Pierre d’Huy
Experts Consulting
p.dhuy@experts-consulting.com

Translated from the French by Stanley Moss
CEO, The Medinge Group
Founder, Diganzi
diganzi@medinge.org

Microsoft Word version | Version original

‘With the device of rhetoric, what is offered at the beginning—and appears at the risk of collective aphasia—are the raw materials of reasoning, of facts, of subject; yet what is found at the end is a complete language, structured and armed for persuasion.’—Roland Barthes: ‘L’ancienne rhétorique’, Communications, no. 16, 1970, B.0.4, p. 197.

PowerPoint is a Microsoft program which allows the user to create electronic presentations in the form of a succession of slides, often linked by simple animated visual effects. These slides can contain pictures, text, films, sounds, moving figures and different computer graphics or hyperlinks. This presentation application is used in great numbers internationally by businesspeople and students alike. Microsoft estimates 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made every day all over the world.

The success of PowerPoint is so considerable that its emergence cannot be explained away solely by the recent fall in the price of computers and projectors. In itself, PowerPoint seems to constitute an emerging medium of societal communication. Such unprecedented success inevitably attracts the eye of the médiologue. Rather than dismiss PowerPoint as a minor event, let us take time to re-examine it.

Over a long period, the uninterrupted use of PowerPoint as reference support has evolved a particular form of speech. It models a distinct manner of thinking, demonstrating, and persuading. Since its creation twenty years ago, PowerPoint has survived inconspicuously, a hegemonic example of constitution of norm.

One is tempted to wager that soon the young generation will no longer be able to express themselves orally without help of a tool of presentation. In this respect, note that PowerPoint is reported to be more and more widely used for wedding speeches. Even more troubling, there may come a day when people cannot listen unless a speaker expresses himself in conjunction with PowerPoint. Faced with the “little music” that a rhetorical machine produces, classical speech could become inaudible.

PowerPoint abets the impression of clear presentations. Steve Jobs made such a demonstration when he launched iPhone at Mac World 2007 in San Francisco.¹ Like a pianist who perfectly controls the independence of left and right hands, he linked a simultaneous projection of text and pictures to illustrate his purpose. Thanks to PowerPoint, the quality of audience reception was maximized, and understanding was made easier.

PowerPoint also allows the manipulation of audiences by the fundamental use of argumentation founded more on effect than on proof. On February 7, 2003 the American General Colin Powell introduced a PowerPoint document to the Security Council of the United Nations, the intention of which was to demonstrate confirmation of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (See attached reproductions of certain slides used).

The perverse effects raised by PowerPoint’s detractors revolve around five major problem points:

• problem of the user: while PowerPoint aids good presenters, it always renders the mediocre ones unbearable. PowerPoint is a complex professional multimedia instrument placed at the disposition of an insufficiently competent general public;
• problem of writing: rare are the PowerPoint presentations which play the game of brevity and are an instrument of the supportive kind. The better part of PowerPoint presentations are talkative and laboured;
• problem of effectiveness with principles of demonstration: the logical fluidity of classical speech is at odds with thoughts broken apart by the succession of PowerPoint slides. PowerPoint often stutters;
• problem of manipulation: the principle of juxtaposition exempts the presenter from the logical necessity of linking reason to effect in written text. To juxtapose is not to show. Often the syllogisms of demonstration found in PowerPoint presentations are weak or contestable. But they are difficult to refute because the presenter can overlook the first parts as he pleases. The mind of the audience is under the control of imposed rhythms and enforced reading in fragments;
• problem of use: explanation is the job of the presenter. PowerPoint is often sent by electronic mail without explanation, as a reference document. This is a bit like giving a person the apparatus of a conjurer and expecting them to competently perform magic tricks on stage. By removing the obligation to support a presentation, PowerPoint corrupts the information which it is intended to carry.

For all these reasons, doubt is growing over the real pedagogic effectiveness of PowerPoint. Associations of parents of American pupils are seeking a ban on its use in secondary schools and universities in the USA.

To look in greater detail at the opinion of its detractors, it helps to refer to the very effective work of Edward Tufte² and to articles such as ‘PowerPoint Makes You Dumb’³ in The New York Times^, or ‘Point of View on PowerPoint’⁴ in The Guardian.

PowerPoint: simultaneous speech
PowerPoint comes from the world of Apple Macintosh, that is to say from the world in the ’80s which first allowed the general public access to computer science. The world of Apple is that of the visual, of “creatives” and of graphic designers, the world of those who free themselves from the dictatorship of the parallel horizontal line, the unmoving characters of print. This is the universe of the mouse, of the cursor which drifts freely across the screen and finishes in the blinking vertical line, of letters arrayed on the keyboard. It is the Macintosh brush and mobile characters in opposition to the static Underwood typewriter. The mind freed from drawings can visualize on the electronic screen. One recollects the freedom of the Calligrams of Guillaume Apollinaire and the technical difficulty of their reproduction.

PowerPoint multiplies the battery of effects at the disposition of the speaker, and in doing so compounds its means. PowerPoint “effects” are the new rhetorical devices of our time. The pictures, schemata, graphs, pop videos, computer graphics, animations, or illustrations are like digital cousins to metaphor or metonymy. This somehow justifies calling the toolbox of its capabilities an ‘auto-content wizard.’ Richard Mayer, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studied its human features in detail, looking at the system of information, segmented by how it sees itself and those instructions which it agrees to follow. He determined that simultaneous contact to both channels allows the public not only to better understand, but to better persuade. It is the ‘dual channel’⁵ effect, a key element of the mechanics of firm belief in PowerPoint.

Let us pause for an instant and reflect on an interesting mixture of typologies, since in PowerPoint, the visible splits the legible into two distinct parts. PowerPoint creates a new behaviour here: collective reading onscreen. To reference the three ages of Régis Debray,⁶ someplace new has been created which exists between the graphosphère and the vidéosphère, between appearance and publication, since the text is read and seen, simultaneously and collectively. This perhaps explains its success. PowerPoint plays on thresholds. PowerPoint is a machine to conciliate what is written and what must be seen. Picture redeems itself as behaviour through the counterpoise with written text. As the text gets lighter, it is elevated by pictures.

PowerPoint automatically formats and gives life to slides consisting of text, pictures, figures, and effects, all at the same time. Here one rediscovers the simultaneity of the Surrealists, which one can find in La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France. In 1913 Blaise Cendrars captioned this poem, illustrated by drawings of Sonia Delaunay, as the ‘first simultaneous book’.

PowerPoint software understands that to communicate definitively and persuade, it is necessary to multiply statements in parallel, all at the same time: see a picture–read a text–hear the voice of a presenter. The rhetorical figures of PowerPoint are built in the gaps between the three dimensions: picture, text and voice. The three statements synchronize, are repeated, or—to the contrary—move, move apart, collide.

PowerPoint: presentation or performance?
First regarded as a simple tool of support, the PowerPoint program is on the way to becoming a universal language used by both professional and academic worlds. These are the places where speech is carefully staged. These worlds seek to prescribe order which successfully coordinates image, movement and writing. Every multinational today has meeting rooms endowed with big screens designed to receive presentations. Any information arrayed there is invariably transformed into presentation. Each presentation repeats, constructs, takes up time, times its interventions. If the medium is the message, then with PowerPoint everything turns into show business. To such an extent, speech becomes more important than the transmitter. To such an extent, the searchlight and the newscaster end up merging.

More and more press websites offer their visitors slide shows in PowerPoint. The Newspaper of the Net, in partnership with the AFP, offers this type of slide show, for instance, designed to explain the economy in 675 frames. Business Week adds slide shows to many of its online news stories. These presentations automatically activate, and display as a programmed succession of slides. They constitute a kind of intermediary between written articles and that of short video subjects. They show wonderfully that a good PowerPoint can very effectively operate without a newscaster or presenter.

This explains why the PowerPoint presenter is compelled to deliver theatrics. It is due to the overlap of information and not the synergy, of competition with the PowerPoint presentation. Facing a huge screen, the presenter is encouraged to make more of it than really exists. A simple purpose then becomes a presentation; a hypothesis suddenly becomes a claim. The presenter is compelled, often in his defending arguments, to prove, to demonstrate, even when he has nothing of substance to offer. Bereft of real reasons, presenters get carried away. They display only glittering facets of their case. It is the most serious reproach which can be made about PowerPoint: PowerPoint does not like stories, PowerPoint kills narration. Narrative migrates in an opportunistic scenario, sequencing inappropriately, defended by the language of firm belief.

PowerPoint: ownership of speech
PowerPoint’s response to Barthes’ idea of rhetoric is to offer a description of the machine, defined by Microsoft, as ‘The most prevalent form of persuasion technology’.⁸ This means that the argument (‘fidem facere’ of Probatio) tells and moves at the same time (‘animos impellere’) and thus persuades by what is seen. PowerPoint directs our attention to the art of persuasion. This art has been left fallow since the time of Napoleon III, the epoch of the last important treatises on rhetoric, when it constituted the backbone of the education of all ruling classes since Athens in the fifth century.

Rhetoric is a contemporary of Democracy, and a language conceived to entice the jury during courtroom trials. It is not by chance that PowerPoint is of American origin, the product of a nation enamoured with litigious business, who first aligned PowerPoint to the principles of computerization. This ‘first rhetoric’ is disparaged by Plato in Gorgias.⁹ Socrates compares the ‘make believe’ of rhetoric, contrasting it to the ‘informing’ of the philosopher. Calliclès answers that ‘rhetoric does not need to know what the things are about which it speaks; it has simply discovered a technique which serves us for persuading.’ PowerPoint has no knowledge as its objective, only firm belief. It lies far from the Socratic maieutics, the search for truth by dialogue and confutation. Rhetoric contents itself with its status as a machine of persuasion. Any likely simplistic assemblage is acceptable, provided that the target is reached.

Barthes said to us in 1964, in his seminary at the École des Hautes Études, that rhetoric is a social practice, as well as a privileged technology, since it is necessary to pay to acquire it. It allows the ruling classes to gain definite ownership of the word. With PowerPoint, one also definitively gains the ownership of speech. This occurs thanks to a format of content, which is taught and which one learns. It is a pure technology of persuasion, in search of firm advocacy from its audience. This is an art ‘of persuasion, a group of rules, recipes, wherein the implementation intends to persuade the listeners of speech, even if that of which they must be persuaded is wrong.’¹⁰

PowerPoint is, finally, a tool of education. Occasionally during some university orals, a student might wonder if the oral was more about a financial year, a lesson driven by PowerPoint, first of all. The question is no longer to prepare students for the job, but to create good rhetoreticians. On this point, Gorgias explains to Socrates, ‘And whoever is the man presenting an argument in favour, compared in debate, the speaker will persuade that his argument be chosen, rather than that of his opponent; because there is no subject on which the speaker would speak in a more convincing manner in front of a crowd, so great and appealing is the potency of our art’.

The contemporary translation of this statement could be that it is better to have a good PowerPoint introduced by an incompetent, than be given a speech by an expert. So, to persuade about the urgency to struggle against global warming, it is better to have the PowerPoint used by Al Gore in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth¹¹ by David Guggenheim than to provide speech of the most erudite climatologists.

PowerPoint: show, to provoke thought
It would be inadequate or inexact to dismiss the success of PowerPoint solely for its triumphant packaging of content. PowerPoint often supports a sophisticated rhetorician, a technician.
The médiologue can also discern the numerical resumption of a more Aristotelian rhetoric, a rhetoric less subjugated by its own power, a rhetoric more in the service of truth and beauty. There is nothing worse than when PowerPoint renders rhetoric heavy, when it is badly used. Of course, one can see it coming, an annoying aspect of the control of the progression of thought. The presenter is there to persuade, but after all, the firm commitment apparent in the flux of a well-written text is worth the artful juxtaposition of a PowerPoint presentation, if the reason is fair.

We have seen a Minister of Finance¹² skilfully use a PowerPoint presentation as a kind of supplement. His bright and open speech was simplistically interspersed by dynamic zooms into a slide or swift transitions from one to the other, to the delight of his audience. By recalling the conditions of a dialectical exchange, reinstituting dialogue with his public like a midwife might, he revitalized the foreseeable fixity of his PowerPoint. Pictures came in support of words and provided more evidence that yes, in order to persuade the young generations one needed to divert eyes taught to dart from screen to screen. Such technique was needed, at the very least. It proves that a good visual speech, that is to say a speech which constructs a “point of view”, is a universal speech bearing firm belief, one which transcends national languages. A picture does not require translation.

PowerPoint is a rhetoric machine adapted for the Doubting Thomases of the world, who believe only what they see. PowerPoint, sits at the peak of the vidéosphère, the worship of appearance. During the first film screened by the Lumière Brothers, the seated audience dropped down under their chairs when they saw an engine entering the railway station of La Ciotat. What sequence of slides could be placed in a row today to produce the same result?

A century later the young generations have an advanced disposition to the screen. Consequently they understand that the picture of the engine signals no danger. Their enormous experience with an ongoing succession of screens has conferred upon them three new talents.

1. They learned to read pictures, and not only texts.
2. They know how to read several speeches at the same time, from multiple sources, without being unsettled.
3. They demand a connection which enables interaction (i.e. Wikipédia¹², continual interaction with a “living” encyclopædia).

PowerPoint answers the first two points wonderfully by arranging the reading of picture and writings hierarchically. For the third, let us note that in its 2007 version, PowerPoint’s new connectivity allows collaborative tasks and hyperlinks with the Internet universe. In doing so, Microsoft upgrades PowerPoint in the hypersphère¹³ of Web 2·0, reinforcing the potential to perpetuate its already considerable success.

PowerPoint is a sign of the times, ardently American, giving everyone the possibility of creating amateur cinema, and of conceiving small illustrated visions of the world. Even when it occurs in a clumsy manner, even if its assertiveness of firm belief is applied for the poorest of reasons, it has its worth. PowerPoint understands that it is necessary to demonstrate in our contemporary world, and thus to compel people to think.

