Stanley Moss
DiGanZi
diganzi@gmail.com

Pierre d’Huy
Experts Consulting
ph@ph8.fr

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

Parisian subway riders careening through the tunnels of the 3rd arrondissement barely notice a particular stop, one whose name contains a clue and potential warning as to the direction culture is headed in the coming era. The name of the station is Arts et Métiers, Art and Technology. It’s a name born of the era known as the Belle Époque, which occurred during the last decades of the Industrial Revolution, approximately 1880–1910.
   There’s a distinct arrogance emanating from a period of time whose inhabitants refer to it as a ‘beautiful era’. To make such a claim alone implies a single-minded confidence in the righteousness of one’s own actions. But the Belle Époque was sincerely powered by noble aspirations, a religion of progress, which held high hopes for the marriage of technology and art, and the sense that with such a conjunction everything was possible. Contained in this unbridled optimism was the powerful notion that beauty could be given to all at the same time. And that such beauty could be dispensed on any scale, with the orchestra as a meme for the simple model of progress, subdisciplines intersecting to create a harmonious whole. In today’s language we would call the phenomenon good management of new technologies.
   In the new millennium, we regard the visual style called Steam Punk—rivets and girders and turning gears—inseparable from Belle Époque’s worldview. Our conception of the era recollects Verne, Eiffel and Méliès. The submarine-builder, the tower-maker, the lunar explorer scientists. Theirs was a religion of progress, poised at direct odds with the church of Mother Mary. Technology had become the primary vehicle of faith, in which all grand aspirations were invested. It was an era that canonized its own creators.
   The transmission of knowledge mattered heavily to the technocrats of Belle Époque. Even the original lycées built during the era look like castles, lofty temples of enlightenment, unmistakeable semiotic statements about how human intelligence and potential were venerated. It heralded the heyday of the École des Beaux Arts, and the flowering of Art Nouveau. Great improvements were made in public education, resulting in concurrent elevation of literacy levels. Across the Atlantic the spirit of the times infected the consciousness of Andrew Carnegie, who in his lifetime built 2,811 libraries throughout the US and English-speaking world. The direct result could be gauged in the success of self-education pursued in libraries by individuals like Thomas Edison.
   So Belle Époque was real, the beginning of a new era, and it paid in discernable dividends. It was an age of notable advancements in public health, hygiene. longevity, nutrition, in the eradication of disease, and the completion of monumental public works like the Panama Canal. In 1908–9, during construction of the Parisian underground Number 4 Line, excavation for the tunnel crossing under the river Seine was effectively achieved by freezing the river, and involved the installation of two huge refrigeration plants which allowed the movement of supercooled brine to stabilize the saturated ground. In a world whose dreamers felt nothing was impossible, every great challenge like this one could be met, and every guiding mind was thought of as un marchand d’espoir, a dealer in hope.
   Belle Époque occurred during a long period of unprecedented peace in the western world. Its accomplishments, albeit remarkable, ended with the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand in 1914. What followed the era of such a religion du progrès was all the more surprising for the horror it brought, monumental demonstrations of the brutality of humanity which deployed the very technology once worshipped for all the good it promised. Over the next seventy-five years the world would experience WWI, Nazism, the Shoah, Hiroshima, the genocide in Rwanda, 9-11, the international financial collapse of 2010 and the epidemic suspicion that something unsavoury and sinister is at play with the globalization of our industrial economy. Perhaps we are poised at the threshold of a rebirth.
   The recent passing of Steven P. Jobs was followed by a wave of soul-searching and deconstructionist thinking about what made for the success of the Apple brand under his leadership. What had Jobs known, done, understood, achieved that explained the rise from a two-man start-up founded in 1976 in a garage to a company briefly rated the world’s most valuable in 2011? What explained the massive outpouring of grief for a man who gave the world devices: the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad? More than once the consensus turned in the direction of a successful intersection of art and technology, arts et métiers. We had been here before. The products Apple continually created brought the best of both universes together in the interest of progress and hope. Steve Jobs had demonstrated good management of new technologies.
   All the same signs are here again: visionary people deploying new technology, merging it with humanistic and artistic vision. If we are witnessing the beginning of a new and beautiful era, let it proceed like the last one. But let it not be followed by a gross abuse of the power, or the leveraging of these advancements for greater horror. The opportunity is here to push the reset button, to launch a renaissance of humanistic thought that optimistically celebrates the intersection of arts et métiers.
   Let’s think of it as a Belle Époque 2·0.

Enric Bernal
Co-founder and partner, Pinea3
enric.bernal@pinea3.com

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

PEOPLE CONTINUE TO ASK: ‘Will the economic crisis be going away anytime soon?’ Well, I hope not. I hope it will stay with us a bit longer until we all learn the lessons that we have to learn from it. Recently, I heard a radio commentator on a radio programme saying something like: ‘We have to take measures so that if a similar crisis comes to us again in the future, we will be prepared’. While many of us might be saying things like this, there is something fundamentally wrong in the way this person was talking. The so-called ‘crisis’ did not suddenly arrive without warning; the crisis is the system’s reaction to previous actions. Actions made by all of us, not by any evil third-party entity. As active contributors we need to assume our share of personal and collective responsibility.
   In periods of crisis people tend to look for strong leaders with clear answers and decisions; people who appear to know where we ought to be headed. But, significant problems like the ones we face today are not simple enough for any one person to solve. We need leaders who raise questions as well as, and perhaps even more than, providing answers. We need leaders who will challenge us to face problems in order to learn and grow from them. To make progress in solving the current set of problems requires more than just leaders who provide answers from on high, but also leaders who help us change our attitudes, behaviours, and values. This is a different concept of leadership that will also affect the correlated social contract because we need to redefine our civic life and the meaning of citizenship. We need to bring this renewed consciousness into our organizations.
   The topic of this article is conscious leadership and when I use the term leadership I am not only referring to the organization’s highest ranks; but to everyone, at every level. Leadership should be made available to all those who want to empower themselves to act as agents of transformation because we can all be leaders whether as a leader of a team, a division, a family or in our own lives.
   Today’s issues need a more conscious leadership that develops a more holistic approach to organizational issues. Elevating the level of organizational responsibility is the best way to improve an organization’s prosperity and performance and in this article I propose a clear, three-step methodology for doing so.¹

