The article is a version of a paper published in the Journal of Brand Management (2011).

Ava Maria Hakim
IBM Global Solutions
hakimava@us.ibm.com

The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 5, no. 1, 2011

THE TRULY CONSCIENTIOUS BRAND cannot exist in a society based on consumerism. The challenge lies in the sociology of capitalism and a system which has created an environment of producers and consumers that support each other in an ongoing cycle of eco-terror and innovation decadence. Patterns of consumption and the animal spirits driving today’s prevailing economic systems have to change in order to go beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the ethical capitalism that remain closely connected with the profit-responsibility of the corporation to its stakeholders. Positive change has to strike at the core of the problem—the model itself. By doing so, the opportunity exists to develop a sustainable economic and social model versus a model that, by its very nature, has more negative impact than the positive impact created from its “sustainability” efforts.
   The model would have at its core the following five concepts:

• Mass production = mass destruction
• Innovation should be mindful, not landfill
• Measure long term use value
• Quality is a craft
• Consumer needs are basic

Brand management plays a significant role in influencing and affecting consumer behaviour. Changing consumer behaviours and production philosophies, while expanding control of strategic brand direction, will determine the speed at which a socially responsible and environmentally friendly economic model will be developed.

Sustainability is parallel to the horizon
In a line diagram of production, sustainability is the horizontal baseline. This represents the essence of sustainability—the ability to endure the forces that act upon it. It also represents the goal—equilibrium of production with the resources needed to produce. In today’s consumption-based society, demand is increasing the distance from the ‘production’ line to the ‘sustainability’ baseline. As production increases, so does waste and the depletion of resources. This has a multiplying effect with more waste potentially impacting future resources and thereby negating any positive results from other pro-environment initiatives. In Figure 1, nothing is moving toward the ‘sustainability’ baseline. This is the production model of consumerism. Sell more, produce more, use more—in any order you like. Sustainable development defined as ‘that which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’¹ is not possible in this model. As long as development forces an increasing depletion of resources and continued growth rate of waste, “sustainable development” is in fact an oxymoron.²

Figure 1: Impact of a consumption-based model

   Ethical capitalism and CSR initiatives attempt to change the direction of these lines by injecting innovation. But in most cases the innovation can only impact the angle of the lines. For example, eco-efficient design may decrease the angle of the waste and resource line, but because production continues at the same or increasing rate (fuelled by consumers connecting to sustainability) the impact remains incremental. Similarly the use of renewable resources may decrease the rate of depletion of resources, but without a change in production numbers, the direction remains the same. Rarely is there an impact to the production line because by its nature, capitalism is about production and growth. The consumer becomes both the target and source of this destructive desire for growth.

Concept 1: Mass production = mass destruction
As long as the focus is on producing more stuff for more consumers, the ‘waste’ and ‘resource’ lines move away from sustainability. To move closer to the ‘sustainability’ baseline, both the ‘waste’ and ‘resource’ lines need to change direction—waste needs to be removed and resources need to be used at a rate less than or equal to the natural rate of replenishment.
   ‘Researchers have compared humans’ annual demand for resources with the area of land needed to generate the required resources and absorb the wastes … They calculated that in 1961 human demand for resources was about 70 percent of Earth’s ability to regenerate; by the 1980s demand had grown to equal the annual supply of resources, and by the end of the 1990s it exceeded by 20 percent Earth’s capacity to sustain consumption. “It takes the biosphere, therefore, at least a year and three months to renew what humanity uses in a single year”, so that humanity is now eating its capital, Earth’s natural capital.’³ Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh uses a powerful metaphor—the Sutra on the Son’s Flesh—to illustrate the outcome of maintaining current consumption patterns.⁴ The moral of the Sutra is that in effect we will be eating the flesh of our children if we do not make changes now to safeguard their future through more mindful consumption.
   To create more goods for more consumers, mass resources are taken from one location, often shipped to another location for development and then sent to distribution points for consumer masses around the world. Waste is created throughout the cycle not just at the end of the product’s life.
   To reduce waste, the amount of goods produced needs to be reduced and changes need to be made in how things are produced. Innovation and quality concepts need to be applied beyond mere product design to eco-efficient production systems—or “eco-systems” of production quality. In these “eco-systems” of production, waste is ultimately recycled into the “natural resource” and quality drives the need for fewer replacements and long-term use value (Anderson, Sarah et al 2004; Wessels, Tom 2006).⁵ Figure 2 illustrates the impact of innovation and quality to production reduction—narrowing the gap between waste and resources.

Figure 2: Impact of reduction in production

Muji, a Japanese retail company that sells a variety of household and consumer goods, was established in 1980 with the idea of ‘completely eliminating wastefulness … It started with careful selection of materials, streamlined processes and simplified packaging. The concept of rationalizing products by totally eliminating wastefulness, and at the same time making them more attractive, is at the heart of traditional Japanese æsthetics’.⁶ The company looked to add quality with a no-label philosophy. They design things based on simple functionality–‘not a fancy towel, but a useful towel. Socks with right angles like feet. Beautifully simple bicycles.’ The Muji design process resists technology and prototypes are produced with paper rather than computers, so as not to encourage unnecessary detail. The manufacturing process is determined on the basis of the consumer’s use of the product, which in turn is a design priority. Finishes, lines and forms are minimized for manufacturing ease. They maintain continuous and open communication with customers through the Quality Products for Everyday Life Research Center—a ‘laboratory’ where they have dialogue with customers to determine what ‘will suffice’. Muji does little or no advertising, gaining recognition purely from word of mouth, and quality of product.

