Stanley Moss (CEO)

DiGanZi / Seal Beach, Calif. / USA
info@diganzi.com
 
Stanley Moss, brand philosopher, writer, and artist divides his time between Europe and Southern California, where his business interests are centred. A disciple of designers Armin Hofmann, Fritz Gottschalk and Paul Rand, he was based in NYC for 25 years, where he created brand solutions for clients like Citibank, Coca-Cola, the French American Chamber of Commerce, Drexel Burnham Lambert, UC Berkeley, Intel, The New York Times and the American Hotel & Motel Association. Moss is founder and principal of Diganzi, a brand consultancy. Today his practice centres on the expression of humanistic values in the brand discipline, for clients like Philips, Honeywell, and the City of London. In February 2006 he was named CEO of the Medinge Group, the Stockholm-based think-tank on international branding. He also worked as a fine artist, sponsored by Absolut and Johnnie Walker Black Label, and exhibited landscapes in the US State Department Art in Embassies programme. He had a long association with the NY art journal BOMB as director and designer. His New Wave Cookbook is in the permanent collection of the MoMA NY. He acts as Travel Editor for Lucire, a NZ fashion magazine. Mr Moss finds time to serve on the Boards of the Rocket Mavericks Foundation, the Advisory Board of Proton Business Schools of Indore and Ahmedabad, and is a contributing editor to the London-based quarterly, The Drawbridge.

Speaking

Organic Branding
Contrary to hostile conjecture, branding is not dead; it’s just morphing. Stanley Moss regards brands as organic, fractal, evolving entities, and that a brand isn’t only a promise or a conversation. It is, Moss says, a journey. In order to succeed, brands need to be aware of the reality of their ongoing transformation. Using examples of prominent global companies, Moss describes the rise and fall of great brands, ending his speech with who did well and why.

Tracking the Brand 2000-2010
Five years ago companies were just beginning to hear stirrings of the words Corporate Social Responsibility. Sustainability, forget about it, nobody knew. Today we’re in a consciousness competition, trying to remake our brands authentic, responsible and digital at the same time. Plus there’s all those former ad people running around trying to call themselves brand experts, muddying the waters. So what’s the next CSR? A time telescope, looking backward and forward.

The Brand As Jihad
Not a speech for everyone. Moss begins by reading an 850-word chapter excerpt from an unpublished novel entitled The Book of Deals, written in 2001. In it, the history of the Kent cigarette brand is framed in the language of holy war waged on consumers. An entertaining take on vintage commercial branding, meticulously researched with lots of interesting vocabulary. It’s also a parable about the condition of spirituality in our culture.

Trying Not To Look Big
Some companies’ credibility is built on not appearing big, no matter what their size. Bigger wasn’t better. Big Gulp + Big Mac= headed for the rocks? The speech discusses how we can free ourselves from a mass-proliferated way of thinking that the only desirable brand is a big brand. How can corporate culture transform, if growth is removed as a reason?

Quiet brands/Invisible brands (PDF presentation)

Writing

Demythologising the McElroy memo
The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 3, no. 1, 2009

Who’s Kidding Who?
Original article by Pierre D’Huy. Translated from French by Stanley Moss.
The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 3, no. 1, 2009

The Next Wave of Sustainability Hits Swedish Brands (with Thomas Gad)
This article introduces the argument that Swedish brands have moved beyond other countries’ positions on sustainability.
The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008

PowerPoint: Rhetoric Machine
Pierre d’Huy’s commentary of the ubiquitous application, tailored to English speakers by Stanley Moss.
The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007