Is leadership a value-free concept?
Perhaps we think of leadership as being value-free and there are many scholars who will side with this connotation, since this perspective lends itself more easily to analytic reasoning and empirical examination. However, the concept of leadership itself carries with it implicit norms and values. We cannot say that we both desperately need new leadership while also proclaiming that leadership is value-free. Ronald Heifetz argues in his book, Leadership without Easy Answers,² that all the leadership theories developed over the past 80 years have their hidden values and this is so whether we talk about trait, behavioural, or situational theories of leadership. Further, recent supposedly value-fee, theories such as the transformational, charismatic, and authentic leadership theories, also all have implicit values within them.
   Conscious leadership explicitly implies that core values and principles should be part of the construct of leadership and as such it should be a focus for future leadership research. While there is not a universal set of core values and principles that everyone can agree with, the concept of conscious leadership assumes that leadership cares about the organization’s economic well-being as much as it cares about its social implications (internally and externally), and the environmental impact of its business and practices. This triple-bottom-line concept is a good starting-point for identifying an organization’s core values regarding both its economic well-being and the social and environmental implications of its activities. The United Nations has bravely proposed measuring companies against a triple bottom line—economically, socially, and environmentally.³ These measures are known as the ‘3 Ps’: Profit, People, Planet.
   This article postulates that the most successful 21st-century organizations will be those which consciously embrace the triple bottom line and hold themselves and their teams, accountable to its values and principles.
   If leadership has not been operating as a value-free process, then how did we end up in such a globally chaotic state during the past few years? The answer is this is much more a crisis of values than one of economics and ‘the crisis’ will continue until we change our behaviours. We have to modify our value set and incorporate new values into the ways that we approach business as a whole.
   Twentieth-century success meant making as much money as we could, as fast as possible so that we could retire early and then supposedly enjoy life. This is an old paradigm, through which the corporate world promoted consumption at all costs in order to meet the expectations of analyst–investor quarterly results. However, there is another way. There is a way of understanding life and business which redefines the term success by putting short-term gains into perspective with more balanced longer-term returns together and sustainable prosperity, The term prosperity should not be restricted to economics as it was in the old paradigm; prosperity should also be defined in social and environmental terms. We need to leave behind excessive consumerism and its attendant ills and instead connect to a new era of recycling and alternative energies.
   In the 20th century, our concern with people was how they fit within a set of job descriptions, instead of jobs that might fit people’s needs. We promoted competitive advantage by off-shoring and low-cost manufacturing instead of promoting Fair Trade and accounting for bottom-of-the-pyramid considerations. In the last century, we embraced rationality in management. We forgot to include emotions, intuition, love and spirituality in management concepts and this leaves us now in to find their place in 21st-century management practices. To succeed in the 21st century, we will need to develop a more harmonic approach of cooperating and co-existing in the world, and accept higher levels of personal and organizational responsibility. Lastly, we will need to empower ourselves and our organizations to behave with a higher value set than we did in the last century. What we need is more conscious leadership.

Where is my profit?
Some organizations continue to look, first and foremost, for profit in economic terms and although some momentum remains in this approach, with each passing day these sources of profit will disappear. Customers in the new era will not legitimize companies that only focus on increasing their profit without showing social and environmental respect.
   Some organizations still look for a “magic pill” to solve all their problems, as if they were fighting evil viruses. These organizations don’t see themselves as part of the problem and even less as part of its causes. They just want their normality back while they blame just about everyone else—the banks, the government, high employee turnover, competitors, or maybe even the low cost of foreign manufacturing. I have even heard some organizations turn to blaming their customers. All that I can do is wish these organizations good luck in their fight against imagined evil viruses.
   Companies that insist on finding their sources of revenue the old way will continue to experience the symptoms of the “crisis” as if it was a disease of the “old species”. They operate in a two-dimensional world: the pursuit of profit against an axis of time. What is missing for these organizations is the axis of consciousness. New sources of prosperity—triple-bottom-line prosperity—can only be attained by organizations that elevate their level of consciousness to a higher position. The alternative of taking such a path is to accept the decline of the organization. For those who accept the idea of needing to embrace a higher consciousness, what to do then? How should organizational leaders proceed and what are the next steps to raising the level of consciousness of the organization?