Concept 2: Innovation should be mindful, not landfill
The current nature of innovation is iterative, rapid, and for competition’s sake. In an economic system where greater profit and continued growth is the goal, innovation becomes a source of survival and the means for “beating” the competition. This type of innovation creates an innovation decadence that spews products for the sake of creating something “new” rather than creating something useful or something needed. It produces an array of choices that are essentially the same with minor differences in features designed to appeal to the consumer looking for the latest thing or “lifestyle enhancer”.
   Take a look at the number of bottled water drinks. Carbonated water, sparkling water, spring water, filtered watered, water with flavour, and even water with vitamins (for those who prefer not to get their vitamins through proper nutrition). The water comes in big bottles, little bottles, plastic bottles, squirt bottles. The Container Recycling Institute reports that ‘Americans buy an estimated 34·6 billion single-serving (1 litre or less) plastic water bottles each year. Almost eight out of ten end up in a landfill or incinerator. Hundreds of millions end up as litter on roads and beaches or in streams and other waterways. Taxpayers pay hundreds millions of dollars each year in disposal and litter cleanup costs. That’s 877 bottles wasted every second’.⁷ Yet more than one of the water companies claims to be socially responsible with a sustainability focus.
   Furthermore, innovation focused on product differentiation not only stresses out the natural environment with unnecessary resource usage and waste, but it also causes societal stress as consumers, and labourers struggle to “keep up” with the latest technological advancements.⁸ Innovation in a sustainable model needs to be directed beyond the walls of the corporate cash register and the marketing department. It needs to address the entire product life cycle and focus on the resources not only to create but also to dispose of the product. If innovation ends up in landfill or on roads and beaches, it is not innovation—it is rubbish. Sustainable development requires innovation to define a process that changes production to reduce waste and maintain natural resources.
   Apple, Inc., ranked as the top most innovative company in 2011 by Fast Company,⁹ has an environmental approach that begins at the design stage and provides a comprehensive “cradle-to-grave” approach including a full Life Cycle Assessment. Apple tracks the environmental impact of each product by measuring greenhouse gas emissions for its facilities, the manufacturing process, product packaging, transportation, and customer usage of its products. An environmental report is provided for all products they currently ship. Their recycling programme ‘begins in the design stage, when we create compact, efficient products that require less material to produce. The materials we do use—including arsenic-free glass, high-grade aluminium, and strong polycarbonate—are highly valuable to recyclers, who can reclaim them for use in new products’.¹⁰ These practices enable Apple to drive greater efficiency and develop products that have less impact on the environment.
   Riversimple, a UK-based transport provider with the goal ‘to eliminate the environmental impact of personal transport’ is applying business model innovation to change an entire industry. Riversimple has applied what they are calling ‘whole system design’ to develop a completely new approach to auto manufacturing. This approach looks at the entire system (of business) and optimizes the whole versus focusing on one single subsystem.¹¹
   Today, auto manufacturing is based on a model that generates revenue by “selling more products”. Design and technology are used to sell more products and sell more products more often. By not defining their business as auto manufacturing, the Riversimple model looks to sell mobility as a service—shifting the auto manufacturing model mentality of “sell more products to make more money” to “generate revenue from less product”. The interest of the mobility provider becomes the efficiency, longevity and quality of the vehicle in order to optimize the revenue from each vehicle versus optimizing product sales. Like Muji, Riversimple looks to accomplish their goals via a collaborative innovation environment that is open to the world of designers and engineers.¹²

Concept 3: Measure long-term use value
The real measure of the value of an innovation, or product should be in the long-term life time use value—not share or transactional economic value. Our society of consumerism continually wants and buys the latest, throwing away the “old”. But in an environment of rapid innovation, old becomes younger and younger. Consider the life span of a cellphone—two to five years at the maximum? Nearly 2 billion cell phones were sold in 2007, double the sales number in 2000.¹³ Including the handset, battery and adapter, each represents about one pound of waste that needs to be managed.¹⁴ Add to that all the accessories, whose lifespan is even shorter and it becomes apparent that recycling efforts will have to increase significantly in order to be at all effective. According to Environmental Protection Agency reports, the amount of recycling is increasing, yet the actual percent of what is recycled has remained constant because consumption continues to grow at an ever increasing rate.¹⁵
   By designing for long-term use value rather than short-term profitability, the rate of waste production slows along with the need to produce more and more of the same basic thing. It also means creating a product that is built to last and bringing to market those innovations that make a significant difference—a difference that is worth the overall impact it has across its life time. Wouldn’t it be better to have a cellphone designed with the same principles as a fine Swiss watch? And rather than throwing them away every two years, we pass them along to the next generation who actually longs to use it.
   IWC Schaffhausen has been engineering master timepieces since 1868. The company was founded in Schaffhausen, Switzerland to take advantage of the skilled craftsmen, low wages and location. From the beginning, IWC used invention and innovation to design according to the founder’s ultimate mission: ‘simple but perfect, absolutely reliable mechanical watches for everyday use’. The company began keeping detailed records for every watch that has left the factory since 1885. Since 1885, details of the calibre, materials used and cases have been entered into the records. In the case of later models, the company claims that its service department has the parts and is capable of repairing and maintaining watches from every era since IWC’s foundation in 1868.¹⁶
   Today, IWC is still in Schaffhausen with a few hundred employees. Their timepieces are still produced to the quality goals set at inception with many of its models sought by collectors. Quality, treasured products—products likely to never occupy a landfill.

