Category Archives: The Journal

Viktor, a Russian friend of mine interested in the philosophical dimension of branding, and I are riding through California towards the Nevada border, following the route we got two weeks before from Stanley Moss at a dinner in the Ritz–Carlton Hotel, in Virginia.

The title of this short essay is a barely amusing paraphrase of the famous quotation from Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753). Berkeley was an idealist, which means, in philosophical terms, that he believed that mind predominates over matter. In fact Berkeley was something of an extremist among idealists, believing that matter, or the material world, does not actually exist at all.

The authors look at our times and wonder whether the world is on the brink of a second Belle Époque, a new era of humanistic thought and progress.

The author, who has worked on the internet since 1990, and used social networks such as Facebook and Twitter soon after their inception, looks at how these new media can impact on branding strategies and transparency.

This story about political transmission is excerpted from a forthcoming book of parables by Stanley Moss and Pierre d’Huy, entitled Legacy and Power, to be published in 2012.

This article was previously published as a chapter in the book Leadership Talks (2010), edited by De Baak Management Centre in the Netherlands. It proposes that there is no future for any organization without a conscious leadership.

What is a conscientious brand? This article explores the key features of a conscientious brand and the implications for brand management.

How Bahrain’s media landscape was changed by one man, and 11 Blackberries.

This article is directed to brand managers interested in building models for sustainable development and conscientious consumerism. The article is a version of a paper published in the Journal of Brand Management (2011).

Happiness is an illusory ideal which is neither the basis for working in an organization nor for managing it. It is more about the quest to find meaning in our lives and to attain a sense of fulfilment.

For many, CSR has been seen as a sticking plaster that could heal a company’s reputation and improve its appeal. How can we make CSR a core idea inside companies?

Everyday people are stepping up to the plate in creating apps about brands or events that resonate with them. Brand owners need to do their share if they are to maintain a means of engagement with their audiences.

The authors contrast the approaches and personalities of Thomas A. Edison and Nikola Tesla, and how the two types contribute to successful teams in modern organizations.

In January 2011, the Medinge Group’s annual Brands with a Conscience (BWAC) awards will be announced for their eighth consecutive year. What does this term represent? What are the awards, how were they created, how are they decided, who has won in the past and how can they be viewed in retrospect?

A short slide show on how enterprises are unbranding, or moderating their public positions, exploring avenues of greater discretion in brand strategy.

An English-language version of d’Huy’s article ‘Nul ne peut se jouer des signes’.

Yan cites the ‘Incredible India’ campaign as a strategic triumph. He calls it a good example of Nicholas Ind’s principle of “living the brand.”

This article argues that in future, places will function differently and that their governance is evolving into one where multiple stakeholders will come together to solve specific issues and that governments, although almost always involved, will be only one of the partners of such new alliances, coalitions and partnerships.

When brands make claims which they cannot support, stakeholders easily spot the ruse. Pierre d’Huy makes a semiotician’s case for the fact that signs can’t lie. In the philosophical universe, people won’t be misled.

Where the brand’s personality is seen to begin – often the first successful product – is critical to the brand’s credibility and its ability to stretch further over time. It’s all a matter of bridging the gaps in our minds so that we can accept and trust these brands in a new category.

This paper challenges ideas about resistance to change and by implication, the traditional model of brand building which suggests the dominance of the organisation in controlling a brand. In its place we will stress the value of movement and difference – both of which are inherent in people’s relationships with brands

Coping with translucency; preparing for transparency’ provides analysis and future insight for brand owners adapting to the world of social communications.

Harris introduces the technique he calls a visual Mind-Map via a supporting audio file. This alternative to the conventional PowerPoint presentation allows all the key points of a talk to coexist on a single page, and personalizes the process. Harris says he sometimes begins with a blank page, filling it in with participants in an interactive scenario.

Ultimately, change is simply what happens to us all, all of the time. The lesson is not in the amount of change we can handle, but in the way we manage that change.