Living organizations
Before discussing what to do to reach higher levels of prosperity, it is important to establish a common concept and language to illustrate the path forward. As such, organizations can be thought of as living organisms⁴ with a life cycle in which they are born, develop, mature, and eventually die. Most Fortune 500-type companies don’t last longer than 50 years, as they are not able to adapt to the changing environment. This analogy of considering organizations to be living entities has been successfully used by others. A prominent example is Arie de Geus with his best seller, The Living Company,⁵ in which he proposed the keys to managing for a long and prosperous organizational life. De Gues identified four critical characteristics for organizational longevity, one of them being the company’s sensitivity to their environment in order to be able to learn and adapt.
   When we accept the concept of living organizations, then by extension we can speak of an organizational state of health. At any given time, an organization can be in a different state, which can dramatically affect their performance. Like a human body, when an organization is ill or wounded, it does not perform at its maximum potential. An organization that is interested in achieving higher levels of prosperity will first need to be in a healthy state. From this point of view, all organizations need to embrace a healing process of some sort. Who today would dare to say, ‘My organization is as healthy as it could possibly be. We are performing to the maximum of our capabilities’? As with the human body, organizational health—good or bad—is a continuous process. It is not something that is done once and then forgotten. Health should be promoted for the entirety of an organization’s life.
   Why do we talk of healing instead of curing? Healing refers to inside-out actions which lead to living a healthy life and it has very little to do with the removal of symptoms. Healing is a systemic approach that encompasses every aspect of the being. Healing is about harmonic alignment, wellness, and wholeness. On the other hand, curing is a much more utilized western term and refers to using external actions to fix the internal problems. In other words, the magic pill that is sought to fix our problems while this often means merely addressing the symptoms and not the fundamental causes.
   Typically, people enter the health care system when indications of illness can no longer be ignored. They tend to look for a cure for a specific issue when it arises, rather than maintaining good health through regular exercise, eating a healthy diet and other actions that contribute to our overall state of wellbeing. Similarly, organizations will only react when the symptoms of under-performance are too painful to ignore. In response, CEOs will be replaced, factories will be closed, and major restructuring will be implemented. Instead, what are the equivalent wellbeing exercises for organizations? How does an organization eat a healthy diet and practice yoga?
   The reality is that there are a number of actions that an organization can put in place to embrace a healing process and work towards prosperity. These actions address the four key elements of a living organization’s being: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. For example, a company should balance the pursuit of financial health (physical), with the development of efficient decision-making processes (mental), with the harmony of people’s personal interests (emotional), and with the respect to the community (spiritual).
   The process of healing and steering the organization towards a healthier and more prosperous state is a transformational journey that happens in stages. At each turn, we elevate the level of consciousness a notch higher. Organizations are not likely to make a quantum leap from a low to a high state of consciousness. Like the human body, the organizational system evolves by attaining these stages of health. Donald Epstein proposes in The 12 Stages of Healing⁶ that there are 12 stages of consciousness that a person must go through in order to heal to their maximum potential. Similarly, an organization’s ability to heal is directly proportional to its ability to ascend a spiral of consciousness. Each strand of this spiral represents a crisis and, yet, growth is not possible without it. As in human life, suffering is needed to learn and grow. If we want to reach higher levels of health and prosperity in our organizations, we will have to embrace crises and take them as opportunities to learn, grow and transform.

In search of prosperity
The first step towards a higher level of consciousness is not outwardly focused. Looking for and caring for customers, and the environment, will be a definite outcome of the process, still it must start with an inward look. This is why prosperity cannot be purchased; it has to be lived and experienced. Organizations have to first develop an awareness of their own state of health. What is working and giving energy currently to the organizational system, and what is not? As self-awareness is the key to taking the first step in any leadership development programme, so, too, the organization’s governance needs to analyse and understand the different parts of its being.

• Are the values, the mission and the purpose of our organization well founded?
• How do we make decisions?
• How well do we cooperate between divisions and departments?
• Is our vision inspirational and shared?
• How do we express our truths to the market?
• Is the organization’s foundational moment giving or taking energy from our current operation?
• How are emotions lived in the organization?

   As an organization begins to answer these and other important questions, it will become aware of potential blockage points to higher levels of performance and success. As in a personal development programme, higher levels of organizational consciousness will inevitably bring us to choose certain areas to be worked on and developed further. Therefore, the very first step towards prosperity is for the governance body to increase its awareness of how their organization is run, where the energy flows smoothly, and where it does not. This crucial first step provides a self-diagnosis of organizational performance in terms of energy.
   The second step towards prosperity consists of developing the organization’s capabilities and commitment for change. This process starts by assuming that we have some degree of influence over what happens to us and that we accept our share of responsibility for the situation, even if it is minor. There will always be excuses for us to avoid taking responsibility and while it is fair to say that we are not always in control of what happens elsewhere in the world; still, the question is: do we really not have any influence over other events? For those of us tempted to say, ‘No,’ I would ask you if there was anything that you might do to that could worsen a situation? If the answer is ‘Yes’—there are ways of making things worse—this implies that we do have a certain amount of influence. We are empowered. This necessary self-empowerment will help us to look for solutions instead of focusing on blaming external factors and others.
   During this phase the organization’s governance body needs to identify and empower a group of key senior and middle management individuals, to embrace the change at hand and to play the role of internal transformation agents. Organizational change is about modifying behaviours, which implies the modification of values and beliefs. Without a shift in vales and beliefs, organizational change programmes are often unsuccessful. Many of us have seen or lived through organizational change initiatives and know that without a group of empowered transformation agents from within, the changes will not stick. How many agents of change are required to create the critical mass needed to shift the balance? The answer obviously depends on the scope of change, the size of the organization, and the timing or resources we are willing to invest.
   The third step towards prosperity is to provide a catalyst and to facilitate a sustainable transformation of this living organization. With an accurate diagnosis and after having empowered our core team of advocates for change, we can advance and focus more specifically on all the necessary alterations for truly transforming and healing our organization. The length of this phase depends on the organization’s current state of health, as well as how much change is desired. This is potentially a long phase as organizational change is not something achieved in a few weeks, nor can transformational change simply be purchased. This deeper focus is an experience that the organization has to undergo in the first person., There are no short cuts to transforming an organization, changing corporate culture, improving inter-personal cooperation, or to establishing a sustainable business model that is respectful of the environment and social needs.
   In summary, the transformation journey towards healthier organizational states and higher levels of prosperity happens in spirals where at each turn the organization is becoming healthier. Organizational healing can be achieved through:

• developing organizational self-awareness about its own state of health;
• empowering a group of internal transformation agents that will enforce the change objectives throughout the organization;
• spreading the change plan and rolling-out the necessary workshops in order to reach the critical mass necessary for change to occur.

   Conscious leadership is about challenging the status quo to face the problems in order to learn and grow from them. It is about bringing transformation into organizations that otherwise will be outperformed by their competition. It is also about elevating the level of consciousness to the standards of our century. Doing so will benefit not only organizations but also the greater world and our own individual societies.

Notes
   1. E. Bernal, J. Cos and X. Tarré: Pinea3, Living Organizations, at www.pinea3.com.
   2. R. Heifetz: Leadership without Easy Answers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1994.
   3. Sustainability: from Principle to Practice. München: Göthe-Institut, at www.goethe.de/ges/umw/dos/nac/den/en3106180.html.
   4. E. Bernal, J. Cos and X. Tarré, op. cit.
   5. A. de Geus: The Living Company. Boston: Harvard Business School Press 2002.
   6. D. Epstein: The 12 Stages of Healing: a Network Approach to Wholeness. Novato, Calif.: Amber–Allen Publishing and New World Publishing 1994.