Concept 4: Quality is a craft
Schumpeter states in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy that capitalism forced out the artisan and craftsman. ‘The world of the artisan was destroyed primarily by the automatic effects of the competition that came from the capitalist entrepreneur’.¹⁷ Gone with the artisan and craftsman is the passion for producing individual items of quality and moreover, gone is the connection of the producer to the final product. With the assembly line and the “factory” concept (applied even in service organizations today) workers have become more and more disconnected from the final product and from the actual consumer of the product. Rather than one person putting their name on the product and holding accountability, there are now sales organizations that sell, factories that produce, and a whole host of directors driven by their own agendas. In very few cases do sales work in the factory or vice versa. The factory worker has no connection or accountability to the consumer. After all, if there is a problem, the consumer will call the help desk in a low-cost country and be assisted by someone who is “scripted” and has no impact on the design or production of the product. And all sales wants to do is sell. How authentic is that? Yet you will find that many corporations utilizing these practices are also branding themselves as socially responsible.
   In the proposed model, the craftsman is brought back into the picture with the sole responsibility to add more “soul”—to bring back a passion for quality. Quality—not quantity—is the key to sustainability. IWC is one example of the true value of quality. But this also requires that consumers understand the value of quality and change their compulsive buying behaviour. Conscientious brands need to influence conscientious consumption.

Concept 5: Consumer needs are basic
According to Jeffrey Sachs in The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time, ‘the extreme poor and the poor make up about 40 percent of humanity’.¹⁸ He continues, ‘The gulf between today’s rich and poor countries is … a new phenomenon, a yawning gap that opened during the period of modern economic growth … Today’s vast income inequalities illuminate two centuries of highly uneven patterns of economic growth.’ He goes on to explain that this discrepancy is due to the ability of some regions to achieve unprecedented ‘long-term increases in total production’ with technological innovation being the main force behind this achievement.¹⁹ But, at what cost?
   Numerous studies and indices show that human development and satisfaction do not continue to grow with personal expenditures or Gross Domestic Product (GDP).²⁰ ‘Despite high and sustained levels of economic growth in the West over a period of 50 years—growth that has seen average real incomes increase several times over—the mass of people are no more satisfied with their lives now that they were then’.²¹ The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a measure that looks at human development and welfare of a nation in relation to economic progress shows that in fact the ‘well-being’ of Americans has declined even though GDP has increased. Similarly, the Happy Planet Index (HPI) which measures the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens²² shows a negative correlation between GDP and the changes in HPI. The Index supports the view that ‘Over-consumption in rich countries represents one of the key barriers to sustainable well-being worldwide’.²³
   So although growth is needed to provide 40 per cent of humanity to a standard of living that ensures survival, there appears to be a point where growth no longer provides positive benefits. ‘Growth not only fails to make people contented; it destroys many of the things that do. Growth fosters empty consumerism, degrades the natural environment, weakens social cohesion and corrodes character’.²⁴ This occurs because once basic needs are satisfied, the market and promoters of growth convince us that we need more—more to demonstrate that we are accomplished, that we live a certain lifestyle and that we have meaningful, progressive lives. But meaning does not come from manufactured objects of identity. Moreover, this consumption-based model is not sustainable. It does not positively impact our behaviours, our sense of well-being or the well-being of our society and the planet. Even as global consumption expands without precedence, consumers basic needs are not being met—sanitation, water, food, and happiness.
   The United Nations Millennium Development Goals to cut poverty in half by 2015 are certainly noble. But if the thought is to progress billions of people along the path of the current “high-income”, consumption based countries, the plan is strongly faulted. It has been stated that ‘if everyone in the world were to consume as much as the average consumer in the rich countries we would require four planets the size of earth’.²⁵ Without a change in the culture of capitalism itself, without the development of a more conscientious consumer and society as a whole, the dream of ending poverty may be achievable but totally unsustainable. Such progress will be void of what people really want—happiness.