Notes
1. Steve Jobs, MacWorld 2007, San Francisco, Calif. Video of available speech at http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d5200/event.
2. E. Tufte: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, 2nd ed. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press LLC, 2006.
3. E. Tufte: ‘PowerPoint makes you dumb’, The New York Times, December 17, 2003.
4. ‘Point of view on PowerPoint’, The Guardian.
5. R. E. Mayer: Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001.
6. ‘The most prevalent form of persuasion technology.’ Readers will appreciate the ambiguity of the English word prevalent, which means at the same time spread and predominating.
7. R. Debray: Cours de Médiologie générale. Paris: Gallimard 1991, reissued folio, Paris: Gallimard 2001.
8. Plato: Gorgias.
9. An Inconvenient Truth, film by David Guggenheim, 2006.
10. R. Barthes: ‘L’ancienne rhétorique’, Communications, n° 16, 1970, p. 197.
11. This refers to a presentation by Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
12. Wikipedia is an online-based collaborative encyclopædia, www.wikipedia.com.
13. L. Merzeau: Cahiers de médiologie, no. 6, 1998. ‘This will not kill that.’

Pierre d’Huy is an international consultant specializing in the Management of Innovation, and a professor affiliated with the Management Institute of Paris. He teaches at CELSA Sorbonne Paris IV. His most recent book is Collective Innovation from Éditions Liaisons Sociales. There is more to come in February 2007 in another book, Collective Imagination.
Stanley Moss translated this essay from Pierre d’Huy’s original text in French. Mr Moss is CEO of the Medinge Group, a Stockholm-based think-tank on international branding. He is also founder of Diganzi, an international brand consultancy, www.diganzi.com.

Pierre d’Huy
Experts Consulting
Professeur associé, Management Institute of Paris
p.dhuy@experts-consulting.com

Version PDF | English translation by Stanley Moss

Êtes-vous PowerPoint? Il faut du courage pour se lancer aujourd’hui dans une conférence sans la ressource du précieux logiciel de mise en écran des textes et des images (ou de ce qu’il faut en retenir). Mais cette pensée PowerPoint peut faire aussi quelques dégâts.

‹Dans la machine rhétorique, ce que l’on met au début, émergeant à peine d’une aphasie native, ce sont des matériaux bruts de raisonnement, des faits, un «sujet»; ce que l’on trouve à la ?n, c’est un discours complet, structuré, tout armé pour la persuasion› – Roland Barthes: ‹L’ancienne rhétorique›, Communications, n° 16, 1970, B.0.4, p. 197.

PowerPoint est un programme de Microsoft qui permet de concevoir des présentations électroniques sous forme de succession de diapositives. Ces diapositives peuvent contenir des images, du texte, des films, des tableaux de chiffres et toutes sortes d’infographies ou d’hyperliens. Cet assistant de présentation est utilisé massivement partout dans le monde par les hommes d’affaires et les étudiants. Microsoft estime à trente millions le nombre de présentations PowerPoint élaborées par jour dans le monde. Le succès du programme PowerPoint est si considérable qu’il ne peut être expliqué uniquement par la baisse récente du prix des projecteurs et des ordinateurs. Il constitue en soi un fait de société qui semble aller de soi. Ce type de succès inaperçu attire immanquablement l’œil du médiologue. Plutôt que de le relativiser, prenons le temps de le revitaliser. L’utilisation continue de PowerPoint, comme support de référence, construit, à la longue, une forme particulière de discours et modélise une certaine façon de penser, de démontrer, de convaincre. Depuis sa création, il y a vingt ans, PowerPoint poursuit discrètement un travail hégémonique de constitution de norme. Il y a fort à parier que bientôt les jeunes générations ne pourront plus envisager de s’exprimer à l’oral sans assistant de présentation. On observe à cet égard que PowerPoint est de plus en plus utilisé pour … les discours de mariage.

Plus inquiétant, elles pourraient ne plus pouvoir écouter un orateur s’exprimer sans PowerPoint. Face à la petite musique que produit la machine rhétorique, le discours classique pourrait leur devenir inaudible. PowerPoint permet de concevoir des présentations limpides, Steve Jobs en a fait une démonstration lors du lancement de l’Iphone au MacWorld 2007 de San Francisco.¹ À la façon d’un pianiste qui maîtrise parfaitement l’indépendance des aides de sa main gauche et de sa main droite, il associe une projection simultanée de textes et d’images pour illustrer son propos. Grâce à PowerPoint, le confort d’écoute est maximum, et la compréhension est facilitée. PowerPoint permet aussi de manipuler son auditoire par l’utilisation de principe d’argumentation fondé sur l’effet plus que sur la preuve. Ainsi c’est sur la base d’un document PowerPoint que le Général américain Colin Powell présenta, le 7 février 2003, la confirmation de la présence d’armes de destruction massive en Irak au Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies (voir reproduction jointe de certaines diapositives utilisées).

Ainsi des effets pervers, soulevés par ses détracteurs, peuvent se résumer autour de cinq points majeurs:

• problème d’utilisateur: si PowerPoint améliore les bons présentateurs, il rend toujours insupportable les médiocres. PowerPoint est un instrument professionnel multimédia complexe mis à disposition d’un grand public insuffisamment compétent;
• problème de rédaction: rares sont les présentations PowerPoint qui jouent vraiment le jeu de la brièveté d’un instrument de type ‹support›. La plupart des présentations PowerPoint sont bavardes et laborieuses;
• problème d’efficacité du principe de démonstration: à la logique de fluidité du discours classique s’oppose le principe haché de la successivité des diapositives PowerPoint. Souvent PowerPoint ânonne;
• problème de manipulation: le principe de juxtaposition exonère le présentateur de la nécessité logique d’enchaînement de cause à effet du texte rédigé. Juxtaposer n’est pas démontrer. Souvent les syllogismes de démonstration des présentations PowerPoint sont faibles ou contestables. Mais ils sont délicats à réfuter parce que le présentateur peut à sa guise en escamoter les premières étapes. La pensée de son auditoire est sous le contrôle d’un rythme imposé et d’une lecture partielle;
• problème d’utilisation: le support PowerPoint, qui a nécessairement vocation à être porté par un présentateur, est souvent envoyé par courriel, sans explications, comme document de référence. C’est un peu comme si on envoyait les accessoires d’un illusionniste et que l’on charge la personne qui les reçoit de reconstruire le numéro qu’il fait sur scène. Détourné de son statut de support de présentation, PowerPoint corrompt l’information qu’il est censé porter.

Pour toutes ces raisons, certaines personnes doutent de la réelle efficacité pédagogique de PowerPoint. Des associations américaines de parents d’élèves réclament l’interdiction de son utilisation dans les collèges et les lycées. Pour entrer plus dans le détail sur le point de vue de ses détracteurs, il suffit de se référer au très efficace ouvrage d’Edward Tufte² et à toute une série d’articles comme celui du New York Times intitulé ‹Power Point vous rend idiots›³ ou encore ‹Point de vue sur PowerPoint›⁴ du Guardian.

PowerPoint, discours simultané
PowerPoint provient de l’univers Apple Macintosh, c’est-à-dire d’un monde qui a permis l’accès du grand public à l’informatique dans les années 80. Le monde d’Apple est celui de l’image, celui des créatifs et des graphistes. Le monde de ceux qui s’affranchissent de la tyrannie de la ligne horizontale parallèle des caractères mobiles d’imprimerie. Le monde de la flèche de la souris qui se promène librement sur l’écran et s’additionne à la barre clignotante des lettres du clavier. Le pinceau de Macintosh contre le caractère mobile et la machine Underwood. L’esprit libre du dessin peut s’envisager sur l’écran électronique. On songe à la liberté des Calligrammes de Guillaume Apollinaire et à la difficulté technique de leur reproduction.

PowerPoint multiplie l’arsenal des effets à disposition de l’orateur et ce faisant, superpose ses moyens. Les ‹effets› PowerPoint sont les nouvelles figures rhétoriques de notre temps. Les insertions d’images, vidéo-clip, schémas, graphiques, infographies, animations, illustrations par des images diverses sont comme les cousins numériques de la métaphore ou de la métonymie. Ce qui justifie qu’on le qualifie d’auto-content wizard, de magicien de contenu automatisé.

Richard Mayer, professeur de psychologie à l’université de Californie à Santa-Barbara, a étudié dans le détail une particularité humaine: posséder un système d’information séparé pour ce qui se voit et ce qui s’entend. Il a aussi constaté que s’adresser aux deux canaux simultanément, permet au public non seulement de comprendre mieux, mais de convaincre mieux. C’est l’effet ‹Double Canal›,⁵ élément clé de la mécanique de conviction PowerPoint.

Arrêtons-nous un instant sur un intéressant mélange de genres, puisque en PowerPoint, le visible se dédouble dans le lisible. PowerPoint crée ici un nouveau comportement: la lecture collective sur écran. Quelque chose qui se situe, pour reprendre les trois âges de Régis Debray,⁶ quelque part entre la graphosphère et la vidéosphère. Entre l’apparition et la publication puisque le texte est lu et vu, simultanément et collectivement. Ceci est peut-être une explication de son succès. PowerPoint joue sur les frontières. PowerPoint est une machine à réconcilier ce qui est écrit et ce qui doit être vu. L’image se rachète une conduite par le contrepoids du texte écrit et le texte s’allège, s’élève par l’image.

PowerPoint met en pages et conçoit des diapositives comprenant du texte, des images, des chiffres, des tableaux, simultanément. Le simultanéisme, propre aux surréalistes, que l’on trouve dans la Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France en 1913. Ce poème, illustré par des dessins de Sonia Delaunay, fut sous-titré, par Blaise Cendrars, Premier livre simultané. Pour bien communiquer, et convaincre, le logiciel PowerPoint a compris qu’il faut multiplier des dires en parallèle: voir une image-lire un texte-entendre un présentateur, tout cela simultanément. Les figures rhétoriques de PowerPoint s’effectuent dans les écarts entre les trois dimensions: l’image, le texte et la voix. Trois dires qui se synchronisent, se répètent, ou tout au contraire, se décalent, s’éloignent, se percutent.

PowerPoint, présentation ou représentation?
De simple support, le programme PowerPoint est en passe de devenir une langue. Une langue universelle utilisée par le monde professionnel, comme par le monde universitaire. Le discours y est soigneusement mis en scène. Y faire son cinéma, c’est le mot d’ordre. Toutes les salles de réunion de toutes les multinationales du monde sont aujourd’hui dotées d’un grand écran pour l’accueillir. Toute présentation s’y transforme invariablement en représentation. Chacun répète, construit, monte, chronomètre ses interventions. Si le médium c’est le message, alors avec PowerPoint tout est show business. À tel point que le discours devient plus important que l’émetteur et que l’on finit par confondre le projecteur et le présentateur.

De plus en plus de sites de presse proposent à leurs visiteurs des diaporamas en PowerPoint. Le Journal du Net, en partenariat avec l’AFP, propose ce type de diaporama pour comprendre l’économie en six cent soixante quinze images. Business Week conçoit un ‹Slide Show› sur la plupart de ses thématiques. Ces présentations sont auto-animées, elles se présentent comme une succession de diapositives. Elles constituent un intermédiaire entre la proposition d’articles rédigés et celle de courts sujets vidéo. Elles démontrent admirablement qu’un bon PowerPoint peut, en réalité, très bien se passer de présentateur. Ceci explique pourquoi le présentateur de PowerPoint est contraint à la théâtralisation. C’est parce qu’il se trouve souvent en porte-à-faux, en situation non pas de synergie, mais de compétition avec sa présentation PowerPoint. Face à un écran géant, il est poussé à en faire trop pour exister. Un simple propos devient alors une présentation; une hypothèse, une revendication. Le présentateur est entraîné, souvent à son corps défendant, à montrer, démontrer, même quand il n’y a rien à voir. Sans raison réelle, on s’emballe, on étale, on paillette le propos. C’est le reproche le plus grave que l’on peut faire à PowerPoint. PowerPoint n’aime pas les histoires, il tue la narration et la fait migrer, en la séquençant de façon inopportune, en discours de conviction.

PowerPoint: propriété de la parole
PowerPoint répond point par point à la description de la machine rhétorique de Barthes, il est défini par Microsoft comme ‹la forme de technologie de persuasion la plus aboutie›.⁷ Convaincre (fidem facere, de la Probatio) par ce que l’on dit et simultanément émouvoir (animos impellere) par ce que l’on voit. PowerPoint. C’est le retour d’un art de la persuasion qui n’a été laissé en jachère que depuis Napoléon III, époque des derniers traités rhétoriques d’importance, alors qu’il a constitué la colonne vertébrale de l’enseignement de toutes les classes dirigeantes depuis Athènes au cinquième siècle. La rhétorique est contemporaine de la Démocratie, c’est une langue conçue pour séduire les jurys populaires des procès. Ce n’est peut-être pas le fait du hasard que ce soient des Américains, grands amateurs d’affaires judiciaires, qui imaginent avec PowerPoint le premier principe d’une application informatique. Cette première rhétorique est décriée par Platon dans son Gorgias.⁸ Socrate y oppose le ‹faire croire› du rhéteur au ‹faire savoir› du philosophe. Calliclès lui répond que ‹la rhétorique n’a aucun besoin de savoir ce que sont les choses dont elle parle, simplement elle a découvert un procédé qui sert à convaincre›.

PowerPoint n’a pas pour objet la connaissance, mais la conviction. Loin de la recherche de la vérité par le dialogue et la réfutation de la maïeutique socratique, la rhétorique se contente de son statut de machine à convaincre. N’importe quel type d’assemblage de simples vraisemblables lui convient, à condition que cet objectif soit atteint. Barthes nous rappelle, dans son séminaire à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, en 1964, que la rhétorique est aussi une pratique sociale, une technique privilégiée (puisqu’il faut payer pour l’acquérir) qui permet aux classes dirigeantes de s’assurer la propriété de la parole. Avec PowerPoint, c’est bien de cela qu’il s’agit, s’assurer la propriété de la parole. Grâce à une mise en forme de contenu, qui s’enseigne et s’apprend. Une pure technologie de persuasion au service de la conviction d’un auditoire. ‹Un «art» de la persuasion, ensemble de règles, de recettes, dont la mise en œuvre permet de convaincre l’auditeur du discours, même si ce dont on doit le persuader est faux.›⁹

PowerPoint est enfin un enseignement. Ainsi parfois, lors de certains oraux d’épreuves universitaires, on se demande si l’oral n’est pas, tout d’abord, un exercice, une leçon de PowerPoint. Puisque la question n’est plus tant de faire des étudiants des hommes de métier, mais des bons rhéteurs. Gorgias s’explique à Socrate sur ce point: ‹Et quel que soit l’homme de métier que lui opposerait le débat, l’orateur persuaderait qu’on le choisisse lui plutôt que n’importe qui d’autre; car il n’y a pas de sujet sur lequel l’orateur ne parlerait de façon plus persuasive que n’importe quel homme de métier devant une foule. Tant est grande et belle la puissance de notre art›. La traduction contemporaine de cela pourrait être qu’il vaut mieux un bon PowerPoint présenté par un incompétent, qu’un discours d’expert. Ainsi, pour convaincre de l’urgence à lutter contre le réchauffement climatique, mieux vaut le PowerPoint d’Al Gore dans le documentaire Une vérité qui dérange de David Guggenheim que les discours des plus érudits climatologues.