Alibaba Group/China
Co-op Bank/UK
Marks & Spencer/UK
Merci/France
Pictet et Cie./Switzerland
SAP/Germany
Selco Solar Pvt. Ltd./India

The Colin Morley Award is given to:

Muna Abu Sulayman/Saudi Arabia

Detailed descriptions and web links follow:

Alibaba Group
www.alibaba.com
A young Asian brand built on the idea that it must exist as an experience to elevate their own or other people’s level of happiness. Jack Ma founded Alibaba in his cramped apartment with 17 colleagues. A decade later, Alibaba Group is the largest ecommerce company in China, with 15,000 employees and more than 100 million users. It also has a B2B unit with a community of more than 42 million registered users from more than 240 countries and regions. This year Alibaba will unveil partnership plans for Grameen China, a project to significantly increase access to micro-credit for poverty alleviation in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia. (Medinge named Grameen Telecom a Brand with a Conscience in 2005, and its parent Grameen Bank was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2008.) Employing the Grameen Bank microcredit model, the group hopes to impact more than 72,000 lives in its first five years.
   Ava Hakim, IBM exec and member of the Medinge Group, remarked that Alibaba is a business ‘built on trust, one which respects intellectual property rights and will remove sites which infringe upon the rights of others.’ She also was impressed by the six core values named, which they have successfully applied to their business.

Co-op Bank
www.co-operativebank.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/1193206375355,CFSweb/Page/Bank
The Co-op, founded in 1872, from its origins has focused on serving local communities. Today the Co-op is the only UK clearing bank to publish an ethical statement. Medinge director Patrick Harris lauded the brand, noting that ‘since 1992 Co-op has been building its ethical stance by asking its membership to vote on issues such as animal welfare, human rights and ecological impact.’ It claims to have turned away over £900 million in loans to businesses not in keeping with the Co-op Ethical Policy. The commitment to improve their food business’ ethical and environmental performance is in line with expectations arrived at in consultation with 100,000 members. Co-Op was double-nominated this year, for both its banking and food businesses.

Marks & Spencer
plana.marksandspencer.com
In her nomination, Medinge director Erika Uffindell emphasized the focused approach to climate change, waste and sustainability that Marks & Spencer have adopted. With their Plan A campaign, the company established 100 commitments to achieve in five years, clear targets for their business, actionable by people across the group. Uffindell finds the brand very accessible and involving: they have engaged 17,231 customers in making pledges to support climate change and a commitment to sustainability.

Merci
www.merci-merci.com
Merci is a 1500 m² shop for fashion and home furniture based in Paris, France. All sales profits are destined for women and children in Madagascar. The store sells new or artist-reworked donated goods and has had a huge impact. Some goods are sent directly to Madagascar. Merci’s website is especially minimal and modest, yet effectively states the store’s mission. In his nomination, Medinge’s Philippe Mihailovich expressed the hope that Merci’s actions influence others to follow.

Pictet et Cie.
www.pictet.com
This Swiss-based private bank started in 1805. Medinge director Nicholas Ind cited two significant aspects of the brand.
   First, its focus on sustainable development and the redirection of funds in this direction by encouraging the maximum investment in sustainable areas for a given risk: the bank’s management of a water fund, launched in 2000, which has become the world’s largest of its kind, with over €4 billion in assets; and a Clean Energy fund. The second aspect is the Prix Pictet—the world’s first international prize dedicated to photography and sustainability—mandated to encourage the use and power of photography to communicate vital messages to a global audience. This year’s theme is Earth.

SAP
www.sap.com/about/SAP-sustainability
Today, many B2Bs are silently doing a fantastic job to adapt to our global challenges. Medinge’s chairman Thomas Gad nominated Germany’s SAP, a software company whom he admires because ‘they actually help other companies to create usable metrics in their CSR and sustainability.’ Over the past 10 years, SAP has been recognized by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for upholding ethical, environmental, social, and governance values in products and services.

Selco Solar Pvt. Ltd.
www.selco-india.com/index.html
Medinge CEO Stanley Moss described Selco as an interesting small business, 14 years old, who supply solar power solutions, mostly in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. They rely on microfinance loans, employ 140 people, and have done around 100,000 installations of small to large size. They are partially funded by Grameen. Moss was impressed by their cradle-to-grave attitude about product, longevity in the marketplace after a tough start-up, good work on the individual level, private ownership, and the understanding of need for innovation.

The 2010 Colin Morley Award to Muna Abusulayman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muna_Abu-Sulayman
Simon Nicholls, a member of Medinge, nominated Muna Abu Sulayman, who receives 2010’s Colin Morley Award, for excellence by an individual or NGO, acknowledging their contribution to the betterment of society through sustainable, socially responsible and humanistic behaviour. In giving this award, the Medinge Group recognizes Muna’s outstanding work in educational development, poverty alleviation and strategic philanthropy; as Executive Director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, developing and implementing operations for humanitarian assistance across the globe; her role as the first woman in Saudi Arabia to be appointed by the United Nations Development Programme as a Goodwill Ambassador; and for exceptional reporting as co-host on popular MBC-TV social programme Kalam Nawaem, in particular her advocacy of rights for women. As a public and media personality, she speaks about issues relating to Arab society, media, building bridges of understanding between east and west. Since 1997, Ms Abu Sulayman has served as lecturer on American literature at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. She frequently appears as a panelist at the Davos World Economic Forum, Jewish Economic Forum, C-100 of the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institute Conferences and other venues.