The role of brand management
To develop the “truly conscientious” brand will require an expansion of brand management’s influence on production, development and areas of innovation. Without some ability to influence the development of products and services, brand management is not managing the brand but simply creating marketing messaging.
   Brand management plays a significant role in influencing consumer behaviour and brand managers have a key role in helping to eliminate those things that drive excessive consumption and social and environmental destruction. Consumption in itself is not a bad thing. Rather it is the increasing rate of consumption by a relatively small part of the global population that puts strain on the environment and forces consumption patterns on others that are not sustainable. Eliminating shallow marketing messaging and “lifestyle” advertising is the first step toward positive change and influencing the development of a conscientious consumer—one that demands quality, eco-efficient products with long-term use value—from all the products that they purchase. The same type of creativity that is applied to developing identities and campaigns needs to be applied to developing products that eliminate wastefulness. The goal is more with less. More meaning, less stuff. More quality, less waste.
   Change has to occur in production and consumption. Corporate social responsibility initiatives typically only address the symptoms and in some cases drive further increases in the rate of production, waste and consumption inequalities. Brand management has the ability to influence both production and consumption, but to do so brand management will also need to change. Brand management has to become the catalyst for sustainable development and an activist for the conscientious consumer. In developing countries, there is great opportunity to create models for sustainable development from which conscientious brands can arise naturally. In developed countries this change will be more challenging but the implications are great. Models to address these challenges deserve further investigation and immediate thought.
   ‘When we’re able to get out of the shell of our small self and see that we are interrelated with everyone and everything, we see that each of our acts affects the whole of humankind, the whole cosmos … Mindful consumption brings about health and healing, for ourselves and our planet.’²⁶

Notes
   1. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1987, p. 54. Viewed November 2010, http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm#I.
   2. S. Harding: Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Co. 2006; S. L. Hart: Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth, and Humanity, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing 2007.
   3. C. Hamilton: Growth Fetish. London: Pluto Press 2004.
   4. T. N. Hanh: The World We Have: a Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology. Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press 2008.
   5. S. Anderson, et al: Alternatives to Economic Globalization: a Better World Is Possible. San Francisco: Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc. 2004; T. Wessels: The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England 2006.
   6. ‘Back to Our Origins, Into the Future’, Muji Global 2010, http://www.muji.com/message/. Viewed November 2010.
   7. ‘Bottled Water’, Container Recycling Institute 2010, http://www.container-recycling.org/issues/bottledwater.htm. Viewed November 2010.
   8. D. Harvey: The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
   9. ‘Most Innovative Companies 2011’, Fast Company, no. 153, March 2011, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/153. Viewed March 2011.
   10. ‘Apple and the Environment’, Apple Inc. 2010, http://www.apple.com/environment/. Viewed November 2010.
   11. ‘About us’, Riversimple LLP 2010, http://www.riversimple.com/Content.aspx?type=7&mode=menu&key=136c7243-2378-407e-96cf-750d15de37a8. Viewed November 2010.
   12. Ibid.
   13. Electronics Waste Management in the United States. Washington, DC: Office of Solid Waste, US Environmental Protection Agency 2008, EPA530-R-08-009, p. 11, http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/docs/app-1.pdf. Viewed November 2010.
   14. B. K. M. Fishbein: Waste in the Wireless World: the Challenge of Cell Phones. New York: Inform, Inc. 2002, p. 23.
   15. Fact Sheet: Management of Electronic Waste in the US. Washington, DC: US Environmental Protection Agency 2008, EPA530-F-08-014, p. 8, http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/manage.htm. Viewed November 2010.
   16. ‘About IWC’, International Watch Company 2010, http://www.iwc.com/history/. Viewed November 2010.
   17. J. A. Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: George Allen & Unwin 1976.
   18. J. D. Sachs: The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time. New York: Penguin Books 2005, p. 19.
   19. Ibid., at pp. 28–31.
   20. C. Hamilton, op. cit., at pp. 54–61; S. Harding, op. cit.; J. G. Speth: The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. Yale, Conn.: Yale University Press 2008.
   21. C. Hamilton, op. cit., at p. 3.
   22. ‘About the Happy Planet Index’, Happy Planet Index 2·0, 2009, http://www.happyplanetindex.org/learn/. Viewed November 2010.
   23. S. Abdallah, S. Thompson, M. Michaelson, and N. Steuer: The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why Good Lives Don’t Have to Cost the Earth. London: New Economics Foundation 2009.
   24. C. Hamilton, op. cit.
   25. C. Hamilton, op. cit., at p. 174.
   26. T. N. Hanh, op. cit., at p. 27.

Stanley Moss
DiGanZi
diganzi@gmail.com

In the canon of English-language writings on brands and brand management, few documents possess the stature of the legendary McElroy Memorandum known as “Brand Man”. Authored in 1931 by a a 27-year old Proctor & Gamble promotions executive, it inserted into the practice of brand-building seven directives which shaped our perception of brand’s purpose and function in the ecology of the marketplace. This single manifesto created the modern Brand Manager. For more than seven decades its enduring words were regarded with a reverence like that for the Holy Grail, and perpetrated a set of attitudes which beg to be re-examined in the face of brand world today. McElroy is at heart a strategic marketing document. It prescribed dynamic relationships be instituted within teams, and dictated a rigid hierarchical schema for the organization. Its application helped P&G separate brand managers into parallel teams, with each team competing internally with other brands in the company’s portfolio. Teams were mandated to market their own products to the sales force.

While the youthful Neil McElroy understood a brand to represent a cold-hearted economic entity, such a narrow presumption no longer holds exclusively true. The McElroy memo was simply the first step in codifying brands as instruments of an evolving, organic process. The memo limits its focus to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), those rapidly-produced products with short shelf lives, which need to be sold in large quantities in order to be profitable; in this particular category new-product creation factors mightily, competition is uppermost in everyone’s mind, and only good performance guarantees brand survival. Business schools, take heed. If McElroy is the foundation for all brands of the future, then we are in for rough waters. That’s because brands are no longer simply tools of marketing departments, or receptacles which hold psychological levers for creating demand and moving product. The equation has upended. Marketing today is a fraction of the brand equation.