PowerPoint: donner à voir, pour donner à penser
Ce serait un raccourci inexact de ne considérer le succès de PowerPoint que comme le triomphe d’un contenant sur un contenu. PowerPoint est souvent le support d’une rhétorique sophiste, manipulatrice. Le médiologue peut aussi y voir une reprise numérique d’une rhétorique plus aristotélicienne. Une rhétorique moins subjuguée par son propre pouvoir, une rhétorique plus au service du vrai et du beau. Il n’y a rien de surprenant à ce que la rhétorique PowerPoint soit lourdaude lorsqu’elle est mal utilisée. Bien sûr, on la voit venir, avec le côté irritant du contrôle du cheminement de la pensée de celui qui reste à convaincre … mais après tout la conviction du flux d’un texte bien rédigé vaut bien la persuasion de la juxtaposition adroite d’une présentation PowerPoint, pour peu que la cause soit juste.

On a vu un ministre des finances¹⁰ utiliser habilement une présentation PowerPoint comme une sorte de stock. Son discours brillant et libre fut simplement émaillé par de brusques zooms sur une diapositive ou une autre, au gré de ses échanges avec son auditoire. En reconvoquant les conditions d’un échange dialectique, en réinstaurant le dialogue avec son public à la façon des maïeuticiens, il revitalisa la fixité prévisible de son PowerPoint. L’image vint en support au verbe et l’on se dit que oui, peut-être, pour convaincre les jeunes générations et détourner leurs yeux habitués à virevolter d’un écran à l’autre, il fallait au moins cela. Un bon discours visuel, c’est-à-dire un discours qui construit un ‹point de vue›, un discours universel de conviction qui transcende les langues nationales. Parce qu’une image ne se traduit pas. PowerPoint est signe de son temps, américain en diable, il offre, à tous, la possibilité de faire son petit cinéma amateur, de concevoir des petites visions du monde illustrées. Et, même si cela se produit la plupart du temps de façon maladroite, même si sa puissance de conviction est parfois utilisée pour de mauvaises causes, il a du moins le mérite d’avoir compris qu’il faut donner à voir à notre monde contemporain, pour lui donner à penser.

Notes
1. Steve Jobs, à MacWorld 2007, San Francisco. Vidéo du discours disponible sur http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d5200/event.
2. E. Tufte: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, 2e édition. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press LLC, 2006.
3. E. Tufte: ‹PowerPoint makes you dumb›, The New York Times, 17e decembre 2003.
4. ‹Point of view on PowerPoint›, The Guardian.
5. ‹Dual channel›, dans R. E. Mayer: Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001.
6. R. Debray: Cours de Médiologie générale. Paris: Gallimard 1991, rééd. coll. Folio essais. Paris: Gallimard 2001.
7. Platon: Gorgias.
8. An Inconvenient Truth, documentaire de David Guggenheim, 2006.
9. R. Barthes: ‹L’ancienne rhétorique›, Communications, n° 16, 1970, p. 197.
10. Il s’agit de Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
11. Wikipedia est un encyclopédie collaborative, www.wikipedia.com.

Pierre d’Huy est consultant International en Management de l’Innovation, Professeur associé au Management Institute of Paris, Enseignant au CELSA Sorbonne Paris IV. Dernier ouvrage paru L’Innovation Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales et à paraître en février 2007, L’Imagination Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales. Pierre d’Huy est consultant International en Management de l’Innovation, Professeur associé au Management Institute of Paris, Enseignant au CELSA Sorbonne Paris IV. Dernier ouvrage paru L’Innovation Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales et à paraître en février 2007, L’Imagination Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales.

Patrick Harris
thoughtengine
patrick@thoughtengine.co.uk

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Ask ten people to define strategy, and almost inevitably, you will be presented with eleven answers—each of them different. This is unfortunate, especially in today’s fast-paced world where the right strategy, properly executed, may just be the difference between failure and success.

The most succinct description of strategy at a meta-level, is to pose three questions:
• where are you now?;
• where do you want to go?;
• how will you get there?

However, all too often, organizational responses to these vital questions are dry, anodyne papers that emerge from laboured strategic planning processes and which ultimately gather dust on the desks of the senior team for a year or so. Then, with disdain as the mood and mediocrity as the accepted measure, the cycle is repeated.

What a strategy should do, by contrast, is create a firm call to action in a collaborative way and in a clear direction. Good strategy can provide the organization with steerage to address fast-paced change including many new and emerging trends, such as:
• instant, “blog speed” competitor response;
• empowered consumers armed with choice and information; and,
• power brands, which can use trust to span industry boundaries.

Accepting the importance of good strategy, what characteristics does it have? Good strategy must first contain the essential ingredients of appropriate content set in the right context. Content tells us what is important and context tells us why.

A healthy balance of content and context addresses the commercial realities of markets, customers and competitors, but importantly, it explains the management reasons why this particular focus is endorsed.

Thereafter, good strategy creation comes alive and focuses on principles, behaviour and deeds. These elements provide responses on how to realize the strategy but are often overlooked by strategists and leaders alike. Crucially, they supply the means to ignite action and build organizational momentum. Achieving strategic momentum is fundamental and boldly displaces the business mantra of seeking buy-in. Obtaining buy-in is effectively a pipe dream because it assumes that the strategy is 100 per cent accurate, is communicated with 100 per cent effectiveness and is implemented with 100 per cent efficiency. Momentum, however, suggests that the essence of the strategy is communicated and that the organization is supplied with the guiding tools of principles, behaviour and deeds to implement it effectively.

Principles are overarching statements that describe how things are done. A proper principle will look a bit like the adage: ‘Everything in moderation, nothing in excess.’

My favourite example of principles at work was a customer service issue. The CEO and I recognized that immediate action was needed to refocus the customer service effort. We gave finance and technology teams strategies about call costs and service-level agreements. But to the customer service team, we supplied only one principle: ‘Our service is like oxygen and a customer dies after three minutes without it.’

One phrase enabled an entire division to change its working style. Can your organization’s strategy do this?

Behaviour is the next characteristic in creating strategic momentum. Innocent’s playful health and Pret a Manger’s passionate about food are great examples expressing behaviours to suit strategies. After all, you can’t dictate a culture, but you can nurture behaviours that underpin the culture you want.

The final, yet perhaps most critical, characteristic of strategic momentum is deeds. A good strategy outlines deeds that strategists and business leaders must live up to and that will deliver success. Deeds are, in effect, the strategy in action.

Without a statement of deeds for the organization to observe in the actions of others and without a management team visibly making progress along those lines, there is no way to benchmark how quickly the organization is ingesting the strategy. If people cannot see others getting involved, they will become reluctant to participate. A strategy without participation is of no value to anyone, except possibly the competition!

So how is this type of strategy created? It is important to have the means in place to regularly test and challenge the strategy as a complement to existing processes. Every organization needs a few impassioned people who are empowered to challenge the current view. Their role is to ensure that the issues that are normally taken as given are subjected to deeper investigation.

The end result is definitely worth it—a rich strategic direction, a set of appropriate implementation tools, significant organizational momentum and the in-built flexibility to embrace strategic change when required.

Patrick Harris was Director of Creativity for Orange, managing its strategic think-tank. He is Founder of thoughtengine, a consultancy specializing in strategy, futures, creativity and brand. For more details visit www.thoughtengine.co.uk. This article originally appeared in Business Voice, the CBI magazine, July–August 2006.

Malcolm S. Allan
Locum Consulting
mallan@locumconsulting.com

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Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to outline what is involved in place branding and its relevance to urban planning and the environment and to illustrate this through a case study of the brand strategy recently created for a major new urban development in the Overhoeks area of north Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

What is a brand?
A brand is the good name of a product, an organization or a place. For time limited consumers—shoppers, investors, traders, visitors, migrant talent—it’s a short-hand to an informed decision to buy a particular product, to access a specific service, or to travel to a city, region or country for a holiday or to attend an event, to invest in a development or to open a factory. But, of most importance, a brand is a promise of value to consumers—e.g. a guarantee of value, of quality, of performance, of service delivery, or of after-care.

What is branding about?
Branding is about creating value for those who have a stake in a brand, its reputation, its products or services—designers, investors, manufacturers, salesforces, retailers, and outlets, and about creating value for consumers who wish to purchase its products and services. A brand is also an organizing principle and a decision making tool—it is the basis of the way in which products and services are created and offered to consumers and it provides a basis for making decisions about which products or services to develop, their standards of design, their quality of finish and the way in which they are made available and delivered to consumers. And a brand also helps businesses and organizations to close the gap between policy and execution by providing guidelines and values on what to offer, how to create it and how to make it available to consumers.

Why brand places?
In recent years, the expansion of trade and the growing importance of media have led to recognition of the importance of marketing and promotion in supporting the economic development of places. Globalization of trade has meant that products and services can be purchased from an almost limitless number of sources. Differences in price and quality, the traditional points of competition, are being steadily eroded; distance too matters much less. Thus, perception of place has become an important factor in distinguishing between otherwise often fairly similar products, services and investment opportunities.

At the same time, the role of the media has increased enormously, with the expansion of access to the internet, satellite television and ubiquitous telecommunications. The images created and left by the media play a tremendous role in shaping our views of places and products. Moreover, growth in global travel and communication has increased our exposure to and awareness of places; and equally powerful images and information about places are obtained through personal networks, business travel, and tourism. What we think about investment opportunities, for example in Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, China, Chile, India and South Africa, is inextricably tied to the information and interactions we have with these places as brands.

In this new environment, a number of countries, regions and cities have embarked on programmes to market and promote themselves, both to domestic and to international markets. Whilst the priorities often vary, from promoting tourism to targeting FDI, to supporting exports, the overall objective is typically the same: to make key audiences aware of what the place has to offer and to shape the message that these audiences receive.

The experience of such “place marketing” programmes has been decidedly mixed. Many campaigns have launched with a new logo and strap line, a flurry of press (and the obligatory series of CNN adverts), only to fade away in time, leaving the place with little substantive impact. Such failure typically has many root causes, but three of the most common are:

• a focus on place marketing rather than place branding: too many places confuse place branding with place marketing which tends to focus on the promotion of current attractions and the place as a destination for tourists. By comparison, creating and managing a place brand strategy involves a rigorous assessment of how a place operates, the assets it has, its offer to consumers, its ability to survive and grow, its ambition and vision for its future and the resources it has at its disposal to realize that vision, and the identification of the “on-brand” actions it needs to take to make a reality of it;
• a short-term, “campaign” mentality that does not meet on-the-ground realities: effective place branding takes time, and building a brand requires but real changes (in attitude and action) on the ground before ad campaigns and public relations can take effect. Also, too many place branding initiatives are focused on short-term advertisements, painting aspirational views of the place, which have virtually no link to the real experiences of investors, tourists and business people that interact with it. Place branding takes time and must involve a well organized, programmatic approach and long-term buy-in from public and private sector stakeholders and from the community of the place;
• lack of prioritization and clear differentiation of place: no place can (or should) be everything to everyone, yet many place branding initiatives attempt just this. Developing a clear brand image built on sources of sustainable differentiation and competitive value, and targeted to well-defined audiences, is critical to effective place branding.

What’s required for place branding?
In order to create and implement an effective brand strategy places require:

• agreement among key stakeholders on a shared vision of how their place will develop in the future and what it will offer of value to consumers;
• shared leadership and partnership between these stakeholders to define and realize their brand strategy;
• a clear understanding of the current de facto brand of the place among the stakeholders and how it was formed (i.e. its current offer);
• action to connect the key stakeholders and enable them to work effectively in partnership;
• “on-brand” actions that are taken by the stakeholders to demonstrate the brand and bring it alive, not just communications about it.

Place branding stakeholders
Figure 1 below illustrates the key stakeholders who are required to work in partnership to create a place brand strategy. Places need to involve all of their key stakeholders who can invest in and communicate what is happening in the place and what they are doing to develop it in line with an agreed, shared, vision. All of those organizations and institutions that have a stake in the future development of the place need to be involved in the process. The investments they make in the development of the place, the actions they take and the communications they put out are all vital elements of how the story of the city will be communicated. The principle channels through which a place commonly communicates are its tourism, its private sector, its government and public policy, investment and immigration, its culture and education, and its people. The policies of the government on, and the investment made by the private sector in, tourism facilities, attractions and its workforce communicate powerful messages about the place to potential visitors about how it operates.

Figure 1
The Place Brand Hexagon
©Placebrands 2003

The scale and nature of investment in tourism, in cultural, the arts, and heritage, says a great deal about the extent to which the place values tourism and how well it caters for and cares for tourists, cares for its environment and values its heritage.

The private sector often says a great deal about their place, about its ability to produce excellent products and services, about creativity and their leaders. It can say things to the external world about other aspects of the place such as the private sector’s regard for sustainable development, its treatment of natural and human resources, its respect for its arts, culture and heritage.

How the place conducts its relations with other countries, regions or cities, businesses and institutions, communicates much about the values of the place and its rulers that can create distinct impressions in people’s minds and alter their opinions about it. Similarly, perceptions of the place can be altered by the way its leadership treats its own citizens through their education, training, housing, social security, cultural and environmental policies and programmes, all of which can have an impact on business, and the attraction of tourists and foreign investment.

