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.

Thomas Gad
Chairman, The Medinge Group
Founder, Brandflight

Stanley Moss
CEO, The Medinge Group
Founder, Diganzi
diganzi@medinge.org

T. Gad and S. Moss: ‘The Second Wave of Sustainability Hits Swedish Brands’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008.

When Scandinavians read news about global warning, it somehow does not feel like news to them. It is more like a repetition of something they have heard and feared for years. A long-standing awareness that environmental protection of unique natural resources was necessary has been under discussion at home for decades. They understood the threats, the consequences of pollution and the price to be paid for damaging the richness and variety in flora and fauna. They knew this in turn would severely change the climatic conditions on earth. How did they know this? Because it was a part of their education at elementary schools in Scandinavia for the last 20 years
   Energy saving in this region has a long history as well. During cold winters, when electricity produced in local clean-water generated power stations was insufficient to cover the demand for electric heating, Scandinavians were forced to buy power often from dirty coal-fuelled power stations in eastern Europe. Events like these were a part of their upbringing and it created a deep-rooted understanding of the issues and consequences. Sustainability has never has been such a dramatic story as it now is in world media. Scandinavians find it rather boring, a presumption they probably share with the Germans. After all, the influential German Green Party was established 1985 and Scandinavia has had its own green parties and powerful political factions for as long as people can remember. Thus, last year’s environmental warnings did not really shake anyone up. People simply shrugged their shoulders and said, it had to happen some day in the face of all the reports about global warming. In essence it was old news to them.
   What impresses branding professionals is how powerful the concept brand, ‘Climate Change’, has become and how quickly it developed. Another surprise: how strong the personal brand ‘Al Gore’ has got, certainly more potent than if he had simply become another president of the USA. It does demonstrate to Scandinavians the abiding importance of the USA in world opinion-making. Scandinavians have the conviction that this time climate warnings may finally be for real. There is hope that at least it leads to global action.
   Inaction by the rest of the world was precisely the problem previously. Nordic citizens felt alone in their vanguard interest about sustainability issues, ahead of their time. It was they and the Germans and possibly the Californians (with smog-stricken Los Angeles) who concepted the first models of responsible thinking. This perhaps sprung out of the New Age movement, which also emerged in Sweden. Nobody else seemed to take it seriously. Swedes later felt sceptical towards the USA for not signing the Kyoto protocol, an erosion of trust over the inability globally to decrease carbon dioxide emissions. After all, the biggest and most consuming nation in the world had turned its back on the crisis after contributing so significantly to its creation.
   Sweden’s responsible environmental consciousness is largely political and grew up in combination with the social-democratic tradition and the idea of a welfare state. Government always takes responsibility in setting the rules for social issues. This may explain one reason for the world’s highest rate of income taxation. In Sweden, this so-called Swedish model has lately been under attack, and the new non-socialist government has it on the agenda to adjust the model, so as not to wreck it all together.
   There is still a widespread consensus across all political parties about the fundamental principle of governmental responsibility. This consensus about collective responsibility naturally translates over to Scandinavian brands. Scandinavian companies are good at following the rules. At the same time these are nations with small domestic markets and who need to export to survive. They have always been aware of global competition. Scandinavian industries have complained that the social responsibility they have borne has been excessively one-sided, and that it has made Scandinavian products more expensive. This causes Scandinavian jobs to be threatened. Yet, as there are few changes in the policies, so Scandinavian industry has long been compelled to accommodate the expenses of social and environmental responsibility in its operations and costs.
   The Nordic paper industry, a world leader, has manufacturers like SCA and Metsä-Tissue and strong European consumer brands like Lambi, Libero, Libresse, Serla and Katrin. These brands are good examples of companies who not only adjusted to the sustainability rules, but developed environmental policies far beyond what the regulations required. They invested in new technologies to turn dirty production into a cleaner one, for minimal impact on nature.
   The strong global sustainability trend has led into more self-critical discussion. Industry and government ask: are the brands and businesses in Scandinavia more progressive than the brands in the rest of the world, or have they lost their competitive advantage? Global attitudes move quickly now. Scandinavian brands feel threatened on their own ideological home turf.
   Veckans Affärer, the biggest weekly business magazine in Sweden, published its second yearly “green” issue in 2007. The big question posed concerned national sustainability leadership. They asked: who is leading? The magazine editors concluded that there is a “wait-and-see” attitude in Sweden and in Scandinavia at present. What does the widespread global alarm require companies and brands to do more than they are already doing? And how deep will be government’s role in this new climate? The government in Sweden for the first time in more than a decade leans non-socialist and more liberal, a new political landscape. What exactly will this government do, how much will it regulate, and how much responsibility will it delegate to industry?