We now understand brands to be deeper, broader, more dimensional entities than ever before. But a look at the memo shows why brands became the distorted commercial entities which later came back to haunt Brand Men, and why the discipline engages in such soul-searching, especially in Post-Globalization world.

McElroy’s point 1 shows us clearly where his priorities stand: he directs his Brand Men to take careful heed of units shipped. In the hierarchy of formalization we are dealing with a classic bean-counter mentality. It’s a short-term, simplistic directive which assesses quantity moved as of primary importance. It implies that sheer numbers dictate the highest imperative for brand evaluation. Nothing else takes precedence. There is no future, only an opportunistic present.

Point 2 instructs the Brand Men to examine carefully where brand development is heavy and “progressive”, an interesting and provocative term, especially taken in its historical context. In 1931 “progressive” might have inferred Communist leanings; today the term smacks of fringe cases at the periphery of political movements, possible techno-libertarians advocating secession from the union, free love and anarchy. McElroy asserts that numerical growth is the highest objective, that Brand Men should apply successful treatment to comparable territories. Today’s brand specialist focuses on greater sensitivity to local culture, and pays more attention to local need before overlaying some proven marketing strategy simply because it has worked to sell product elsewhere.

In point 3, McElroy gives five sub-directives for underperforming brands, what he refers to as “light” brand development. He charges his team to study past advertising and promotional history, then evaluate it in the context of the local territory both on supply and consumer sides. Find out the trouble, he writes mysteriously, employing a vast euphemism. Once the weakness has been uncovered, he counsels, make a plan. It’s a statement of pure brute economics, with managers warned to be certain that money budgeted will produce results. Abide by the corporate hierarchy, he goes on, clear it with the District Manager, get buy-in on the local level. In other words, tell your local manager what to do in his own back yard and tell him how to do it. Get him to agree. Next up: hype the sales force, keep them hammering the territory. Write everything down, document, evaluate, assess. In no place does McElroy ask, Is this product needed, redundant, obsolete? Does somebody else make a better one? Do consumers really want it? What consequences does its consumption carry? In 1931 fewer channels of mass media existed for oversight, there was no conception of a problem with disposability and waste, few corporations thought about notions of community, and the term sustainability would not be coined for 40 years. Listen up, brand managers: the world has changed.

Point 4 pins total responsibility on the Brand Manager for the concise communications connected to his brands. This presumes that anything the organization cares to say about product is apt. There is no reference to accurately reflecting product claims, or any consideration of ethical underpinnings. As long as what is said works, it is permitted.

Point 5 addresses the manufacturer’s expenditure at point-of-purchase, quantifying marketing effectiveness at the retail level. We see no recognition of the universe of stakeholder communities which are touched by a product’s existence. Today we acknowledge that advertising adds to mass sensory overload, a form of pollution in an overcrowded environment. McElroy believes if you put the message in front of the consumer, it will be consumed. This is the fundamental corruption of traditional advertising writ large.

Packaging is addressed, but only superficially, in point 6. The Manager is counseled to experiment with and recommend wrapper revisions. We are again firmly in the terrain of marketing, insisting that the package jump off the shelf, differentiated from its competitors, ramping up the claims, doing anything necessary to grab the impulse-driven buying decision. Not a lot of ethics here, and certainly not abiding by Massimo Vignelli’s famous dictum that “the best packages are invisible.”

By point 7, McElroy is back into his corporate ivory tower, advising his Brand Men to see District Managers a number of times a year to discuss any “faults in promotion.” Here is the crux of the unreality: as long as promotion is correctly tweaked, the brand becomes invulnerable. All hinges on the success of promotion, the product lives in a universe independent of any considerations except its own self-interest. Is it any wonder, with subtext like this, that society drifted into a delusional and mindless consumption-driven consciousness?

History is an odd and elastic commodity, which lurches ahead, but mostly plods along, and we have had seventy years of McElroy’s calculating marketing strategies laying claim to the brand. While McElroy is frozen in time, a kind of Peter Pan of brand theory, brand has grown up around the memo. Brands are our silent partners, devices which deliver inspiration, carry promises, help us create our own identities, and stand as symbols for who we are and what we believe. It’s no longer a case of simply selling more units than your competitors. The challenge for Brand Men today is to reflect an understanding of a bigger world out there than one driven by unenlightened self-interest and short-term profits, and that the time is now to focus on truth-telling, to advocate for the greater good, and to always consider the deeper ethical implications of our commercial conduct.

Malcolm Allan
Locum Consulting
mallan@locumconsulting.com

Microsoft Word version

Abstract
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.