The pattern, scale and nature of investment in the place, by the government and by the private sector, both local and foreign, in infrastructure—transportation, airports, docks, power and communications utilities, in human and economic infrastructures—in schools, technical institutes and universities, all sends messages to the population, potential residents (e.g. talent) and investors.

The culture of the place communicates a great deal about its values its arts, literature, traditions and heritage. Its heritage and how it is valued communicates how the population values its past. And the way in which landmarks are cared for and used says a lot about how the population values and cares for its environment. Investment in education and training says a great deal about how a place values its people as does the extent of private sector investment in the development of the workforce.

Finally, the population of the place communicates to visitors, as they interact with them, how much they value visitors, investors and each other. Community groups and NGOs demonstrate the role of the civil society in their community.

Some examples of place brands
There are a variety of place brands in the world, each emphasizing one or several elements of their offer of value to consumers in order to distinguish themselves from their competition. For example, Spain has built its brand strategy on a combination of evolving and distinguishing characteristics commencing with being a new democracy, on its tourism, its culture, on sports (e.g. the Barcelona Olympics), and now on the development of new technologically advanced businesses, especially in the computer gaming and virtual reality sectors. In contrast, Ireland has built its brand on the creation of opportunities for foreign direct investment (FDI) supported by a favourable fiscal climate and the development of the skills and knowledge of its people and its Diaspora around the world. A similar variety can also be observed in city brands: for example, the port city of Southampton in the UK is building a brand based on its role as a magnet for innovation, reflecting the reputation and expertise of its universities and key sectors, such as marine engineering; and the downtown area of Washington DC, its Business Improvement District, is building a brand as America’s meeting place, recapturing and updating its heritage as a place where the public, private and not-for-profit sector come together for the common good.

What is place brand strategy?
A place brand strategy helps the key stakeholders of the place to chart a route towards realizing their shared vision for the development of the future offer of the place. It helps to define the value that will be created for those stakeholders, for example through increased income generated by sports events or from retail sales, from increased investment in land and buildings, from job creation and from the creation of new services. It provides a decision making tool for shareholders to identify really “on-brand” investments from among the many possibilities and opportunities on offer to them. And, it provides a set of guiding principles for everyone who is involved in bringing the brand alive, principles that help to determine the right actions, programmes, investments and communications about them.

Place brand partnership
To implement a brand strategy places need to create an effective partnership of their key stakeholders from the public, private and community sectors: national, regional or local governments, developers, investors, major employers and their business associations, further and higher education institutions, foundations, charitable organizations and community representative bodies, and the media. These people and the organizations they represent are crucial for the development and implementation of the brand strategy. Not only do they need to “own” the process, they need to be willing, individually and with others, to invest in the implementation of the resulting strategy.

In all too many places, our experience is that many stakeholders fail to understand that partnerships and their leadership are complex and need to be worked at if they are to be effective. Good leadership is central to the success of partnerships, especially those uniting the public, private and community sectors. The leadership of partnerships dealing with place brand strategies is different from leadership of private companies and public organizations. Place brand partnerships are not like central government departments, or local government or private companies or voluntary, community and charitable organizations. They are a hybrid form of organization. Their characteristics are determined by those who set them up, the purpose for which they were created and by those who form the team that leads the work of the partnership, the key stakeholders of the place. The form of partnership organization and operation is rarely a given. It has to be negotiated and agreed by those who are going to be involved. Brand partnership has to be worked at. If partnership is “the glue that knits” diverse interests together to undertake projects that they cannot do by themselves, then the way they are led and who participates in that leadership is of profound importance.

A place brand partnership is commonly composed of a Brand Leadership Team—senior top level decision makers drawn from the place’s key stakeholders—government politicians and civil servants, private sector CEOs, directors of community and not for profit organizations and senior representatives of the media, and a Brand Development Team—action takers drawn from the same key stake-holder’s organizations who take responsibility for implementation.

Creating a place brand strategy
To create a brand, the key stakeholders need to undertake a rigorous and robust process of strategy creation and implementation. This is not like an advertising campaign of a short duration. It can take between six and nine months to create a brand strategy depending on the size and complexity of the place. And the resulting strategy can be for a period of between five and fifteen years depending on the nature of the scale of ambition of the place and how much needs to change to realize it.

The process commonly consists of three stages: initiation, vision and strategy, and marketing and implementation:

• stage one, initiation, consists of identification of the key stakeholders and their formation in to a brand partnership—a brand leadership team and a brand development team, and their developing a good understanding of what place branding involves and its potential benefits;
• stage two, vision and strategy, consists of an assessment of the status quo of the place to create an understanding of the current, de facto brand, and the creation of an agreed vision for the future development of the place. To understand its current brand the partnership needs to analyse the internal factors that contribute to and shape the brand’s manifestations, and then conduct an analysis of the external factors that shape the way in which the place is experienced, perceived and recognized by specific target audiences around the globe. In parallel, the stakeholders need to create and agree a shared vision of the future planned offer of value of the place to consumers and investors, internal and external. This needs to be followed by the development of alternative scenarios for a brand strategy to help realize the vision, the selection of a scenario for detailed development and then its testing in target markets;
• stage three, marketing and implementation, involves the creation of a detailed marketing strategy consisting of on-brand actions (investments, developments, events, programmes, etc.) that bring the brand alive and communications about them; a detailed implementation plan—costed and scheduled; proposals for brand strategy management—designing the most suitable form of organization, its staffing and its activities, and its monitoring and evaluation—determining and tracking the key indicators of the brand and acting on them.

The case study—Overhoeks North Amsterdam
Just a few hundred metres across the river IJ from Amsterdam Central Station lies a large area which until recently was occupied by Shell Research. Shell’s New Technology Centre (NTC) is currently under construction and will require some 20 ha less space than the old facility. The surplus land has been sold to the city of Amsterdam. A consortium consisting of ING Real Estate (the world’s second largest real estate developer) and Ymere (a local housing corporation) have been awarded the contract to redevelop the area to provide, housing, offices, cultural and entertainment facilities. Vesteda (a private sector rental housing company) and the Dutch National Film Museum have also committed themselves to the area.

This eclectic group of stakeholders, while all having their own specific goals, needs, ambitions and plans for the area, realized that they had a common interest in seeing this regeneration succeed—its size and location make it of national as well as local importance. Placebrands was appointed by ING Real Estate to work with the stakeholders to form and run a Brand Partnership, consisting of a Brand Leadership Team of senior decision-makers and a Brand Development Team consisting of their key managers, which is responsible for implementing strategy and management.

The objectives agreed for the project were:

• to position the area as more than just a successful construction project—rather the birth of a new quarter of the city of Amsterdam with its own distinctive character;
• to provide the area with sustainable competitive advantages over other parts of the city;
• to change current perceptions of the area to being an appealing, pleasant and lively part of the city;
• to take the first step towards establishing North Amsterdam as a valued and integral part of the city;
• ensure that the area and its activities are seen as a contribution to the life and appeal of the whole city.

Working closely with the Brand Leadership Team, we formulated a shared vision for the future of the area as a lively, smart (in both senses of the word), progressive and creative area that complements the well-known assets of the Amsterdam inner city and challenges the conventional image of North Amsterdam as a dull, drab and deprived area. With the Brand Development Team we designed a brand strategy that takes as its shorthand the expression ‘alive & kicking’. This strategy describes a place that is differentiated from the rest of the city by its unique high-rise skyline and its waterfront park, is identified by its lively, buzzy atmosphere, and is personified by its friendly, creative and stimulating personality.

This brand strategy influenced the municipality’s urban plan to incorporate restaurant facilities and a small harbour on the waterfront. It influenced the architecture to combine modern buildings and landscaping with a sense of Amsterdam authenticity as well as elements that surprise and encourage exploration of the area. It guides the development programme for the area to include new cultural institutions, a designer hotel and public spaces suited to small and medium-sized music, theatre and film events. It also helped the developers of the area to pick and choose businesses and institutions that are ‘alive & kicking’ themselves, ranging from TV production companies to sustainable energy entrepreneurs and fashion designers.

In the words of Anneke de Vries, Managing Director of ING Real Estate development, ‘Placebrands has enabled our partnership of developers and public bodies to realize a truly imaginative and realizable strategy for the development of Overhoeks that will result in the creation of an area that will significantly add to the reputation of Amsterdam. They have created an entirely new way of envisaging and planning for the transformation of major city areas.’

This originally was delivered as an address for the Seventh International Conference on Urban Planning and Environment, Bangkok, January 2006.

Jack Yan
CEO, Jack Yan & Associates, PO Box 14-368, Wellington 6241, New Zealand
jack.yan@jyanet.com

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Executive summary
Successful brands on the internet depend on certain ingredients. And unlike offline brands, the process surrounding vision, research, exposition and image differ slightly, even if the ingredients of brand equity remain the same. Importantly, a loose vision, informal research, and tapping into consumer advocacy all help build a strong brand on the internet. All these additionally contribute to whether a brand has acquired secondary meaning in a legal sense, although the existing test needs to be reconsidered.

1. Introduction
Despite some major texts on branding in the last 10 years, from Wally Olins’s The New Guide to Identity,² to Nicholas Ind’s Living the Brand,³ and the Ind-edited Beyond Branding,⁴ branding is a very divisive field. Few have done studies to connect the organization’s vision to business performance, which this author did in 1999, and the majority of companies have still failed to appoint marketers to the boardroom. Meanwhile, others are leading the cutting edge of branding, such as Stefan Engeseth with his new work, One.⁵ There is little bridging research into the integrated marketing communications’ model and the cutting-edge, consumer movement papers; and certainly very little on how brands can be built using the internet.⁶
Before delving into this paper, it is useful to cover what branding is. As outlined in one of the author’s earlier papers,⁷ it may be thought of as:

the methods in which the organization communicates, symbolizes and differentiates itself to all of its audiences.

The word branding has altered in meaning, even amongst the experts such as Olins.⁸ Traditionally, the ‘brand’ was part of ‘identity’, which may be defined as:⁹

the explicit management of all the ways in which the organization presents itself through experiences and perceptions to all of its audiences.

The brand was merely the part of this management that was directed at a consumer, or an audience member, external to the organization.

However, perhaps through media coverage and Naomi Klein’s seminal No Logo,¹⁰ which questioned the ethics behind branding, the word brand entered the vernacular. At the same time, the branding model evolved somewhat: Olins began touting the brand as an ‘attitude’ that described the organization,¹¹ and branding consultants became a little more obsessed with the message being sent to consumers, perhaps in the wake of No Logo. It, therefore, became important to make sure that the vision of the organization took into account the message it would send to consumers as one of its earliest steps, and to make sure what was being communicated inside the organization was identical to what was being communicated outside. The word brand began taking on the meaning once given to identity.

This coincided with another development: the “mainstreaming” of the online world. With consumer input now being sought readily for things such as product development (e.g. online surveys became common and were thought of as a means through which the most current data about the market-place could be sought), and consumers themselves becoming powerfula dvocates for brands (spreading good news via emails, or indeed, bad news), there was less of a distinction between the marketing departments of organizations and the customers themselves.

Therefore, the branding model began looking quite different. Once, organizations could depend on training their staff to tow the official line, expressing the brand in the way dictated by head office. But consumers could not be managed in the same way. They needed to be incorporated into brand-communication decisions, either by (a) inspiring staff members and getting them to work so closely to consumers on the hope of “infectious enthusiasm”, or (b) turning those consumers themselves into a de facto marketing department.¹²

There are good examples of each. The former group is typified by companies in Ind’s Living the Brand,¹³ notably Patagonia. The sportswear company has staff that use its products, while consumers are prepared to talk up its goods. The latter group includes many of the networking services on the web, including LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com). Arguably, the initial growth of Yahoo! (first built while its founders were still at Stanford University), Google (which uses its user base to spread news of its new products), and Flickr (which is being found by web users frequenting blogs and similar services) could be credited to the second method. The author refrains from using the viral marketing term here, largely because it has become hackneyed.

But how does this online growth actually happen and how does it contribute to the strength of a brand? And if this happens, can the internet truly impact on brand equity¹⁴ and related issues, such as providing a brand with secondary meaning¹⁵ in the eyes of the law?

2. The branding process
The logical place to begin is in the regular branding model.¹⁶ The brand begins with a vision, or, indeed, a slogan (if it is far-reaching enough to guide the whole organization). The important things are that the vision is unique and able to summarize the organizational “attitude”. Audiences learn of the vision through such things as the logo and the communications that surround it. These should ideally express the brand’s attitude. They form an association between the symbols such as the logo and the values of the organization.

As stated in an earlier paper, ‘Semiotics are key’:¹⁷

Symbols, logos, etc., signify certain things that form mental pictures in our mind when we interpret them. [A branding] campaign ensures that the correct pictures are formed and that incorrect or earlier ones are replaced.¹⁸ Repeated exposures reinforce meaning, which is why consistency in branding is important.

This leads to brand equity, which is the added value that a brand endows a particular product or service. The author wrote of its consequence:¹⁹ ‘As audiences—whether they are shareholders, future customers, students or any other group—select or think of the brand more frequently, they ultimately contribute to the organization’s business performance in economic or strategic terms.’

Online, the psychological process remains largely the same. In 2001, when the author last explored online brands,²⁰ there were more audience members specifically seeking certain companies’ products and services on the web. Other than online advertising, many web-based brands were not discovered unwittingly, unlike many that appeared on television or in print. However, there was an indication that this was changing as the web became more commonplace.

2.1 Online brands today
It is almost difficult to remember how western business was conducted without the internet and the World Wide Web. The web is often the first destination for any researcher today, for instance.

But there is still no follow-up from the author’s earlier work on how some online brands capture the public’s consciousness and others do not. Most people discovered Google, for instance, through referrals. (At the time of the earlier paper, Google was still unknown, although the firm existed.) Blogger.com, the service that enables web users to maintain public online journals (web logs, or blogs), spread through its logo appearing on the blogs it hosted on the internet—and gained a secondary meaning as a result. Yet other brands remain online, and have done so for years, without influencing the public.

