internal as well as external and as a minimum must stand for something that is both meaningful and true, something we can believe in. How you communicate your brand on its journey to the customer and what it stands for is what makes the difference between ordinary brands and truly great brand. |