Cities are changing and their places are changing
Cities have been in a constant state of change and evolution ever since they were first created and change is nothing new in the urban landscape. What is new, especially in western Europe and North America, is the emergence of new kinds of places that contain and combine land uses that even five years ago would normally have been separated and kept apart by urban planning policy and planners’ desire for the neat separation of activity generators. Examples of these more complex and multi-functional developments are to be found in large metropolitan cores such as the Kings Cross St Pancras area of London where the developer, Argent, is creating what will amount to a completely new town in the heart of the inner-city area, a place that will bring an entirely new offer of services and experiences for the people who work there, live there, visit there or just pass through the rail termini—a combination of offices, shops, housing, learning institutions, cultural institutions, tourist attractions, and an extensive public realm for events and gatherings. It will change the character of the area and its identity and a major challenge currently facing the developer of this area, and others like it, is how to position it, how to explain it and how to describe it—in short—how to brand it.
   Elsewhere in the metropolitan cores, developers are inventing and creating new kinds of place of a similar scale, offering completely new kinds of offer and new combinations of offer to consumers. A good example of this is the development by Uplace, a Belgian development company, who are creating what I would describe as an ‘experience retail’ centre on the northern edge of the city’s inner city core, a retail-led place of entertainment, culture and learning, on a scale that has never been created before in western Europe. They, too, are facing the challenge of how to brand this new type of place, of how to describe its offer of value to the many different types of consumer who will live, work, shop, be entertained or visit the area.
   Why is this happening? Developers like Uplace and Argent do not take risks with their developments; they do not build places that people do not want to spend time and money in. They build places that consumers wish to spend time in, to congregate in and to experience. They are acutely aware of changes in consumer trends, particularly in retailing, culture, leisure and recreation. They are aware that, despite the short term hiccup of the western “credit crunch”, consumer needs, wants and aspirations are changing and that, especially for the urban consumer, they are increasingly wanting those to be satisfied in places that offer them a greater variety of offers, a greater variety of experiences and a greater concentration of offers and experiences—all in one place if possible.

Consumer needs, wants and aspirations are changing
Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the latest developments to be seen in the design of what we have traditionally thought of as retail environments—shopping centres—where the shops may no longer be the real magnet or draw attracting consumers, where it is the combination of leisure and entertainment uses that are the real draw.
   Shops used to be found on high streets. Then, after the Second World War, following influences from development in the United States and the impact of the growth of private car ownership, they could also be found in large boxes in out-of-town locations and at motorway junctions. Then they were increasingly found in airports and at railway termini and at the more sophisticated forms of waterfront development. In a few places the developers added in a cinema or two, or a multiplex, possibly also a bowling alley and, more recently, an indoor adventure sports centre. The more adventurous of these offered indoor skiing, or water-sports, or mountain-style, rock-climbing faces and rope walkways. Along the way, shopping moved from being something of a necessity to something of a pleasure, to being a form of entertainment, for some almost a pastime. Gradually, over time, but now with greater rapidity, we are seeing the emergence of a new kind of place, a new kind of experience, a new form of destination—the ‘experience retail development’.
   The challenge for developers is how to position, describe and brand these places. This article explores this challenge in more detail through two case studies on the development of brand strategies for these new kinds of place.

What is experience retail?
Experience retail is not just a loose combination of shops in a big box with a few leisure add-ons, such as a multiplex cinema and a bowling alley—now pretty standard and boring fare for many out-of-town big box retail developments. Experience retail is a much more sophisticated offer to consumers of a place where they can satisfy many of their needs, wants and aspirations for the products, services and experiences that they require for their lifestyle and self-image. Experience retail combines very innovative forms of delivering the retail experience together with the leisure entertainment and cultural experiences that consumers want or aspire to, and, increasingly, the residential lifestyle they aspire to as well. In the delivery of service in the retail environment, experience retail provides a more personal and higher quality service. Staff really do know about the products they are selling (often modelling the clothes themselves), who designed them, and where they are made. They are backed up by the latest technologies, like the dressing cubicles with built-in, time-delayed cameras which can show you how the dress or the suit looks from behind.
   Experience retail is a new form of retail place—a destination—where the main driver or attractor is a retail component supported by a combination of activity attractors designed to drive sustained foot-fall to it. It’s a form of development where the overall experience on offer for consumers is a place to spend time and money on a mix of experiences. The mix can include retail, leisure, entertainment, cultural, heritage and sports attractions. It may include a casino–hotel combined with a theatre or concert hall, cultural or sports attractor, such as a museum or a stadium, and perhaps a commercial office element. It can also be a place where people may wish to stay over to experience the full menu of attractors, facilities, events and programmes.
   The drive towards experience retail is being fuelled by changes in consumer behaviour, especially in the advanced consumer societies of western Europe, North America, southeast Asia, Japan and Australasia. Research by myself and others is showing that increasing numbers of consumers now regard shopping as a form of leisure and entertainment and are looking to spend more time in places which offer them a mix of experiences, including shopping, leisure, entertainment, sports, cultural facilities and even access to heritage attractions, in one centre or place.
   Uplace, in a recent publication, summarize the research they have conducted on changes taking place in consumer behaviour and how consumers now wish to satisfy their needs, wants and aspirations in new kinds of places. What they found is that consumers want to accomplish more in less time. Shopping is evolving into an experience. Retail is becoming part of the entertainment industry and shopping is now a way for people to express themselves and associates people with desired lifestyles. Aspirational brands are becoming more important, well-designed buildings are becoming a more important retail marketing channel and the physical retail experience needs to be both entertaining and authentic.
Social trends research in the USA and the UK also indicate that consumers increasingly need to manage many options for themselves and their children in increasingly busy and complex lives. They face the paradox of increasing time pressures and expanding choices. They are increasingly looking for multiple experience settings, shopping that’s more like entertainment, and places to hang out with friends and family.