   Patrick Harris, a Medinge director, added, ‘In the list of 2010 Brands with a Conscience winners, we can see a clear focus on commerce and finance. This is no accident. Instead, this is a sign of the world’s markets responding to the need for responsible and inter-generational business activities.’
   Regarding his nomination of Co-op Bank, Harris said, ‘The UK’s Co-operative Bank is a prime example of a highly principled business within a traditional competitive landscape. The Co-op are being recognized by Medinge for their values-led business focus and for the impact that they bring to a beleaguered sector.’
   Jack Yan, a director of Medinge said, ‘Again, the Medinge Group’s international influence has resulted in a global list of winners, all of which practise our ideals of humanistic branding. I’m thrilled we’ve recognized our first Chinese and Saudi Arabian winners this year.
   ‘In particular, Selco Solar of India shows a commitment to green energy that is very poignant in the 2010s. Just because fuel prices have dropped from their 2008 highs does not mean that the energy crisis is over, a fact the Medinge Group recognizes.’
   Medinge Group member Ava Maria Hakim commented, ‘The message to the world—and Alibaba’s 100 million users—is that China’s Alibaba Group has set a global brand and business benchmark that goes beyond corporate social responsibility to building an integrity-based business driven by long-term vision. Alibaba Group is a Brand with a Conscience of the future.
   Erika Uffindell, a director of Medinge, commented, ‘Marks & Spencer is a great example of an organization living by its beliefs. M&S has been recognized by Medinge for creating the innovative Plan A—an initiative that involves customers and partners in their ambition to help combat climate change and reduce waste. Plan A focuses on five key areas: climate change, waste, sustainable raw materials, health and being a flair partner. Marks & Spencer’s ability to involve their stakeholders in such a simple and accessible way has been reflected in their significant achievements to date.’
   Nicholas Ind, a founding director of Medinge stated, ‘This year, the Medinge Group’s Brands with a Conscience awards shows impressive diversity and reflects the commitment that brand owners are demonstrating around the globe to building organizations that meet the needs of all parts of society. The 2010 winners come from the UK, China, India, Switzerland, Germany, France and Saudi Arabia.’

Special thanks to Medinge’s 2010 BWAC nominating committee
Paulina Borsook
Thomas Gad
Ava Hakim
Patrick Harris
Pierre d’Huy
Nicholas Ind
Philippe Mihailovich
Sergei Mitrofanov
Stanley Moss, chairman
Simon Nicholls
Anette Rosencreutz
Erika Uffindell
Jack Yan

Chhatra Sagar—an eco-resort in Rajasthan (India)
Ekomarine—environmentally responsible paint (Sweden)
Kiva—microfinance lending (USA)
One—enlightened bottled water (UK)
Ragbag—Fair-Traded fashion accessories from recyclable materials (the Netherlands)
TOMS shoes—developing nations’ shoe distribution (USA)

2009 Colin Morley Award
   The third Colin Morley Award for a non-governmental organization is given to the American actor and philanthropist Paul Newman in posthumous recognition for an exemplary life of truth-telling and generosity.

   Announcing the 2009 Brands with a Conscience, Stanley Moss, CEO of the Medinge Group and chairman of the initiative, remarked, ‘This year’s Brands with a Conscience winners are all superior brands who exemplify environmentally responsible conduct and community involvement. Three of these winners have a direct interest in water-related issues. And Medinge’s selection of Paul Newman for the Colin Morley NGO award acknowledges a hero whose humanistic beliefs accompanied authentic, compassionate action.’
   Thomas Gad, Director and Chairman of the Medinge Group commented, ‘The 2009 Brands with a Conscience awards show a sensational variety, and not only geographically; we have award winners from all corners of the world, in a variety of business categories. Everything from eco-resorts, environmentally responsible boat paint, microfinance lending, enlightened bottled water, fair-traded fashion accessories from recyclable materials and shoe distribution for developing nations. Once again, for 2009 we honour a person with our Colin Morley NGO award: Paul Newman—a legend not only as an brilliant actor, but also as a business and a brand doing good for the world.’
   Ian Ryder, a director of the group added, ‘Every year we seem to say that the quality of entrants to the BWAC Awards increases, but the truth is that this year was absolutely outstanding. In every category, from all corners of the globe, each and every one of the finalists would have made worthy winners. All of which says that those who won came from a very select group, and they embody all that is best in our tough test of brand sustainability and conscience.’
   ‘Each of the Brands with a Conscience winners display awareness, responsibility and action. Sustainability here is not limited to a temporary green perspective, but is celebrated as a life-long dedication to future generations,’ said Patrick Harris, a Medinge director. ‘One Water is a wonderful example of a humanitarian focus, founded on an elegant concept. It is a complete solution, harnessing a commercial opportunity to serve communities in need, utilizing the natural energy of children. Pure genius.’
   ‘This year’s nominees have been the most amazing yet,’ agreed Jack Yan, Director. ‘We received more nominees than ever, and competition was incredibly strong. The bar was set very high, and it was one of the most difficult decision-making process I have been through since the Awards’ inception. There was greater advocacy among the Medinge Group’s members this year, showing what passions these brands generated. In the end, our winners are organizations that admirably forward the Group’s agenda in humanistic branding.’
   The 2009 Brands with a Conscience awards will be presented at a private ceremony held at the Management Institute of Paris on February 5, 2009.

The winners in detail
Chhatra Sagar
http://www.chhatrasagar.com/ABOUT.HTM
   Chhatra Sagar is an eco-friendly tent camp in Rajasthan, India, a lifetime project by direct descendants of the Maharajah of Jodhpur. Established in 2001, this small resort overlooks 365 protected acres, where over 200 varieties of wildlife have returned to the habitat. The sustainability quotient is optimal—all locally sourced food, furnished by indigenous craft, employs 30 local families, sponsors teachers, provides medicine, classroom furniture and brings specialized educators who address subjects ranging from family planning to recycling to soil conservation. The family’s personal involvement and constant presence reinforce the commitment.

Ekomarine
http://ekomarine.se/en.html
   For boating-intensive parts of the world like USA, Australia, UK and Scandinavia, the foul painting of boat hulls is a serious and not-ecological business. Sweden-based Ekomarine’s researchers created the Neptune Formula, a naturally-based vegetable-protein alternative, with the added benefit of improving performance by reducing hull friction.