It may be easy to say that Amazon.com, for example, was so revolutionary that by being first-in-sector, it gained mainstream media coverage. That may be so, but there are other ventures that were firsts in their sector that never received that coverage—Fashionbrat, for example, was New Zealand’s first online fashion magazine, but has become forgotten beyond this author’s own coverage. Even some of the first fashion magazines on the internet in Australia (Marie Claire, Fashion Australia) and the United States (Fashion Internet) never captured huge public attention and do not survive today. Something else must be at work.

The author’s earlier work²¹ illustrated that there were some strategic and structural differences between successful online firms and successful offline ones.
Vision. Visions were more fluid, so ventures that were defined too tightly failed: Pets.com and Boo.com, which admittedly had other issues, were defined narrowly and could not shift into new businesses when their original failures became apparent. At the time, the author cited one of his own properties, Lucire, which has survived as a web site and online magazine; while the other two businesses cited have changed only because of changes in their founders’ personal lives. Up to the times of their changes, they had survived well, based on a “loose” vision. By equal measure, Amazon.com survived by branching out from books to DVDs, toys and even lawn furniture.

One issue that was apparent in 2001 was the need to have corporate citizenship. This shift toward more socially responsible firms has become stronger in the last few years, with greater awareness of “anti-brands”.²² Internet audiences tended to be more alert to these anti-brands, some preferring products from entrepreneurial, independent firms.
Research. The earlier research also illustrated that there was a lower-cost and shallower research process, with online entrepreneurs willing to begin their ventures on instinct and relationships with other organizations and customers. Successful online firms were willing to employ modern communication techniques.
Exposition. In communicating the brand, the organization partners with others to help it get its word out. Independent contractors, freelancers and other web sites (through links, and, today, mentions on blogs) become “advocates” for the organization. Those that began offline tended to retain the same brand. (Exceptions exist, such as Condé Nast’s Style.com, the online version of Vogue, though that can still be reached in the United States via Vogue.com.) They also tended to be global in their approach, quoting, for example, US dollar prices, despite their location, and made little use of their own country’s symbols. They also attempted to use as much offline media as possible.

To reach the public, they relied more on below-the-line marketing, and not above-the-line. Part of the reason is budgetary, but they also managed to put out distinctive products or services. The successful firms examined tended to have a more personal and positive “attitude”. They made use of a cynicism against big business to their own advantage.
Image. No changes to how brand image—the consequence of branding—were found between offline and online firms. In other words, all the “hard work” is done earlier, with the results of a strong brand—image, business performance and secondary meaning—unaffected by the medium.

Two brands today may be instructive, as their growth is happening at the time of writing and are considered successes by the media. One is Flickr.com, a photograph-sharing service recently acquired by Yahoo!.Its growth has been gradual, but it shows that a company that did not have a huge marketing budget can become an integral part of the web. (At the time of writing, Flickr has 158,000,000 hits on Google, while a search for “US Supreme Court” results in 37,400,000 hits.) If it follows the pattern of Yahoo!, Google et al, which it is expected to,²³ it will become a normal way for people to share digital photography.

A second brand, which is more fleeting, is the name of a movie. New Line’s Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson, began pre-production in 2005. The name was mentioned on a blog in August 2005, and its star insisted that the film be called that, after the studio attempted to change it to a more generic Pacific Air 121. Because of its odd name, it began circulating around the web, mostly with bloggers. By the end of the year, Wired had published an article about it in its print edition,²⁴ and unauthorized cups, T-shirts and even a blog (Snakes on a Blog) had been created. Some even went so far as to say that snakes on a plane had become a common phrase akin to ‘C’est la vie’ and had input it into the Urban Dictionary, a site where colloquialisms and slang can be entered.

The buzz was so strong that New Line went back to the studio to shoot for five extra days to satisfy fans.²⁵ A fan-designed logo even became the official logo for the film, to be released in August 2006.²⁶ One news source even believes that a parody line that appeared on a blog will make it into the film.²⁷

Finally, it may be worth considering Google, since it was not as strong at the time of the earlier study. An upstart search engine is now the primary search engine on the internet, with 80 per cent of searches for the author’s own web site coming from it. Google has branched from its core search service into Google Earth and Gmail, neither of which would appear, on the surface, to be connected to finding information. Google Ads has become a force in the online advertising arena, and might be influential enough to branch into offline advertising.

These three represent three very different parts of the web. Flickr is part of the much-vaunted ‘Web 2·0’, which in a layperson’s terms is a more interactive evolution of the World Wide Web where everyone has a chance to create their own dialogues, networks and web sites, with richer user experiences.²⁸ Snakes on a Plane is an intentionally fleeting choice: it was not set up as an online venture per se, and is merely reflective of a conversation taking place on the web. Google is well known and began as a single application in the time of Web 1·0, but is adding services (and has added services) such as Blogger, representative of Web 2·0.

2.2 Do they fit into the branding scheme?
2.2.1 Flickr.com

Flickr’s offering, however, is simply stated. It is a photo-sharing service, with a difference: it allows users to tag their images, thereby ordering them under different topics. Those searching for images for tsunami, for example, will find all photos with that tag, regardless of photographer. Prior to that, photo-sharing services tended to be grouped by users, so they were shared only as far as one user was able to spread the word.

The idea, perhaps, is not new. Del.icio.us, another Web 2·0 service, allows users to group blog posts. Professional photo libraries have been grouped using keywords. Flickr democratized not just the library, but the ability to create those keywords—tags under the latest parlance. The difference was that there was an intent about sharing, and the site is typical of the “social media” made possible by the internet.

But on the surface it appears to be a well defined company with a single offering, enough to tempt Yahoo! into acquiring it. (Google was reportedly interested, too.) However, the original vision was not necessarily of this service.

Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, suffering from food poisoning, had a dream about a multi-player game ‘built around sharing photographs.’²⁹ The original Flickr site actually centred on instant messaging with some digital photography support. Early members were gamers and bloggers, with an interest in photography. Butterfield made use of Flickr’s loose vision to emphasize the strength that was emerging from its user base: users who were conversing but setting the tone using digital photography in their instant-messaging.

That same looseness meant a certain level of experimentation, rather than formal research. Flickr noticed where its strengths were by letting users find their own feet and interests.

Flickr does partner with others to spread the word. But rather than through formal alliances, it does this by bringing its users into the fray. Users become the editors for sorting the photographs. In effect, organization and user are on the same side, in an expression of the One principle espoused most heavily by Engeseth.³⁰

Its strongest advocates were its users, and Yahoo!’s own interest came from an email from a ‘Flickr fanatic in Bangalore, India’.³¹ That eventually led to a $30 million deal.

Flickr is now ranked 90th in Alexa, the service that examines where web sites are placed on the web. It can be said to have a strong image, if measured in brand equity terms: it has ever-rising brand awareness, it is positively considered by its users, there is a great deal of loyalty to the service, and its perceived quality is high. The value of its proprietary brand assets—its trademark and intellectual property—may be considered to be high, given what Yahoo! had paid for the company.

Flickr confirms the original criteria set down by the author for a successful online brand.

2.2.2 Snakes on a Plane
Snakes on a Plane is an unusual choice for this paper. It is not a venture, therefore it could not be said to have a vision per se. It is a movie title whose quirkiness led to an initial round of blogging, an article in Wired, and a decision by the studio to shoot for five more days given the buzz on the internet. That prompted more mainstream media coverage.

The author first heard of Snakes on a Plane as Pacific Air 121, when Lucire was first asked to participate in the movie. The studio, New Line, states now that Pacific Air 121 was a working title used to solicit support, though there are claims that it had wanted to change the name to avoid ridicule.

Its Google references have gone up and down since word first got out that Snakes on a Plane was the decided title. Before January 19, 2006, they rested on 96,900, rising to 461,000 by February 1. However, there was a fall from that point: 380,000 on February 5 and 176,000 on February 15. It was New Line’s decision to shoot extra footage that piqued the interest of the mainstream media, and the hits started on an upward trend: by March 25, this had risen to 880,000.

Given there is no “organization” that is called Snakes on a Plane, it is hard to consider if it had a loose vision or not. Perhaps one could say that its producers had an open mind in considering all the attention the film had received on blogs; and that if the vision was “tight”, there would not have been a reshoot. Nevertheless, this inquiry cannot be academically rigorous.

However, other branding aspects can be considered from the perspective of the production company. Evidently, research was informal and inexpensive: the preference for Snakes on a Plane was signalled most by bloggers, not by the studio. Samuel L. Jackson chimed in to say that the title should be retained, but that appears to be a more recent development. Listening and monitoring blogs indicates a willingness to incorporate modern technology in researching how well the Snakes on a Plane title was being received.

The communication of the name has come from not just the studio—New Line pays lip service to it on its web site and snakesonaplanemovie.com, the official site, is barely more than a home page—but from the internet audience. Therefore, the “advocacy requirement” for a successful online venture is more than present—it could even be said now to be Snakes on a Plane’s raison d’être.

The consequences of all this cannot be measured at this time. Providing the interest in the venture does not wane—as it did in February—then Snakes on a Plane will enjoy a sizeable audience. Perhaps with the extra footage, it now will, because New Line was willing to show it would participate in the dialogue with its advocates. Only then can one measure brand equity—whether the brand loyalty is strong enough to be maintained until the film’s release in August.
Snakes on a Plane could be said to be a brand, notwithstanding the absence of a vision. It symbolizes, communicates and differentiates a product. Furthermore, like Star Wars figurines and the like, the Snakes on a Plane name has extended into cups and T-shirts, even if they are not formally merchandised and endorsed by New Line.

But only on certain aspects can one say for sure that Snakes on a Plane fulfils the earlier criteria. However, on those that can be considered at the time of writing, they are met.

2.2.3 Google
There is less similarity between Google and the other two brands examined to date. It is the oldest venture of the three and has received the most coverage. Its name has become so ubiquitous that it is now a verb: to google means to search for something on the internet,³² specifically using the Google web search service.

The history has been dealt with many times before, and is a familiar story: two Stanford University students began tinkering. Larry Page had a fascination for back links pointing to any given web site and built a program to compile them. The offline press began noticing Google as early as 1998. The Google culture, however, was not one of formality. New ideas emerged from Google’s staff and many were implemented, the most famous being Google News. Google never intended to be in the news-editing service, but Google News analysed stories that a web spider found and ranked them on a page of headlines. By 2000, it had introduced AdWords, a keyword-targeted advertising service. Other acquisitions illustrated that Google was not just about search. If it had a tightly defined vision, none of these developments would have been encouraged, let alone see the light of day.

As told by Heilemann in GQ:³³

But beneath the comically clichéd trappings, Google was becoming something interesting—and powerful. Having cut deals with an array of companies, most critically Yahoo, Google was processing more than 100 million searches a day and indexing an unprecedented 1 billion Web pages. Fueling this growth was a relentlessness about innovation. [Founders] Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] were openly, brutally elitist when it came to hiring engineers. (Job applicants, no matter their age, had to submit their college transcripts.) In software and hardware, Google’s innovation was remarkable. Using off-the-shelf components, the company was building what was, in effect, the planet’s largest computing system. And its official mission—“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”—extended far beyond searching the Internet.
“I did not understand when I came to the company how broad Larry and Sergey’s vision was,” [Former Novell CEO Eric] Schmidt says. “It took me six months of talking to them to really understand it. I remember sitting with Larry, saying, ‘Tell me again what our strategy is,’ and writing it down.”

At the same time, the boys had fostered an environment that was flamboyantly idealistic. Search was all, profit peripheral, “Don’t be evil” the corporate motto. (Asked later what the slogan meant, Schmidt would say, “Evil is what Sergey says is evil.”)

In short, Larry and Sergey had already encoded the DNA of the company Schmidt was supposed to run. The character they instilled in Google could be summed up in three phrases: Technology matters. We make our own rules. We’ll grow up when we’re damn good and ready.

The boys’ reality took some getting used to for Schmidt. It wasn’t just the dot-com fripperies that fazed him or the dogs trotting up and down the halls. It was the squatter in his office. (The interloper was an engineer frustrated with the bustle in his own shared quarters. After first attempting to evict him, Schmidt gave up and endured the situation for several months.) He also found himself frequently occupied with grounding Larry and Sergey’s flights of fancy. There was the time the boys suggested having Google enter the business of low-cost space launchings. And the time Larry reportedly tried to ban telephones from a new Google office building.

In terms of research, Google relies on the inspiration of its staff. This informality has almost become legendary, shunned by some traditional business experts and praised by those who believe an entrepreneurial style should be maintained by an organization. At its first post-IPO investors’ meeting, Google was so informal its chef wound up explaining the food on the menu—a move heavily criticized by the Wall Street establishment.

Its growth did come from people spreading the word about the search engine. The initial 1998 press came well before Google secured large financing, and was a direct result of everyday users. Given that the late 1990s and early 2000s saw a dot-com downturn, Google weathered this thanks to users spreading the word and, of course, through delivering a quality service.

Its brand equity is strong. The initial public offering, according to CNN, indicated a worth of $24 billion in 2004.³⁴ Its brand loyalty and perceived quality are high, given that rivals have not managed to dethrone Google. Brand awareness can be little higher—Alexa ranks it at no. 2, behind Yahoo!. Google was found to be a top brand according to Brandchannel,³⁵ while branding shop Landor found it in second but predicts a Google win for 2006.³⁶

There is some negativity relating to its more recent developments—offering Red China a censored version of its search engine, Google.cn, for instance³⁷—but not enough to signal that its image has been tarnished in a major way. Again, only recent events have indicated that Google is anything but a dynamic, entrepreneurial and almost anti-establishment firm—even if its founders are multi-billionaires who have the financial worth of the establishment.

Google also confirms the author’s earlier work on the ingredients of a successful online brand, though it may be useful to examine the consequences of its most recent actions in Red China with Google.cn. The Chinese market itself may opt for other services should the political climate change and the people enjoy greater freedom.³⁸

The three brands examined also illustrate that while the author’s earlier work was directed at Australian and New Zealand enterprises, the rules apply in the United States, too. Indeed, the author advances that they are universal, given the global nature of the internet and very similar online browsing habits between all cultures and creeds.

3. Secondary meaning
It may be worth, in a legal inquiry, to see if the online branding model can endow a brand with secondary meaning.