The evolution of the experience retail phenomenon
For consumers with money, and even those on temporarily reduced budgets, shopping is becoming more “fun” than “run”. Consumers increasingly desire experiential pleasure and feel-good sensations from consumption and are spending more money on quality experiences than on material goods. To address this trend, product manufacturers have recognized that they need to offer consumers experiential sales’ environments, such as the new Apple Stores in major and capital cities around the world or the Abercrombie & Fitch stores in New York and in London.
   The Abercrombie & Fitch store in Greenwich Village looks and feels like an old-style select gentlemen’s club where their clothing fits in like a glove. Consumers can now distinguish such environments and offers in terms of the differentiation (quality, fun, level of service) of the experience they offer. In London, the new A&F store feels almost like a nightclub where fashion-conscious young people and models now hang out wearing the clothes from the store, and where the actual displays seem almost incidental to their display on the bodies of those who “inhabit” the store. It’s a place to be seen in and one where the A&F cognoscenti feel at home. By contrast, the lure of the Apple store in London’s Regent Street is that it is a place where it’s cool to be an informed “geek”, to be savvy about the cool technology, to be comfortable playing with it, to learn about its capabilities from equally or more savvy people of your age (if you are under 35), and to decide what to buy and have it shipped to your home within days.
   As unlikely as it seems, these stores have a predecessor in the form of the Disney Stores which, although designed to shift product in large volumes, are also designed to give the customer a foretaste or remembrance of the Disney experience, whether it be to see one of their movies or to visit one of the Disneyland theme parks. Buying your Goofy puppet in store and taking it home extends the pleasure of that experience.
   The implications of this are that retail development must offer consumers, who are becoming ever more younger, an authentic and entertaining environment in which to find, try on, buy, wear and display goods alongside a complementary and relevant mix of attractors and lifestyle experiences, if they are to be attracted to spend their time and money there. Evidence from the United States indicates that such places are also offering a public realm “in-store” or in the mall that acts as a setting for new forms of public art and sculpture and as a stage for people to show off what they have bought and for them to listen to or participate in live music, drama and dance events.
   The implications for developers are that shopping centres will need to include leisure and entertainment and sports offers and that shopping centres will be more like integrated, urban entertainment centres with high-quality, well-managed, and active public realm.

Where can you find evidence of experience retail?
In the UK, combinations of retail and indoor sports and leisure and entertainment facilities can now be seen. Located In Milton Keynes, the first Xscape, indoor, snow sports facility, offers an all-year round snowslope, rock climbing, Airkix (which simulates freefall skydiving), health and fitness facilities, bowling, and a cinema. In the Trafford Centre in Manchester there is an indoor, state-of-the-art soccer dome which provides facilities for small-side soccer teams to play and practise, plus a 20-screen multiplex cinema and a comprehensive upmarket food-court.
   In central Europe, some examples of retail developments that are moving towards the experience retail concept are Rivetoile commercial centre in Strasbourg, the Ballymore riverside, mixed-use retail centre in Bratislava in Slovakia and the new retail centre in Duisburg in Germany.
In the Middle East, good examples of experience retail can be seen in Dubai. For example, the Sahara Centre complements an international array of global retail brands with a food centre offering local and global cuisines plus an Adventureland family entertainment centre offering 20 rides, an indoor roller-coaster, a multi-level train, an indoor water flume, a billiard hall and a mini-bowling alley.
   Dubai is also the site of the Middle East’s first major comprehensive experience retail development, the Sunny Mountain Ski Dome, due for completion at the end of 2008. The project consists of a dome that will house a large revolving ski slope, going through and around an artificial mountain range created to emphasize an “Arctic experience” effect. Within the dome, there will be a range of Arctic experiences including a Penguinarium, winter aquarium, snow castle, ice-rink, Arctic animal statues, four-season aquarium, snowfall, sound and light effects, cold and warm bath spa, an ice-bridge, a cable-lift, snow maze, ice-slide, and polar bears. All of these will be complemented by a deluxe hotel, a shopping mall, restaurants, coffee shops and other retail outlets.
   Dubai also hosts an annual shopping festival in January of each year which serves to showcase the complete visitor experience of the city—Ski Dubai, the Zoo, the Dragon Mart, Dubai Creek, the Dubai Museum and camel racing. There are other events as well, including international fashion shows, children’s events, street performances, nightly fireworks, film festivals, and many other cultural events that reflect the Emirate’s cosmopolitan character. In addition, one of the biggest events of them all, the Dubai World Cup takes place during the festival, with a US$12 million purse that makes it the richest horse race in the world.
   In the USA, the developer Rick Caruso, who heads up Americana at Brand, based in California, is a pathfinder showing how to meet changing consumer demands. Caruso has significantly changed the face and form of US retailing by creating what Mathew Garrahan of the FT describes as ‘vibrant open air retailing centres instead of bland indoor shopping malls’.
A very good example is his development in Glendale in California, which offers a mix of retail, leisure, entertainment, food and beverage facilities and a high-quality residential component, with condominiums and apartments to rent or buy. This is a place to live, to meet, to hang out and be associated with for the local population who are tired of big boxes with no sense of place or personality.
   This development is the opposite of so many impersonal retail malls across America which are now feeling the full force of the effects of the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and the credit crunch. Many of these malls, almost wholly retail in their floor space, are rapidly emptying or facing complete closure. As they shut, their local communities are losing their main meeting places, especially where the malls had previously replaced the old main street. In an article in the Observer newspaper, James Doran observed that many malls, once the centre of life in American town and cities, are falling dark and local populations are feeling their communities have lost their sense of place and focus. How different this might have been if, instead of being predominantly retail, they had offered leisure, recreation, entertainment and sports facilities, as envisaged in our concept of experience retail.
   Examples of such developments can be found across America and they do appear to be weathering the economic storm in far better shape. They include the Shadow Lake Town Center which serves the Kansas City and metropolitan Omaha metro region, the Shoppes at Chino Hills in California, Solair in Los Angeles’s Koreatown and Culver Studios Plaza in Culver City in California. Important characteristics which unite these and many other similar developments are the return to the street as the predominant built form, the increasing space being allocated to non-retail lifestyle facilities and services, and the high-quality public realm with its use as a venue for meeting others, hanging out, events and entertainment. They are being deliberately designed as places with a human scale. People can spend lots of time and money there on a mix of activities that help them define who they are as consumers and satisfy their aspirations.