Kiva
http://www.kiva.org
   Kiva is microfinance with a peer-to-peer platform. Lends modest amounts direct to developing world entrepreneurs. A brilliant combination of technology and humanity, which connects people through lending for the alleviation of poverty. Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, rallies 10,000 bloggers to promote good causes, and upturned the innovation of Zopa’s direct lending model, applying it to philanthropy. A branded giving process in an economic and powerful way, never preachy and never sentimental.

One Water
http://www.onedifference.org/uk/water/
   One sells bottled water in the UK and gives away 100 per cent of all of its profits to water projects in Africa. Profits are used to install PlayPumps, effectively, children’s roundabouts that, when played on, pump water to a storage cistern. Active since May 2005, One water is aligned with the Millennium Development Goals of getting clean water to 1 billion people who do not have access to it and helping the 2 billion people who die each year from water-related diseases.

rag-bag
http://www.ragbag.eu
   rag-bag produces fashionable and colourful bags and wallets made entirely from waste plastics (bags, sheets, etc.) collected by rag pickers from garbage tips in India, Cameroon and Brazil. They are paid a fair price for these waste products and they are trained to manufacture the products. The bags are sold online and in fashionable and fair trade outlets in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Rag pickers earn a better income and learn valuable skills, while waste is reused to create new, valuable and practical products. rag-bag sets a high example for social, economic and environmental sustainability.

TOMS Shoes
http://www.tomsshoes.com
   For each pair of shoes you buy from this LA-based company, TOMS will donate a pair to needy children in developing nations. Once a year the company does a hands-on ‘shoe drop’ into communities, and customers participate. The shoes are comfy like slippers, and customers effectively vote with their feet. The website is very transparent, and the thousands of shoes distributed are a more direct good deed than throwing money at a cause.

Paul Newman (Colin Morley Award)
http://www.newmansown.com
   Paul Newman set up a company in 1982 to make marinades, sauces and dressings from natural ingredients. All the profits and royalties reverted to Newman, who, from the business’s inception, gave away every cent to charitable causes. In particular the money supports Hole in the Wall Camps, which bring together children with serious and terminal illnesses for a free summer-camp experience. Paul Newman disdained fame, opposed the star–celebrity system, and gave over $250 million to these causes in his own lifetime (in per capita terms the most generous individual on earth). Newman’s life’s work reminds us that an individual can act unselfishly and humanistically, according to his own values and make a real contribution to a better world.

Images
Images for this release may be downloaded from <http://jyanet.com/090101pr0.htm>.

2009 Medinge Brands with a Conscience Committee
Thomas Gad
Sicco van Gelder
Ava Maria Hakim
Patrick Harris
Pierre d’Huy
Nicholas Ind
Tim Kitchin
Sergei Mitrofanov
Stanley Moss, chairman
Johnnie Moore
Luke Nicholson
Simon Nicholls
Simon Paterson
Anette Rosencreutz
Ian Ryder
Erika Uffindell
Jack Yan

About the Medinge Group
Founded in 2002, the Medinge Group first published a brand manifesto of eight statements encapsulating a vision of healthy brands for the future. In 2003, the group authored a collection of essays entitled Beyond Branding, which explored the ways in which brands could add value within alternative business and social models. In 2004, the group established the annual Brands with a Conscience list to recognize organizations who epitomize humanistic behaviour; in 2006, Medinge added a special category of recognition named in honour of its late colleague Colin Morley, which acknowledges excellence by an NGO, in keeping with Colin’s humanistic vision. The Medinge Group maintains an online, automated speakers’ and experts’ bureau accessible through its web site, www.medinge.org. In 2007 Medinge launched an online resource, The Journal of the Medinge Group, a digital anthology of papers and articles written by Medinge members.

Branding New Kinds of Places: the Example of Experience Retail Centres
by Malcolm Allan
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.

How to Improve the Chances of Successfully Developing and Implementing a Place Brand Strategy
by Sicco van Gelder
This paper tries to answer critical questions by describing the criteria and factors that contribute to successful place branding. By assessing the place, the players and the plans they make, it is possible to predict the likely success of a place branding initiative.

An Introduction to Storytelling in Employee Branding
by Tony Quinlan
The real power and opportunity for using stories in organizations is in listening to stories, helping others to create their own authentic stories and making sense of the stories told.

Issues and Challenges of Developing and Managing Brand Strategy in a Not-for-profit (Chartered) Body
by Ian Ryder
The rules are different for chartered bodies. Not the fundamentals of brand strategy, clearly, but the processes and procedures of development and execution, as the author reveals.

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

The Next Wave of Sustainability Hits Swedish Brands
by Thomas Gad and Stanley Moss
This article introduces the argument that Swedish brands have moved beyond other countries’ positions on sustainability.

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

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

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

About the Medinge Group
Founded in 2002, the Medinge Group first published a brand manifesto of eight statements encapsulating a vision of healthy brands for the future. In 2003, the group authored a collection of essays entitled Beyond Branding, which explored the ways in which brands could add value within alternative business and social models. In 2004, the group established the annual Brands with a Conscience list to recognize organizations who epitomize humanistic behaviour; in 2006, Medinge added a special category of recognition named in honour of its late colleague Colin Morley, which acknowledges excellence by an NGO, in keeping with Colin’s humanistic vision. The Medinge Group maintains an online, automated speakers’ and experts’ bureau accessible through its web site, www.medinge.org. In 2007 Medinge launched an online resource, The Journal of the Medinge Group, a digital anthology of papers and articles written by Medinge members.

Aveda
Chocolonely
Hennes & Mauritz
Happy Computers
International Watch Co.
Pret a Manger
Dame Anita Roddick

and the 2008 Colin Morley Award for a non-governmental organization is given to Star School.