   Scandinavian brands historically regarded green issues as a way to get PR and nurture better image domestically, but the message was not promoted abroad. Companies felt the public out there did not care that much. Now the situation is different. Most serious companies and brands in Europe have some kind of visible sustainability strategy. Green issues have moved from an “extra” to something “included”. Companies and brands are subjected to greater scrutiny over the reality of their sustainable credentials.
   Experts today acknowledge how much more difficult it is to stand out using sustainability as a branding tool. The question is now more one of accountability; what do the companies behind the brands actually do, not simply intend to do?
   Today, companies feel a pressure to demonstrate anything, and it can often turn into something resembling a bad joke. When Air France desperately offers a ‘carbon footprint calculator’ prominently on their website home page, so that you can calculate the carbon footprint of your flight with the airline, little can be done with that information. All airlines confront the consequence of a basically dirty technology and no real light at the end of the tunnel.
   For a large polluter like an airline, every reduction is a positive one and proper action demonstrates the sustainability of your brand. A good example of this hands-on Scandinavian approach, a kind of imperative to impress the national audience, is Scandinavian Airlines’ (SAS) very successful Green-Landings programme. Advanced communication and coordination between aircraft navigation computers and the computers in the air traffic control system have been developed. This yields the capability to calculate the most environmentally friendly flight path. SAS has already performed over 1,000 green landings, and every landing saves 100 kg of fuel and 200 kg of carbon dioxide. SAS knows that once all its planes systematically participate in the programme carbon dioxide emissions will reduce by 90,000 tons per year, equalling emissions from 20,000 cars driving 15,000 km yearly on average. SAS, after three near-to-crash incidents, is resolutely selling off an entire fleet of Bombardier de Havilland DASH-7 aircraft, costing the company an estimated €250 million and damaged credit ratings. This is being done to preserve SAS brand equity, for which responsibility, reliability and safety are key values.
   Another Swedish brand, H&M, has taken a leading position in sustainability issues and earned a degree of acclaim for it nationally and internationally. The company operates in 28 countries and has more than 60,000 employees all working to the same philosophy: to bring the customer fashion and quality at the best price. The brand is now one of the most identifiable, visible and valuable of Scandinavian marks. H&M has leveraged its brand equity from cheap clothing into fashion brand by co-branding with famous designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Victor & Rolf and Roberto Cavalli. Alongside its commercial success, this company demonstrates solid principles of entrepreneurship and a strong sustainability positioning, all the more difficult in a business where unnecessary over-consumption, cost-shaving, and issues of ethical production will be the inevitable accusations. H&M has grown into one of the most demanding fashion producers in the world, through determined sustainability policy, hard work, and not just sweet talk.
   Today the company stands as a benchmark for the industry. H&M’s active code of conduct encourages compliance with local labour law, statutory pay and working hours, the right to organize and bargain collectively, a ban on child labour, a ban on discrimination, a ban on forced labour, health and safety in the workplace, and compliance with local environmental legislation. All suppliers are monitored by independent auditors. H&M is such a major buyer that this ripple effect has been felt throughout the entire supply side, especially in China. Status as an H&M supplier has become a crucial demand when negotiating production contracts and prices with these suppliers.
   Many discussions occur about how to engage the alarming global warming scenario. Scandinavia has a social tradition which encourages state-initiated consensus between politicians and industry, with a reliance on entrepreneurial creativity. This got a boost during the dot-com boom, when mobile phone development, largely achieved by Nordic engineers, resulted in the establishment of world-leading brands Ericsson and Nokia.
   Sustainability is not exclusively concerned with environmental questions, but also with issues of public health. Traditional Swedish controls on alcohol, a severe anti-drug policy, high taxes and state-shop-monopoly contradicts the reality that the state owns one of the most high-profile Swedish brands, Absolut Swedish Country Vodka. This brand first began to gain international prominence in New York at the time when Russian vodkas were banned, a response to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. The ban came to include the Canadian brand Smirnoff for the simple crime of having a Russian name, thus driving more vodka-drinkers to alternative labels. Propelled by a rise in the global demand for clear spirits, its popularity in gay culture, trendy bars, with the art community, by clever artistic advertising and a clean, almost-medical design, Absolut came to personify the Swedish attributes of purity and political and environmental cleanliness, represented by a bottle. The current Swedish government has put Absolut up for sale, and all the world’s spirit conglomerates are lining up to bid. Some nationalistic Swedish investors would prefer to keep this iconic national brand Swedish.