In 1931 a young P&G executive wrote a document which proved crucial to the formation of ideas about contemporary brand management. But attitudes about branding have since grown up around the memo’s opportunistic policies. This article deconstructs McElroy’s directives, reassessing our perspectives on how brands need to be viewed in today’s post-globalisation strategic universe.

The author, a town planner and place and destination brand practitioner, discusses the challenges of creating place brand strategies for completely new types of urban development using the example of the emergence of places that combine retail, leisure, entertainment, sports, cultural and heritage facilities to a greater extent than has been seen hitherto.

The author challenges the myths of leadership definitions, and puts forward research on leadership that works, requiring the support of legends, communication and role-modelling.

Detroit has not ever used a brand orientation in its automakers’ marketing strategies, and it talks of trimming brands and numbers to allow it to compete. The author believes in being more focused on brands and not losing economies of scale, and building more of what consumers want. The tools are there, such as consumer-targeted blogs, but manufacturers need to use them.

This article introduces the argument that Swedish brands have moved beyond other countries’ positions on sustainability.

The real power and opportunity for using stories in organizations is in listening to stories, helping others to create their own authentic stories and making sense of the stories told.

The argument of this paper is a simple one: creating value for customers is an organization-wide responsibility. The author reconsiders the market orientation papers of Narver and Slater and Kohli and Jaworski and introduces the concept of Participatory Market Orientation.

This paper tries to answer critical questions by describing the criteria and factors that contribute to successful place branding. By assessing the place, the players and the plans they make, it is possible to predict the likely success of a place branding initiative.

The rules are different for chartered bodies. Not the fundamentals of brand strategy, clearly, but the processes and procedures of development and execution, as the author reveals.

This paper considers the importance of employees in the process of building customer experience. It states that internal investment is rewarded with consistent, quality customer exchanges. Brand values are presented as the currency to measure the worth of exchanges between organizations and their customers. The paper concludes by presenting a case study of the mobile operator, Orange, during the period 1994–2003.

Pierre d’Huy’s commentary of the ubiquitous application, tailored to English speakers.

Is PowerPoint an aid to communication or destructive force in the art of rhetoric? This essay in French deconstructs the controversial Microsoft presentation program from the point of view of a mediologist, making references to works by Roland Barthes and Régis Debray to support its conclusions.

Many strategies built by organizations are ineffective. Organizations tend to build snapshots instead of harnessing momentum.

Places—countries, regions and cities—are increasingly developing strategies for brands. This is because they find themselves in competition with each other to retain and attract talented and creative people, innovative businesses, investors and consumers. The goal: offer valuable services and meaningful experiences to those they seek to influence.

In the world of Web 2·0, the process surrounding vision, research, exposition and image differ slightly, even if the ingredients of brand equity remain the same. Loose vision, informal research and tapping into consumer advocacy all play a critical role.

Organizations often experience failure, either because of a flawed vision, or a shortfall of values. How then do we align internal and external communications to create sustainable competitive advantage as a route to a strong brand reputation?

The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007 Ava Maria Hakim  IBM Global Solutions, Business Transformation Outsourcing hakimava@us.ibm.com Microsoft Word version Thomas Watson, who helped grow one of the first truly global organizations, is quoted as saying ‘Good design is good business’. For the maverick of IBM, ‘Design must reflect the practical [...]

An historically significant article written in 2004 examining the intellectual and semiotic underpinnings of brands with conscience. It is published with the permission of the estate of Colin Morley; his vision helped shaped Medinge’s yearly Brands with a Conscience awards, inspiring our yearly presentation to an NGO, named in his memory.

This paper argues that rather than relying on the abstraction of research to get close to the customer, brand managers should work at building genuine relationships with customers by opening up the boundaries of the organization

1. Branding unites people’s passions. People are not born financial creatures. We recognize that revenue and returns on investment do not concern the majority of people. Branding respects that we are passionate people who are inspired and who have freedom. Therefore, branding activities must be human and humane. Branding, not numbers, provides the interface between [...]