   Announcing the 2008 Brands with a Conscience, Stanley Moss, CEO of the Medinge Group and chairman of the initiative, called them ‘solid indications of the trend towards humanistic branding—this year’s list shows a renewed interest in ethical conduct, accountability and outcome. The 2008 winners remind us that at their essence, brands are for people.’
   ‘Branding has a huge role to play in creating a better and more sustainable world,’ remarked Thomas Gad, Chairman of the Medinge Group. ‘There already exist alternative technologies and products with less damaging impact on the environment, climate and people’s lives. But new green products and alternatives need to become attractive in the minds of people, in spite of their sometimes being more expensive and different. That is why the Medinge Group’s annual Brands With a Conscience Award is more relevant and important than ever. Branding can become a true-flag bearer for a better world.’
   ‘For the last four years, the Medinge Group has named Brands with a Conscience, forerunners to the social responsibility curve, long before the mass media came to champion their causes. This year’s mixture of companies again represents those leading the way, including some who pushed the humanist agenda for years without recognition.
   ‘In particular, we posthumously award a BWAC to Dame Anita Roddick for her lifelong contribution to fighting injustices. This is a recognition that Dame Anita had successfully developed her name into a brand with a reputation, one which had an immediate resonance to many. Star School’s recognition as our Colin Morley Award winner for 2008 is fitting: this is the sort of organization we think Colin himself would have endorsed for its work in combating HIV and Aids in Zululand, by targeting 40,000 high school students,’ said Jack Yan, a founder and director of the Medinge Group.
   Ian Ryder, a founding member and director of the Medinge Group, commented, ‘Each year since we began these awards, the whole world has become increasingly concerned about planetary sustainability. World leaders are meeting in Bali as we issue this year’s winners list. Some of our featured brands have been concerned for years about issues like these. They have actually demonstrated their commitment and not just talked about it. The standard just keeps getting better.’
   Patrick Harris, a director of the Medinge Group, added, ‘Medinge’s Brands with a Conscience winners are not peripheral, fad-based organizations. They are thriving, successful, humanity-centric entities. They are market-forming and world-changing. Together, they are a glimpse of the future of brands. Today’s Brands with a Conscience are embracing an era of generational thinking. They perform the ultimate recycling effort, that of discarding the current disposable, short-sighted generation of thought and replacing it with one of longevity and humanity at its core.’
   ‘The continued shift away from “branding-as-persuasion-to-buy” to “branding-as-how-we-improve-the-world”—with authentic, human considerations at the core of the organization—really gathers pace,’ observed Tony Quinlan, a Medinge member. ‘This year’s award winners effectively counter the ridiculousness of the profit-above-all approach which too many organizations take. Congratulations to such a diverse group, working in diverse sectors—all deserving of our praise and gratitude.’

The winners in detail
Aveda
www.aveda.com
An impressive sustainability-committed body and hair care brand. Its mission positions Aveda as a catalyst for awareness and change at all levels. The company gave its original endorsement to the Valdez Principles (later the CERES Principles) in 1989. Individual responsibility is core to Aveda’s culture. The company regards its employees as change agents with the power to change the course of human civilization.

Chocolonely
www.chocolonely.com
Tony Chocolonely produces 100 per cent slave-free chocolate. Most chocolate is harvested under slave conditions (often by children) in west Africa. Dutch journalist Teun van der Keuken set out to make chocolate products that are certified slave-free. As he has shown in his TV programmes, that is not easy. He even went so far as to start a court case against himself (which he lost), as a consumer of slave chocolate, to shame chocolate producers.

Hennes & Mauritz
www.hm.com
Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) has taken a leading position in crucial issues and earned acclaim for it internationally. The company operates in 28 countries and has more than 60,000 employees all working to the same philosophy. Alongside commercial success, this company demonstrates solid principles of entrepreneurship and a strong sustainability credentials, 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, and today stands as a benchmark of standards for the industry.

Happy Computers
www.happy.co.uk
Happy is a training company, that makes learning about IT an enjoyable and helps companies create great workplaces. Ethics are at the core of the business, with every new employee introduced to this through the company’s Corporate Scruples game at their induction. Happy has sent trainers to Uganda, Nigeria and Cambodia to, pro bono, to support the creation of local sustainable training centres. In London they provide support to a range of local charities, employ a deaf trainer to deliver IT training in British Sign Language and have been carbon-offsetting since 1991 (long before the term was in use).
   Although only employing 50 people, Happy has previously been rated the best company in the UK for customer service (Management Today, 2003), the best small business in terms of positive impact on society (Business in the Community, 2006) and the second-best place to work for (Financial Times, 2007).

International Watch Company
www.iwc.com
Since 1868, a brand of the utmost integrity, dedicated to the manufacture of quality timepieces. A beacon for the watchmaking craft, which offers three- to four-year apprenticeships in the discipline. Creates limited quantities. Number of employees in 1869: 196; number of employees in 2006: 390. Pursues a strong social and ecological policy as part of its CSR initiatives, and in partnership with adventurer and environmentalist David de Rothschild (Adventure Ecology). With structural measures and alternative energies, IWC is cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by at least 50 per cent. Certified as climate-neutral business, at the same time a driving force behind the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, a global organization whose aim is to open up new prospects in life for underprivileged children.

Pret a Manger
www.pret.com
Good food with organic (where possible), non-GM ingredients. Leftovers to homeless. First coffee for free each day—in every shop—to remind of the importance of the customer. Several charities supported, also a foundation, a great working environment to all staff. The company is not too bothered about profits. On its website, it states that someday, it hopes to earn 9 per cent profit, but hasn’t yet.

Dame Anita Roddick
www.anitaroddick.com
Dame Anita Roddick showed admirable leadership not only in the Body Shop but as an advocate for Fair Trade, the environment, corporate social responsibility, free speech and other causes through her personal work. Much of this can be found at anitaroddick.com, which was updated personally until her passing. All of this reflects a personal brand that is consistent and honed, supported by causes, many of which are compatible with the Medinge Group’s own aims. Anita Roddick believed in living her own personal brand as much as for her audiences, including the media, and had few detractors, something which cannot be said for many other high-profile types.

The Colin Morley Award for excellence by an NGO: Star School starschool.brimstone.net/document.asp?levelid=180
Star School works with 40,000 high school students in HIV–Aids-stricken Zululand, South Africa. This schools-based intervention encourages learners to build their future through informed decision-making. The group works within existing structures—in this case, the school system. The NGO is financed by the Swedish entrepreneur Dan Olofsson, endorsed by the South African government. Star Schools are now spreading out on the African continent. The project was launched in 2005, and has since been rolled out to 40 schools in the Umkhanyakude district of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Images
Images for this release may be downloaded from <http://jya.net/080103pr0.htm>.