   IKEA was rewarded last year by the international branding think-tank Medinge Group with one of their yearly Brands with a Conscience awards. The award referenced IKEA’s anti-corruption stance, specifically citing its business in Russia, where 300 invited guests for the launch of a new Moscow store were unceremoniously turned away from the celebration. Official permits had not been delivered, owing to IKEA’s refusal to pay bribes to the authorities. In Sweden, IKEA’s homeland, the company is considered to be a sustainability leader among Scandinavian brands (together with H&M and Volvo). IKEA’s strict environmental policy aligns closely with founder Ingvar Kamprad’s sparse and lean management principle—no waste in the economics of the business, environmentally or with energy. IKEA took the initiative to promote low-energy products and is today the leading distributor of low-energy light bulbs. ‘Good design for everyone’ is one of the founding principles and the attitude generally is very democratic and Fair Trade-oriented concerning suppliers, employees and customers.
   With this much history in place, sustainability in Scandinavia appears equivalent to a hygienic factor, and consequently a bit boring. Once the claims have been made, actions are more important than words. Companies have discovered it is critical to communicate value beyond sustainability itself. A good example of how this works can be seen in instances where organic food and sustainability are considered in tandem. It is not enough to create the impression of responsible conscience with the consumer. One must deliver more to ensure commercial success. With organic food, the good feeling and the perception of better and more natural taste is important. Svenskt Sigill, an ingredient brand for a variety of different Sweden-produced food products, emphasized its Swedish origin and the good taste (‘Home-made’ is the slogan), with greater prominence than the fact that its line is produced to stricter sustainable standards than ordinary food.
   The importance of combining sustainability values in the brand with higher product performance can be seen in the Swedish start-up EcoMarine’s first non-toxic biological paint for boats. Toxic paint has long been a problem for environmentalists in Scandinavia. Boating is a uniformly popular pastime; in fact, most households in Sweden have at least one boat, sometimes several. Frequently these are rather large sailing or motor craft. All existing paints for boats are either toxic to repel growth of algæ and sea grass on the hulls, or non-toxic but lack the repelling effect. Toxic paint is forbidden, since it releases amounts of pollutants into the sensitive waters of the Baltic Sea and the otherwise pristine lakes in Sweden. Recently EcoMarine introduced a paint formulated with natural bacteria, which not only keeps algæ and vegetation off the boat hull, but also creates a slimy surface which increases performance and speed of the boat. Environmentally speaking, it decreases the amount of energy needed to drive the boat through the water.
   The performance argument is always the winning one. It is a similar position to that which promotes biofuel ethanol, which increases the performance of the bio-powered car, in comparison to gasoline-fuelled engines of the same size. Saab successfully employed this concept in their brand building, until the argument lost some of its lustre when it became widely known that ethanol (although itself non-carbon dioxide-producing) requires objectionable quantities of energy and carbon dioxide emissions to produce and distribute.
   The combination of good conscience and good performance is the wave of the future in Scandinavian sustainability innovation and branding. Swedbank-Robur’s highly successful fund management has shown the market-place real dedication to sustainable investments for 15 years. They consistently argued that such investments could perform very well, or at least as well as non-sustainable ones. Swedbank-Robur has proven that a combination of doing good with good financial performance is a winning proposition. Proofs like these of a successful balance between the opposing sides of the sustainability discussion will always make a huge impression on performance and consensus-seeking Scandinavians
   This paper has introduced the argument that Swedish brands have moved beyond other countries’ positions on sustainability. There are lessons to be learned here about the implications for other brands. It is clear that non-Swedish brands will follow the same trajectory, raising their awareness of challenges, solutions and consumer attitudes. Countries without the social democratic model may find it more difficult to follow Scandinavia’s lead, but with the volume of alarm raised every day in world media, and the UN’s recent report which documented the urgency of global warming awareness, velocity towards sustainable behaviour can only increase.
   Somewhere out in consumer world there is an opportunity to develop an area of research which evaluates the effectiveness of how sustainability incorporates into the real fabric of organizations. This could be a sustainability orientation measure, which considers the extent to which sustainable thinking is central to decision-making. A project done in Sweden called Brand Orientation Index looked at the degree of brand orientation of 500 Swedish companies; perhaps this is the model to replicate on the course to a global sustainability orientation index? Where else but in Sweden will vanguard thought like this occur.

This paper also appeared in the Journal of Brand Management.

Malcolm S. Allan
Locum Consulting
mallan@locumconsulting.com

M. Allan: ‘Place Branding’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
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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.

Ian Ryder
CEO, UffindellWest
ian@uffindellwest.com

I. Ryder: ‘Linking Vision and Values with Brand (Specifically Reputation) Management’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
Accepted June 2007
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.

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’.