Traditionally, brands have acquired secondary meaning through ‘advertising or massive exposure’, establishing a trademark ‘in the minds of consumers as an indication of origin from one particular source.’³⁹ Tyndall offers a fairly standard explanation:⁴⁰

A descriptive name, word, term, or mark will have achieved secondary meaning when a significant quantity of the consuming public for the goods and/or services in question understand it to refer exclusively to a particular party. …

Courts examine the following factors in determining whether a name, word, term, or trademark has acquired secondary meaning:
1. The length and manner of use;
2. The nature and extent of advertising and promotion; and
3. The efforts made in promoting a conscious connection between the name, word, term, or mark and the product, service, or business in the minds of consumers.

It is accepted that the antecedents of branding, even in an offline model, do not necessarily provide a brand with secondary meaning. This is usually due to insufficient exposure.

In the internet world, where there is a potential global audience, do the standards for secondary meaning differ? The three examples in §2 can be said to have acquired secondary meaning: they cannot be mistaken either for anything else or having been from anyone else but their creators. They had got there without heavy (conventional) advertising or promotion; instead, it was their user bases or fans that propelled them into the minds of consumers in their market-place.

Indeed, an inquiry into the length of use may be less applicable on the internet: Snakes on a Plane has been mentioned only since around August 2005 and has managed 880,000 hits in Google (in seven months). The internet is not the only place where timeframes are more compressed than they were many decades ago: the same pattern can be found in new product development and in the product life cycle.⁴¹

Only the third factor quoted above may be said to have relevance in an inquiry about secondary meaning in online branding.

One approach may be to obtain Alexa statistics of all web sites, making a judgement on each one to see where a cut-off point might lie between online brands that have acquired secondary meaning and those that have not. However, this may prove unreliable: there are offline brands that have ventured online that have a low Alexa ranking⁴² but possess secondary meaning, such as the New Zealand clothing brand Karen Walker.

The best approach is to examine, instead, how well linked they are on the World Wide Web. As advocates will post about their favourite brands, and provide links to them—especially in the age of citizen media or social media—they will get picked up by search engines.

Google, which ranks sites in its index through an algorithm, is best placed as an analysis tool. The algorithm includes a consideration of how many web pages link to a particular site, and even how credible those pages are. It is partly based on web traffic. Further, it is an international consideration, of consumers worldwide, although given the United States’ position as the leading nation on the internet, there will be more American viewpoints covered. It is also, fortunately, independent: no one person can influence the Google algorithm, even if some lawsuits have been started over it.

Flickr, Snakes on a Plane and Google are all unusual words or terms, but Amazon is not. A search for Amazon does not come up with the river, but Amazon.com, the retailer, first. The first mention of the rainforest is the third site. Only two in the top ten do not refer to the retailer. Within its market, it is highly unlikely anyone would consider Amazon to relate to any other organization but Amazon.com.

In short, if a brand has met the criteria from the author’s earlier paper, summarized here, then it can qualify as a ‘strong online brand’. If, in addition to this,⁴³ it has achieved some success in the Google index, then a future court should regard it as having acquired secondary meaning.

4. Summary
Organizations cannot expect to employ the old, offline rules of branding in an online sphere. But at the same time, they cannot expect that the old rules will apply offline, either.

Importantly, the internet has helped identify consumers who are conscious of corporate social responsibility, and public opinion now favours entrepreneurial-style firms over establishment-style ones. These trends have not changed since the author first examined online branding in a pre-9-11 paper.

But even more vitally, the democratization of media—the emergence of citizen media or social media—has meant that individuals have become brand advocates. Online brands find success through tapping in to their respective advocates, providing them with a “reason to spread” their names. Those that follow these requirements have found success, and some of 2006’s most talked-about brands—new, fleeting and established—have done so, by and large, perhaps unwittingly.

This has an impact on the way secondary meaning is to be considered by the courts, changing drastically any consideration into advertising. This needs to be replaced by a consideration of “chatter” on the World Wide Web, resulting in links or a high Google ranking. Secondly, the consideration into time needs to be altered, as brands can be built on the internet at a rapid pace.

The internet has forced such changes that few organizations can have an offline-only existence, so the processes described in this paper need to be considered in any branding exercise or inquiry into a brand’s or trademark’s secondary meaning.

Notes
1. LL B, BCA (Hons.), MCA. CEO, Jack Yan & Associates (http://jya.net); President, JY&A Consulting (http://jya.net/ consulting).
2. W. Olins: The New Guide to Identity. Aldershot: Gower 1995.
3. N. Ind: Living the Brand: How to Transform Every Member of Your Organization into a Brand Champion, 2nd ed. London: Kogan Page 2004.
4. N. Ind (ed.): Beyond Branding: How the New Values of Transparency and Integrity Are Changing the World of Brands. London: Kogan Page 2003.
5. S. Engeseth: One: a Consumer Revolution in Business. London: Cyan Books 2006.
6. Many of the papers discussing online brand-building are general, without creating a credible model. See, for example, the papers collected at Allaboutbranding.com.
7. J. Yan: ‘Online branding: an antipodean experience’, in Kim, Ling, Lee and Park (eds.): Human Society and the Internet. Berlin: Springer 2001, pp. 185–202.
8. J. Yan: ‘The attitude of identity’, Desktop, October 2000, pp. 26–31.
9. W. Olins: The New Guide, op. cit.
10. N. Klein: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picador 2000.
11. J. Yan: ‘The attitude of identity’, op. cit.
12. Brand managers could well become managers of consumer perceptions some day, helping guide them and feeding them back into the corporate vision. The brand could become a pluralistic “collective of perceptions”, rather than a single idea under the current model. So far, that has not happened, but it is a logical outcome of today’s trends.
13. Op. cit.
14. D. A. Aaker: Building Strong Brands. New York: Free Press 1991.
15. Secondary meaning arises when consumers have come to identify a trademark with its owner over time.
16. J. Yan: ‘Online branding’, op. cit.
17. Ibid., at p. 186.
18. J. Engel, R. Blackwell and P. Miniard: Consumer Behavior, 6th ed. Chicago: Dryden Press 1990.
19. J. Yan: ‘Online branding’, op. cit., a p. 186; q.v. S. T. Cavusgil and S. Zou: ‘Marketing strategy-performance relationship: an investigation of the empirical link in export market ventures’, Journal of Marketing, vol. 58, 1994, pp. 1–21; and R. Dau and P. Thirkell: ‘The relationship between marketing orientation and export performance: further empirical evidence’, Proceedings of the 1996 Australia–New Zealand Marketing Educators’ Conference. Wellington 1996, pp. 369–86.
20. J. Yan, ibid.
21. Ibid., pp. 190 ff.
22. The term is a misnomer, since anti-brands work on the same principles as brands when it comes to the branding process. However, the vision will generally include a rejection of undesirable, unethical behaviour and the embracing of principles including fair wages and the use of sustainable resources.
23. J. McClellan: ‘Tag team’, The Guardian, February 3, 2005, <http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1403974,00.html>.
24. E. Steuer: ‘The best worst movie of the year’, Wired, vol. 14, no. 1, January 2006, <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/play.html>.
25. B. Kit: ‘Fan frenzy for “Snakes” is on a different plane’, The Hollywood Reporter, March 23, 2006, <http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ thr/film/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002234847&imw=Y>.
26. C. Elsworth: ‘Cult film fans are bitten by Snakes on a Plane’, The Electronic Telegraph, March 25, 2006, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml? xml=/news/2006/03/25/wsnakes25.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/25/ixworld.html>.
27. B. Kit, op. cit.
28. Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media Inc. notes the seven ingredients of a Web 2·0 firm as: (a) services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability; (b) control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them; (c) trusting users as co-developers; (d) harnessing collective intelligence; (e) leveraging the long tail through customer self-service; (f) software above the level of a single device; (g) lightweight user interfaces, development models, and business models (original emphasis). See T. O’Reilly: ‘What is Web 2·0’, O’Reilly.net, September 30, 2005, <http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/ 2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html>.
29. E. Schonfeld: ‘The Flickrization of Yahoo’, Business 2·0, December 2005, pp. 156–65.
30. S. Engeseth, op. cit.; and S. Engeseth: Detective Marketing: Creative Common Sense in Business, 3rd ed. Stockholm: Stefan Engeseth Publishing 2003.
31. E. Schonfeld, op. cit.
32. The author believes the first high-profile usage of the term was in Maid in Manhattan, a film released in 2002. See J. Yan: ‘Branding to youth: the forces at work’, address to Sales and Marketing Executives International, Auckland, New Zealand, March 11, 2003, <http://www.jackyan.com/files/stuff-030311-smeiauckland.shtml>.
33. J. Heilemann: ‘Journey to the (revolutionary, evil-hating, cash-crazy, and possibly self-destructive) center of Google’, Men.style.com, <http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_422>.
34. ‘Google IPO priced at $85 a share’, CNN.com, August 19, 2004, <http://edition.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/08/19/google.ipo/>.
35. R. Rusch: ‘The search is over: Google wins in 2005’, Brandchannel, January 23, 2006.
36. ‘Brands in the news: winners and losers’, USA Today, December 28, 2005, <http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/ 2005-12-29-hot-brands-chart.htm>.
37. See, e.g. M. Dickie: ‘Google to launch censored China service’, The Financial Times, January 25, 2006, <http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0cf3fc52-8d0b-11da-9daf-0000779e2340.html>.
38. J. Yan: ‘Yahoo! and Google kowtow—would I?’, Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog, February 11, 2006, <http://www.jackyan.com/blog/2006/02/yahoo-and-google-kowtowwould-i.html>.
39. Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed. St Paul: West Publishing Co. 1979.
40. J. M. Tyndall: ‘Secondary meaning’, United States Trademark Law Overview, 2002, <http://home.att.net/~jmtyndall/ustm/secondary.htm>.
41. See, e.g. K. B. Clark, and S. C. Wheelwright (eds.): The Product Development Challenge: Competing through Speed, Quality, and Creativity. Boston: Harvard Business School Press 1995.
42. J. Yan: ‘Online branding’, op. cit., pp. 197–8.
43. The two need to be considered together as the inquiry should be whether a brand has acquired secondary meaning, not a common word or phrase which may appear in the Google index.

This paper has also appeared in CAP Online.

Ian Ryder
British Computer Society
ian.ryder@gmail.com

Microsoft Word version

If you were offered an almost cast-iron guarantee of the route to sustained competitive advantage and a wonderful reputation would you want to know about it? Well let me try to show you what I truly believe is a very simple and easy mantra that makes it possible—but only if your organization truly embraces it as an operating (brand management) practice. Let me begin by explaining something that is really important to understand first, and the reason why the title looks the way it does.

I am very lucky to be able to see quite a lot of academic work and current “think” pieces and for some reason the marketing world, or at least that part of it which purports to write and comment on “branding”, too often makes a misleading distinction between “brand” and “reputation”. The distinction most often indicating that they are independent or can be managed independently—I must address this first so that this article makes sense!

Reputation management is brand management. The only difference is that brand management covers a broader spectrum. I have searched for some time to try and find a usable and easily understood analogy to explain my thinking here, so please allow me to take you through it. Then, as we see how business strategy, derived alongside a set of vision and value statements, is inextricably linked to brand strategy we will see clearly how these impact reputation, why employees are so crucial to that reputation and where the internal and external communications linkages need to be.

I read a paper by a very well known research organization that actually damaged the “reputation” of their “brand” for me! As part of it the author argues, ‘The brand has psychological appeal; reputation appeals to the sense of social responsibility’, which is such a confused expression that if it appeared in one of the Journal of Brand Management papers I was refereeing I would be questioning the author’s understanding of the subject!

My premise is that reputation is to brand as health is to body—allowing for the fact that no analogy is perfect.

Consider: the Body
It is a collection of 6 billion genes manifested in blood, organs, bones etc. all covered up by skin and covered in many places by hair.

The “health” of that body is affected by such things as basic construction of those genes (i.e. luck of the draw actually) but seriously impacted by diet, exercise, sunlight or propensity to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, etc.

“Health” is positively impacted or negatively impacted dependent on how we treat these things and that impact, through our “health management”, will absolutely affect “the body”—it does not exist in isolation. Further, our health is the result (outcome) of the way in which we treat our body.

However, there are things that we can do as part of our “body management” that arguably don’t affect our health, at least nowhere near as directly. We need to cut our hair, manicure our nails or treat our skin with creams to prolong elasticity, youthful looks, etc. (hasn’t worked for me yet though!)

Consider: the brand
It is a collection of lots (not 6 billion!) of “things” manifested in strategies (business, financial, marketing, HR, manufacturing, etc), systems, processes, premises, partners, products, services etc, all wrapped up and “covered” in a brand promise.

In the same way we can take reputation (health) which is also affected by the basic construction (vision, values, culture, operating model) of the business brand (Body) but it is seriously impacted by the behaviour of our people, systems and processes or the way we communicate our attitudes to such things as CSR and customer management. “Reputation” is positively or negatively impacted dependent on how we treat these things and that impact, through our “reputation management”, will absolutely affect our brand—it does not exist in isolation. Our reputation is the result (outcome) of the way in which we treat our brand.

However, there are things that we can or should do as part of our “brand management” that arguably don’t affect our reputation, again, at least nowhere near as directly. We need to manage our corporate identity, trade marks and patents, ensure we have a structured brand architecture and appropriate measurement systems in place.

I know analogies are always open to attack because we can never find the perfect match, but in all my struggles to find one to try and “dispel the myth”, this is so far the best I have found and I hope it makes the relationship clear.

Let us move on then to vision and values. Making these work in any organization is a major challenge and you really should read a book called The Committed Enterprise by Professor Hugh Davidson.1 It is one of the most readable non-fiction books I have ever enjoyed and it presents the results of a very substantial research programme looking at why many organizations fail to implement their vision and values. Two particular tables highlight some keys to success or failure which include:

Failure:
1. Agree vision and values amongst a small group
2. Develop values in a vacuum
3. Keep values vague and don’t measure
4. Allow senior management to flout values
5. Communicate inconsistently
6. Micro-manage the organization brand

Success:
1. Use vision to align and unite stakeholders
2. Establish values that build competitive advantage
3. Convert values to measurable practices
4. Communicate by action, signals and repetition
5. Macro-manage the organization brand

(See the book for the complete list.)