The challenge of branding experience retail places
Given this trend towards the development of larger scale, complex, mixed use developments, some at the size of small towns—completely new communities—how do their creators develop relevant and effective brand strategies to ensure that consumers become aware of, understand, differentiate and decide to experience the services and facilities on offer in them?

‘The Creative Place’
I have been working with two firms of developers to assist them with exactly these challenges. In London, I have been working for developer Hutchison Whampoa UK (whose parent company owns and operates international docks in places like Hong Kong) on the development of a new experience retail concept—‘The Creative Place’—to sit at the heart of a new, predominantly residential, development of twenty-five hectares at Convoys Wharf in Deptford in London’s docklands, a site which sits on the southern bank of the river Thames opposite the bottom of the Greenwich peninsula. Deptford is one of the poorest areas in inner London and an area that plays host to waves of immigrants to the city, most recently Somalis driven from their country by recent wars and disruption. Despite looking and feeling like a very run-down area, it is actually very vibrant and cosmopolitan and has a number of creative facilities, some with world-class reputations, such as Goldsmiths College and the Laban Centre for Contemporary Dance.

Figure 1
Convoys Wharf, the Creative Place

At the centre of the site stands a large protected building, the Olympia, whose structure was designed and built from wrought iron tracery of a similar kind that Gustav Eiffel designed and used for his tower in Paris. The challenge presented to me and my colleagues was to come up with a proposal for the reuse of this large building in a way that would differentiate the residential apartments to be built around it, provide an improvement in local retail, leisure and recreation facilities, and “locate” the development as a distinctive place with a distinctive offer in south east London.
   Using a facilitated workshop format we met with the developer and their real estate advisers and to develop a vision for the building and the site, to identify alternative concepts for realizing the vision and to develop a brand strategy to guide the development and use of the Olympia building.
This creative facility is designed to attract people to live in the development and be a place for residents to entertain friends and relatives, and for people who live in its catchment area to visit, as well as adding to the retail and leisure offer and experience of the area. Locum is proposing a mix of creative retail facilities and activities, including bespoke fashion designers’ shops and workshops, workshops and showrooms for designers of fabrics, restaurants, cooking schools, specialist bookshops and spaces for performance arts—drama, dance, live music and theatre.
   In Eire, Locum has been working for a developer to create the concept of Europe’s first “retail resort”. Located midway between Dublin and Belfast, this will be known as ‘The Perfect Place’, a place in which to stay and relax in a top-class spa hotel, while shopping in a retail facility that will be home to the world’s top designer fashion, jewellery, shoe, accessory, furniture and interiors and automobile brands, eating at one of a number of world-class, chef restaurants or making use of a great range of indoor and outdoor sports facilities, including watersports, sailing, golf, hill-walking, equestrian facilities and Ireland’s first all-weather race track.

Figure 2
Dundalk, the Perfect Place

Some conclusions
In conclusion, we believe that experience retail will be a major form of development over the coming decade. It has the capability to revive many flagging town and city centres and return them to being places in which people will want to spend time and money. Experience retail developments will change the offer of the places in which they are located, change the nature of the experience offered to consumers and change their branding as destinations.

Locum’s services
In response to these changing consumer trends we have created the team to enable developers to realize this new form of destination. The Experience Retail Team offers an integrated service and works with its clients from the point of developing their vision and concepts for the development to its sale or its ongoing management. The team provides integrated services combining destination brand strategy, destination specification, development appraisal and risk assessment, planning, valuation, investment, licensed and leisure, attractor and tenant identification, hotel development, letting strategy, asset management, marketing strategy and communications, and overall project management.