Malcolm S. Allan
Locum Consulting
mallan@locumconsulting.com

M. Allan: ‘Branding New Kinds of Places: the Example of Experience Retail Centres’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 2, no. 1, August 2008.
Microsoft Word version

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Figure 1
Convoys Wharf, the Creative Place

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

Figure 2
Dundalk, the Perfect Place

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

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

Ava Maria Hakim 
IBM Global Solutions, Business Transformation Outsourcing
hakimava@us.ibm.com

A. M. Hakim: ‘Business, Brand, Innovation and Design’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
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

C. Morley: ‘Why More Brands Now “Have a Conscience”’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
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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

N. Ind: ‘Beyond Branding: from Abstraction to Cubism’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
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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 flow 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 identifies 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 (first 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.