Just this selected list provides so much rich discussion about what impacts our ability to manage our reputation. We will refer to this later to see how the links are made.

Let us consider the more commonly understood primary elements that help to build or destroy reputations. There are three main ones:

• product or service quality;
• customer experience;
• social or environmental record.

Clearly there is a very direct impact on reputation if the physical product bought is of poor quality and fails to do the task for which it was purchased. We have all bought what we think were “bargains” from unknown branded sources only to curse later when the CD didn’t play, or the handle fell off the spade, knife, wheelbarrow, etc. But we also know that even where we are buying a solid, recognized quality brand, there is a large component of “service” in the “total customer experience” associated with that brand—it is not just “service” brands that need to watch out for reputation failures from a service perspective!

Quick example: recently I was looking to replace the Philishave electric shaver that had given me good service for about 12 years—solid product brand experience. I went to several outlets looking for advice on current models and after two experiences in well known suppliers from staff that cared less about what I wanted and knew even less about the product, I was despairing. Then I was walking through Boots (a large retail chemist) and just happened to notice that they had a section containing shavers and, as I stopped to look, I was approached by a lady who asked very nicely if she could help me. To cut a long story short, this lady knew everything I needed to know about the alternatives and handled the interaction so smoothly and in an unpressured way that I bought a model far more expensive than I had originally been considering, and I went away feeling I had enjoyed buying it!

The key morals here are:

• “product” brands often also rely on service to complete the brand experience;
• “channels” are critical and need to be part of your brand management system in order to ensure a consistent, enjoyable brand experience for your customers;
• it was the individual that made the difference.

This is all very self-evident in service businesses where restaurant staff, telephone contacts with such as insurance companies, banks etc. all make good or bad service very immediate. We have all spent much time, I am sure, spreading both good and bad observations around our networks that have either enhanced or detracted from the reputation of those brands!

And so it is that employees, and indeed the wider definition of that, which includes everyone who represents our brand and helps deliver the brand experience that drives our reputation, are absolutely critical to the process. One crushing statistic that I discovered a few years ago in the Journal of Marketing found that in the list of reasons why customers defect, whilst only 9 per cent are lured away by competition, a huge 68 per cent are turned away by an attitude of indifference on the part of an employee!

This is not rocket science! A very simple rule set says:

(a) ensure your employees understand what we mean by a ‘consistent, positive brand experience’;
(b) explain why we need to manage that;
(c) help them recognise and understand their role in that;
(d) engage their commitment to fulfilling their part in the delivery of it;
(e) make the measurement of our performance in achieving it both easy to understand and a matter of public record, so we can see we need to improve, or rejoice that we are retaining delighted customers.

All of the above we now delight in calling brand engagement or embedding.

Which leads us neatly into: what are the links across the organization that contribute to our reputation? Well we have already touched on several, but probably the single most important factor is the CEO of the organization. He or she is responsible for as much as 40–55 per cent of the image and reputation of any corporate brand (depends on which survey you look at), and is also clearly the driver and owner of the company vision and values—note I didn’t say developer of those (refer back to Hugh Davidson’s key failure list).

Common situation: the CEO says: ‘We keep telling them what our vision, values and strategy are and yet I keep seeing employee surveys telling me they don’t get it—how often do they need telling?’ (N.B. this is a genuine Fortune company CEO quote.) The answer of course, is not to tell, but to listen. Listen to the voice of your customers, employees, even your suppliers and respond to that input. Your reputation is created through them and driven by every single experience (moment of truth) they have—it is also instantly changed for the worse but only gradually changed for the better.

So, again, a very short check list:

• from any level of the organization (or brand delivery owner) up to the CEO, the delivery of the brand experience must be absolutely consistent with expected values;
• the “soft”, informal networks are the most true and valuable—listen to them and act upon them;
• your systems or processes must be designed to facilitate customer service and support in line with your values
• measurement systems are crucial. Ensure they are designed to complement and not work against each other—convergent goals. ( Jack Welch, of GE fame, had a passion to create what he called a ‘boundary-less’ culture, which is even further advanced thinking than convergent measurement, but it helped turn GE into the global powerhouse of the 20th century.)

Finally, how do we use vision and values as a route to a strong reputation through alignment of internal and external communications? I refer back again to Hugh Davidson’s list which has communications as the key to either success or failure in the actualization of making vision and values work. Once more this is not difficult although there are many companies out there who try to make it so!

Internal communications
This is not the place to review the myriad tools available to serve internal communications. However, research indicated that the relationship of satisfaction with internal communications and the percentage of those who are prepared to speak highly of the company product or services is seriously connected. On a four-point scale from ‘very low’ to ‘high’, this moves from less than 20 per cent to almost 80 per cent of employees who would speak highly. The jump from the ‘medium’ satisfaction with communication to ‘High’ is staggering though—it more than doubles!

External communications
Again there is a myriad number of ways in which companies “communicate” to their various constituencies, but the key is clarity and consistency. It is no good, for example, espousing a set of values that include care for the environment and then behaving in a way that conflicts with that (one of the problems that the oil and chemical industries have struggled with). In fact, the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown out of that very conundrum into a major field of its own. It is not difficult to understand why when you consider just a couple of frightening facts like:

• it has taken only 30 years to consume one-third of the planet’s resources that took 3·8 billion years to make;
• in the past 50 years the world has lost a quarter of its topsoil and a third of its forest cover.

The lesson is, as always, very simple. Do what you say you will do and make sure that the messages being delivered through whichever communication disciplines you have chosen for external audiences, are the same as those being driven internally through training or induction and measurement systems.

Humanity-based strategy
As we move towards the summary, I wanted to share some thinking that began with my esteemed colleagues in the Medinge Group and which resulted in my contribution to our book Beyond Branding. Based around anthropology, this thinking has developed into what I call Humanity-based Strategy (HBS).

Take a look at the four top expectations or needs as expressed by Disney employees and “guests”:

Disney’s vision and values are legendary and they define their “Total Customer Experience” in four elements:

(a) anticipation;
(b) ‘Welcome’;
(c) the Experience;
(d) ‘Goodbye’.

Whichever way you look at this very simple overview, it is quite clear that Disney is thinking about their customers and employees as human beings and for very good reason!

HBS is a very simple, but powerful, concept with just three basic tenets:

(a) people are people first;
(b) manage the reality gap;
(c) create trust and relevance.

Since man descended from the trees we have been driven by a base set of programmed behaviours that always prevail whatever social behaviours we overlay. Your customers’ (and employees’) first reaction to any situation and brand experience will always be the human one—feeling good, or feeling bad. You simply must begin to understand and learn how to manage that.

The reality gap is simply the difference between what you think you are doing to and for your customers and staff, and what you are actually doing—there is always a gap of some kind and this can either be causing you to waste revenue or profit opportunities, or allowing gaps for your competition to enter. Learn what it is and how to manage it.

The two most powerful words in the world of customers: without trust you can have no loyalty of any kind and no “advocation” other than bad press. Without relevance, in both product or service offer and timing, you will be unsuccessful with the sale.

Your vision and values should drive your building and execution of each of these three tenets.

Summary
It has not been possible to address in depth any of the items that I have touched on in this article but I hope you have some pointers to use to examine your own situations, along with some further reading.

Vision and values “fail” in organizations either because of a “flaw” in the vision or failure of the values to create any competitive advantage. However, even if these are not flawed and do lead to competitive advantage, they are executed (and that word has a very interesting double meaning!) by your people, primarily, and supported by the systems and procedures and measurements within your company. It is no good having the best website in the world, easy to navigate, user-friendly and quick, if your distribution process (owned or outsourced) lets you down—your reputation will not survive and prosper!

The last example I will use is, not surprisingly, one that has now moved into the history books as one of the most spectacular: Enron Corporation. It is not my place or intention to question what exactly were Andersen’s values that resulted in the shredding of key papers, the action that was probably more to blame for their “crash” than the questions about their basic audit processes. But it has to be said that if they had been rigorously executing a brand management system, that was linked to the business values and disallowed any such practices because of the reputational impact of failure to conform to values, then they would not have been faced with the disappearance of what was a globally powerful brand. To link back to my opening distinction, the rapidly failing reputation (health) was bringing down the brand (body).

The guarantee!
Lest I fail to do what I am now going to implore you all to do, I did promise to let you in on the six-word secret to sustained competitive advantage through a great reputation and therefore unassailable brand.

Make a promise … keep a promise!

If you just think through what living to this very simple philosophy means, first developed way back in 1987 when I was asked to define brand management, you will realize how powerful it is. A brand is a promise, and a promise is about trust. Your vision and values act as the beacon. Then, using this “mantra” as the guiding principle for the delivery of those will ensure that whatever your business, be it product- or service-based, whatever your channels of selling, support, delivery or after-sales, your incidence of poor customer comment will be so low as to ensure your high reputation is maintained.

Perhaps the last words should come from a gentleman of outstanding credentials (Nobel Award winner) who described, way back in 1937, what business was all about: ‘Fulfilling customer needs via relationships you maintain’ (Ronald Coase: Nature of the Firm).

Says it all really doesn’t it? Good luck!

Reference
H. Davidson: The Committed Enterprise: How to Make Vision and Values Work. Boston: Butterworth Heinemann 2002.

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 and æsthetic in business but above all … good design must primarily serve people’. Tom Peters, an expert on business management practices, has said, ‘Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.’ Charles Eames, a designer in the common sense of the word, said, ‘Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose’. Simply put from the perspective of a business person, designer and consumer, design is a system that transforms anything into something new.
   
‘Anything’ can be an idea, an object, a place, a process, a business, a person—it can literally be anything and every thing. If the result is something new within an existing category (a category being the market or economy associated with the thing being transformed), then it is an innovation. If the result is something new that creates an entirely new category, then it is an invention. In 1886, when Dr John Pemberton created Coca-Cola, he created a new category of soda—an invention. In 2007, when Coca-Cola evolved the invention into Coke Plus—they created an innovation. This article will look at the design system and its impact on value creation, business and brand.

The Design System

1. Critical Mind
2. Hypothetical Juxtaposition
3. Value Creation

1. Critical Mind
   Critical Mind is the first phase of the design system. During this phase, ‘anything’ is analyzed by the mind of a three-year-old. That is, everything about anything is questioned at a micro level of detail. First, the input is mapped and broken down into key elements. In a business this may be the standard McKinsey Ss—shared values, strategy, structure, skills, staff, systems, style—or it may simply be one of the Ss segmented into subcomponents or processes.

Depending on how brand is defined, the segmentation for brand may be similar to business with the added Ss to include—sensory experience, solution, and sales. Once broken into the key elements, the critical mind asks: Why this? Why that? Why there? What cost? Why? Who? Why? Why? Why? This is done in order to identify core elements, additional elements that can be changed or removed, and any areas for improvement. It is Kaizen within the system of design.

2. Hypothetical Juxtaposition
   If Critical Mind is about looking deep, Hypothetical Juxtaposition is about looking wide. Hypothetical Juxtaposition looks across categories, trends, and economies, in order to select elements that could be paired with, or juxtaposed with, existing core elements. It takes a critical look at market trends and needs in order to hypothesize where the repositioning of elements could present new opportunities, open new markets, or invent new categories. It is important to note that the more radical the juxtaposition—that is, the greater the difference between elements paired together—the more radical the innovation can be. Think about the impact on business and brand if a hotel experience was combined with a dynamic physical structure—like ice? Or a gas station was combined with renewable power?

3. Value Creation
Hypothetical Juxtapositions is just as it says—hypothetical. The real value of Phase 2 happens in Phase 3 when recombined ideas and innovative scenarios become reality. Value creation reconnects the elements to best accomplish a single purpose—adding value. Value is measured differently depending on the stakeholder view taken. From any view however, value has an impact on price and price is a key determinant of value—i.e. is the value received equal to, or greater than, the price paid? Design is a key determinant of both price and value.

Design impacts value, business and brand

The diagram illustrates categories based on simple design and price combinations. It shows the impact of these combinations on value creation. ‘High Design’ creates greater value in terms of consumer experience (Xp), social capital (community) and competitive advantage. It suggests, too, that design creates greater value by serving basic needs as well as the higher level needs of the consumer—belonging, esteem, self-actualization. The greatest value for both the business and consumer are clearly in the upper two quadrants.
   
All businesses are brands but not all brands are businesses. Even those that ignore branding, develop a brand just by the fact that they are a business. If a weak brand is input to the design system, the output is brand innovation or invention. If a strong brand is entered into the design system, the output is brand innovation or invention. In either case, the output is the same. However, the amount of value created varies based on what occurred during the three steps within the design system—Critical Mind, Hypothetical Juxtaposition and Value Creation. Were the core elements identified? Were they maintained? Why? Enhanced? Why? Removed? Why? What new elements from other categories and trends were added? Why? As in any system, the output eventually becomes the input. The frequency that the design system is applied, and to which elements, also determines the amount of value created.
   
Branding is a design system but the design system is not only branding. The design system is a system for innovation and invention—two things that are vital to the creation of value within both business and brand. Businesses that do not apply the design system still develop a brand but do not produce innovation with any predictability. Without innovation in a world where competition thrives on innovation, a luxury can quickly turn into a bad deal.
   
To conclude, businesses produce brands. Strong brands produce businesses. Design produces both strong brand and strong businesses.

Colin Morley
Permission to republish to be sought from the family of Colin Morley c/o the Medinge Group

PDF version

Demonstrating that your brand has a conscience is becoming more and more important as the population of the developed world has more of its basic needs met and starts to look for higher values. The brands in this book demonstrate the growing importance of ethical issues with the opportunities it gives to new challengers and the need for existing brands to develop new values.

But first, ‘Hang on a minute,’ you may say. ‘How can a brand have a conscience?

‘Surely brands are just devices used by corporations to market their goods and services? A brand is not a conscious being so how can it have a conscience?‘

Yes, ‘Brands with a Conscience’ is an attention-getting headline. And it also highlights one of the roles that brands now play beyond just telling you the functional characteristics of what you are buying.

A brand can be the symbolic glue that binds a group of people together in creating and delivering value to customers. The name, colours and design of the brand come to symbolize a deeper set of shared experiences, values and beliefs that build trust between the owners, managers, employees, suppliers, customers and the wider community.

So when you find yourself traveling past a McDonald’s or Wal-mart you have a pretty good idea of what to expect if you stop and go inside as a potential customer, employee, supplier or community representative. The owners, managers, employees, suppliers and others who have created and delivered the products and services that you will experience there have a common understanding of what they are providing that enables them to act together as an embodiment of the brand.

The brand does what is implied in the word we use to describe the organization—it makes one body or corporation out of a group of people and things. So you can hold the corporation or brand to account for its actions in different times and places, even though different people may have delivered the product or service each time on behalf of the brand.

As the twentieth century went on, corporations were seen to have a single mind as well as a body. It is now commonplace to think of corporations as having a “soul”, and beyond that lies the world of the corporate “spirit”. Ken Wilber describes the evolution of human consciousness through the levels of body, mind, soul and spirit in his book A Theory of Everything. Corporations and brands are evolving through the same levels of consciousness.

Most of the brands we use every day do not seem to be very concerned with ethics or morality. They may provide features that satisfy functional needs (e.g. food, taste, vitamins) and benefits that satisfy emotional needs (sustenance, pleasure, well-being). Features and benefits are provided within an ethical or moral framework that is dictated by the economic, legal and regulatory system in force. So for example, products have to be fit for their purpose and must not make untrue claims about their performance. Few major brands or corporations seek to extend the regulatory frameworks in their industries to make production more ethical or expensive.

That was all very well during the materialistic era of mass consumption that has driven the world economy over the last 30–50 years. Over this period, most people have been unconcerned with the ethics or morality of what they were buying. The only criterion for choice has been, ‘Does this brand do what I want it to do for me?’ Does it fulfil my needs? Does it keep me alive, make me more comfortable, give me pleasure or enhance the way other people perceive me? At the lower and middle range of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs there are few or no questions of conscience for brands or consumers.

Consumers who think this way look for value by considering the functional and emotional benefits of the product or service quality provided, versus the price charged and any inconvenience involved.

As the population has become more affluent and better educated, many people have satisfied the basic needs of survival, pleasure and esteem of others. New questions begin to arise that relate to the goodness or badness of what people buy.

• Were these shoes produced using slave labour?
• Does this food have organic ingredients that have been fairly traded?
• Are these packaging materials recycled and/or recyclable?
• Are the employees of this company fairly rewarded for their work?
• Does this company pollute the area where it manufactures its products?

Some of these questions are intertwined with the functional features of the product for the consumer. For example, people may prefer organic foods because they believe that pesticides are bad for them, regardless of the perceived environmental benefits. And some of these questions are driven by media and pressure groups that are hungry for scandal and bad news with which to create headlines. Some governments have responded to public and media pressure by setting up tribunals and committees to review issues of corporate behaviour and governance. Corporations have in turn banded together into trade associations to lobby governments and supra-national bodies to reduce or limit the regulatory pressure on their activities.

Some major corporations have discovered that questions like these can damage or even destroy them; regardless of how healthy the bottom line was before they were asked. Sunny Delight in the UK, McDonald’s, Arthur Andersen and Nike are just a few.

However caused the interest in these questions knocks on to how people perceive themselves and takes us higher up Maslow’s Hierarchy to ‘self-esteem’ and ‘self-actualization’. When you have a choice between having your needs met ethically or unethically for the same price then there is no need to challenge your self-perception as a good person by continuing with the unethical option.

So the question, ‘Does this brand have a conscience?’ has become more and more relevant for consumers, employees and investors.

As a result we have seen brands and corporations adopt CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility as a standard of operation. By auditing environmental and ethical impacts and specifying programmes to alleviate or eliminate negative impacts, CSR has helped to create a conscience in many organizations. Investors have discovered that companies that practice CSR often perform better on the stock market because corporate scandals are avoided and the quality of management improves.

Where CSR standards have been adopted by all the companies in an industry the costs and benefits involved have been common across those industries and all the brands have demonstrated a degree of conscience.

Real Brands of Conscience, however, are those that accept the challenge of leading their industries. They accept the short-term cost sacrifices (such as more expensive ingredients and production processes) because they use the communication power of their brand values to gain a long-term benefit by appealing to the new target audience of ethical consumers. Brands of Conscience make a leap of faith that customers who today are ethically unaware or uncaring will grow to adopt the brand values and place value on the conscience of the brand.

Many brands have CSR policies that underpin their operations and do not publicize their consciences for fear of being scrutinized more closely by people looking for violations of ethical business principles. These companies believe that the benefits to their reputation of publicising their CSR policies would be outweighed by negative publicity of their violations or by the extra costs that they perceive would be needed to eliminate their violations. High-profile brands like Nike and Coca-Cola now find it very difficult to shake off the campaigns by activists who target them continuously.

http://killercoke.org/

http://www.saigon.com/~nike/

Brands of Conscience accept this challenge and communicate their policies widely so that critics can scrutinize them and they can learn further from the feedback. When they are targeted by activists they engage in dialogue and build a constructive dialogue which further changes policies and ultimately enhances the brand’s reputation.

So a brand with a conscience is explicitly making moral or ethical conduct part of its values and positioning in the marketplace. It is making an appeal to its consumers’ sense of responsibility for right and wrong.

So to what extent will consumers use ethical considerations to discriminate between brands in the future? Indeed will brands be able to satisfy the needs of the Cultural Creatives who have often rejected brands altogether and chosen the equivalent of the local farmers’ market instead of the supermarket?

Here I believe we come back to one of the major roles of brands—to make the provision of a mass product or service more efficient by gaining economies of scale. The original motor cars of choice for the Cultural Creatives were basic, reliable, high quality products like Citroën 2CVs and Volkswagen Beetles. Lean production with minimal waste and based on consumer pull is becoming mainstream thinking in many factories. Brands that enable cheaper prices while expressing ethical values will have a major competitive advantage as populations move up the spiral.

Brands that have raised ethical considerations like Body Shop and Virgin have taken business from incumbent brands that woke up too slowly. So now the race is on between the established brands that need to evolve fast, and challenger brands that can reposition the incumbents as unethical dinosaurs. Both groups can be ‘Brands with a Conscience’.

Nicholas Ind
Equilibrium Consulting, pb 5822 Majorstuen, 0308 Oslo, Norway
nind@equilibriumconsulting.com

Abstract
This paper focuses on the limitations of marketing as it is currently practised. It argues that the discipline’s desire for credibility has led theorists and practitioners to base their thinking around quasi-scientific rationality. This has been valuable in creating credence in the board room, but it is not a very good way of understanding the connections between the organization and its customers. Rather the emphasis should be on people and the nature of relationships.

Introduction
There is an adage in marketing—indeed it may be the adage—that it pays to be close to the customer. To become close suggests a communion between the customer and the organization in an almost intimate way with both sides willing to open up to each other. Close indicates transparency and reciprocity. The primary way organizations have tried to do this has been through the vehicle of market research, which has been a key driver in transforming many organizations from being production led to customer focused. However, there are challenges in using traditional research as a means of getting close to customers and also in the way organizations sometimes misuse research to aid decision-making¹. The key problem is that research must abstract and group and categorize customers. If we accept the specific individuality of people, this categorization will inevitably be flawed. Yet such is the widespread faith in measurement and systems² there is a tendency to mistake the abstract for the real: as soon as managers start seeing numbers, they tend to stop seeing people. While market research can be valuable for informing decisions, the argument is we should not over-rely on it nor mistake data for reality. It is at best an approximation based on the present and past and inevitably predicated on assumptions. As the philosophers, Guattari and Deleuze, echoing Spinoza, say, people tend to categorize and universalize the particular: ‘we think the universal explains, whereas it is what must be explained.’³

From abstract to cubist thinking
While numerical analysis is valuable in informing decisions, we should not over-rely on it nor should we universalize behaviour without questioning the intensive processes below the surface (Deleuze 1994). Research is too often used not as an inspiration to understand how people might think and behave, but rather as a judgment on how they will behave. The example of the Volvo Cross-Country car (Ind and Watt) demonstrates the point. This car was developed by the Swedish car maker as a hybrid vehicle, designed to reach a new type of younger customer who might want the practicality of an estate car with the off-road appeal of a sports utility vehicle (SUV). At the time this was a new approach and Volvo felt the need for the reassurance of research. The model of the car was tested in clinics but the consumer response was negative: people had never seen a vehicle like this and couldn’t put into any existing category. As a result of the research, the project was closed down. However, shortly after, Subaru successfully launched a new vehicle, the Outback, directly into this supposingly non-existent sector. Volvo quickly restarted its own project and launched the Cross Country to critical and commercial success. The lesson is that rather than universalizing and abstracting we should see marketing as Cubist; that there are many perspectives of the same thing, where ‘solid apprehensible reality seems to give way to a world of shifting relationships.’

In search of the human
The question we ought to pose is whether there is another, more ‘cubist’ way of building brands? The solution lies in recognizing that the relationship between an organization and its customers is dynamic, non-linear, non-controllable and difficult to predict. This is about putting quantitative analysis and abstraction in its place. And recognizing that it is the customer who has the power to begin, sustain or terminate a relationship. Thus, the organization should look to reconnect with its customers: to break down the borders between the inside and outside. One of the attributes of humans is our ability to recognize in others feelings that we ourselves have and to link the past with the future.⁴ This is much easier if we concentrate on a direct dialogue rather than using mediated information.

Some organizations are adept at this process: Linux and the whole Open Source movement are based on the principle,⁵ as are the sportswear brands Quiksilver and Patagonia and the online game company, Funcom. The design and innovation consultancy IDEO, uses co-creation methods and “unfocused” groups for the development of services and products in such areas as IT, medical equipment and children’s toys. Volvo uses close customer connectivity in developing new models. Interestingly all of these organizations limit market research primarily to a source of insight and some, such as Quiksilver, Patagonia and IDEO reject the abstraction of research.

The skate, surf and snowboard company, Quiksilver is a particularly apt example of the ability to break down borders and connect with customers in an intuitive way (Ind and Watt, 2004). Like Patagonia—and the early Nike (Ind, 2001)—it recruits people from the sports it serves; employees who spend their spare time surfing and skating and who are intimately connected with the culture of their sports. From the CEO (a surfer) down, employees attend and take part in sports events. Also Quiksilver encourage interested professionals, such as designers as well as board riders to contribute their ideas. The 240 professional riders and an army of supported amateurs are an extension of the grass roots’ connection Quiksilver enjoyed in its early days when it was run as a hobbyist surf shorts business. Quiksilver knows creativity has to meet with the approval of the enthusiast audience both to ensure it is a trend leader and to maintain its authenticity. Some innnovations are the direct result of input from riders, such as the development of surfing fiction books aimed at girls or the design of a wet suit range and some ideas are the result of dialogue that provides inspiration for designers. Rapid feedback also tells the company when its products aren’t working as they should or its communications aren’t connecting. Quiksilver treats its customers as insiders and the language of the company reflects this. The free-flow of ideas out from the company’s employees and back in from its network creates the opportunity to build relevant value for the customer. However, it is only an opportunity: to sustain a process of continuous creativity, Quiksilver needs to be an active listener. It has to have the humility to recognize good ideas can come from outside the company and the willingness to share ideas within the company across organisational boundaries. This ensures the continued relevance of the brand to its core customer base. As Quiksilver Marketing Director, Randy Hild says, ‘the challenge is to keep an open mind … I look at everything that comes my way. We’re very good listeners.’

Summary: a different future
As organizations grow they move away from the intuitive knowledge derived from a close and evolving relationship with customers and tend to rely more on the abstraction of research. However, abstraction needs to be explained and the intensive processes that lie under the surface explored. This indicates the value of moving to a more human-focused approach that encourages a direct relationship between the organization and its customers; a relationship founded on trust and a willingness to take down the border between inside and outside.

Organizations have to try to engage customers and to involve them in the process of creating relevant value. This has several implications: the boundaries of the organization need to be challenged, managers need to encourage transparency and work at active listening, employees need to be encouraged to engage with customers and communications need to ?ow across internal boundaries. Companies will have to rework their organizational structures so that the customer is no longer a box on the outside but a connected part of the organizational machine. Also rather than concentrating on internal departmental units, the flows between them, that enable customer knowledge to be shared, need to be emphasized. By combining structural and attitudinal changes the customer can become an active presence rather than a mere spectre in the organization.

Endnotes
1. Philip Kotler in Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control, 5th ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall 1988, p. 188 identi?es six pertinent complaints about market research, one of which is ‘marketing information is sodispersed throughout the company that it takes a great effort to locate simple facts.’
2. Dostoyevsky writes in Notes from Underground: ‘But man is so partial to systems and abstract deductionthat in order to justify his logic he is prepared to distort the truth intentionally’. F. Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground, tr. J. Coulson, London: Penguin 2003, p. 31 (originally published 1864 as Zapiski iz Poolpolya).
3. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, What is Philosophy? London: Verso 2003, p. 49. Benedict de Spinoza writes in Ethics (II/135): ‘how easily we are deceived when we confuse universals with singulars,and beings of reason and abstractions with real beings.’
4. J. Barresi: ‘On Becoming a Person’, Philosophical Psychology, no. 12, 1999, pp. 79–98.
5. In E. Raymond: The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 1997, the author calls the approach the Bazaar model and contrasts it with the Cathedral model where the source code is a carefully guarded secret. He suggests that the Bazaar model is a more effective way of testing software code than the Cathedral model which has to second-guess customer reactions.

References
D. Boyle: The Tyranny of Numbers: Why Counting Can’t Make Us Happy. London: Harper Collins 2002.
G. Deleuze and F. Guattari: What Is Philosophy?, London: Verso 2003.
G. Deleuze: Difference and Repetition, tr. P. Patton. New York: Columbia University Press 1994 (?rst published 1968).
N. Ind: Living the Brand, London: Kogan Page 2001 (rev. ed. 2003).
N. Ind and C. Watt: Inspiration: Capturing the Creative Potential of Your Organisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2004.
B. de Spinoza: Ethics (1996), tr. E. Curley. London: Penguin 1996 (II/135) (originally published 1677).

A version of this paper appeared in the Journal of Product & Brand Management, vol. 15, no. 2, 2006.