2007 BWAC Committee
Thanks to:
Malcolm Allan
Paulina Borsook
Thomas Gad
Sicco van Gelder
Ava Hakim
Patrick Harris
Pierre d’Huy
Nicholas Ind
Tim Kitchin
Johnnie Moore
Stanley Moss (chairman)
Simon Paterson
Tony Quinlan
Anette Rosencreutz
Ian Ryder
Erika Uffindell
Jack Yan
Ton Zijlstra

About the Medinge Group
Founded in 2002, the Medinge Group first published a brand manifesto of eight statements encapsulating a vision of healthy brands for the future. In 2003, the group authored a collection of essays entitled Beyond Branding, which explored the ways in which brands could add value within alternative business and social models. In 2004, the group established the annual Brands with a Conscience list to recognize organizations who epitomize humanistic behaviour; in 2006, Medinge added a special category of recognition named in honour of its late colleague Colin Morley, which acknowledges excellence by an NGO, in keeping with Colin’s humanistic vision. The Medinge Group maintains an online, automated speakers’ and experts’ bureau accessible through its web site, www.medinge.org. In 2007 Medinge launched an online resource, The Journal of the Medinge Group, a digital anthology of papers and articles written by Medinge members.

Adnams
Ecover
Fetzer Vineyards
Freeplay
IKEA
RED
Virgin Group/Virgin Fuels
Whole Foods

The first Colin Morley Award for a non-governmental organization is given to Shakespeare’s Globe.

   Announcing the 2007 Brands with a Conscience, Stanley Moss, CEO of the Medinge Group and chairman of the initiative, called them ‘evidence of the increasing embrace of humanistic branding as a critical component of corporate behaviour. The list shows that today we are seeing successful brands demonstrate deeper ethical understanding, commitment to sustainability and greater brand complexity.’
   ‘By definition, all NGO-brands should be brands with conscience,’ remarked Thomas Gad, Chairman of the Medinge Group. ‘This year we innovate an award which supports the importance of branding them. The first Colin Morley Award is given to Shakespeare’s Globe of London, and honours a cultural project as a brand of conscience. The commercial awards this year show a good mix of large organizations and smaller entrepreneurs. We favour the idea that brand conscience is not exclusively for enthusiastic smaller companies. It is equally important for large organizations—and for those possibly much more difficult.’
   Nicholas Ind, a founding member of the group, said, ‘This has been the year that the corporate world really discovered the imperative of action on the environment. We have recognized this in our choice of Brands with a Conscience. Among this year’s winners there are some powerful examples of what can be achieved when a genuine commitment is made to sustainability.’
   ‘Brands with a Conscience has regularly shown that it is possible to achieve international recognition while living one’s most heartfelt aims,’ said Jack Yan, a founder and Director of the Medinge Group. ‘This year’s winners may be a mixed bag in terms of their industries, but share a joint vision to make their part on the planet a better, happier one.’
   Ian Ryder, a founding member and Director of the Medinge Group, commented, ‘The Brands with a Conscience awards have truly come of age this year. The range and quality of entries was high and the judging was hard, but any one of this year’s winning organizations, large or small, demonstrates that active, “conscience-driven” brand management helps customers, partners, communities and the world at large. Significantly, they help in the essential act of
achieving commercial success. Well done, and thanks, to all the nominees for trying, and to the winners for being just that little bit better.’
   Patrick Harris, a Director of the Medinge Group added, ‘As the first recipient of the Colin Morley Award, Shakespeare’s Globe is well positioned as a humanity-focused organization and as a leading brand. Through its efforts of studying Shakespeare in performance, it encourages individuals to find personal relevance, and to realize the effects of a timeless commentator on the human condition.’

The winners in detail

Adnams
http://www.adnams.co.uk/index.html
   A local brewer in Suffolk, England, Adnams is recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development, and regularly features in the UK list of top 50 places to work. In October 2006, it unveiled the UK’s greenest warehouse, the first commercial building built from sustainable hemp blocks, with the UK’s largest sedum roof, drawing 80 per cent of its hot water needs from solar panels. An energy-efficient brew house is slated for completion in March 2007. Adnams has been brewing in Suffolk since 1872, today employs 280, has a charity arm, and focuses on sustainability because it wants to.

Ecover
www.ecover.com/gb/en/default_home.aspx
   Ecover is the world’s largest producer of ecological detergents and cleansing products, a pioneering, innovative company founded in 1980 in Belgium. Their progressive environmental and social policy is at the heart of their business success. In their vision statement they say: ‘Ecover is a company that strives to optimize economic value. We regard the environment as an inseparable part of the economy … job performance as a means to foster the social well-being and personal development of its direct and indirect employees.’ The Medinge Group also recognizes Ecover’s visual identity which combines a strong brand mark with appropriate environmental signals like transparent packaging.

Fetzer Vineyards
http://www.fetzer.com/
   The sixth-largest seller of prize-winning premium wines in the US—and the largest grower of organic grapes in northern California, committed to going all-organic by 2010. Fetzer uses nothing but renewable power and water treated without chlorine; has reduced its waste by 94 per cent since 1990; earns Salmon-Safe and Fish-Friendly certificates for its vineyard practices; is a charter member of Climate Leaders, an industry-government partnership; and has helped influence its parent company, Brown-Forman, towards sustainable business practices.

Freeplay
www.freeplayenergy.com
   Established in 1994 and driven by its core purpose of making energy available to everybody all of the time, Freeplay Energy plc seeks to maintain its leadership in creating and developing the international market for self-sufficient energy products. Its commitment to this objective is demonstrated by the establishment of its product range and the formation of strategic alliances with partners that bring compatible technology and market leadership. The application of the company’s technology has had a significant role in promoting education and access to life-changing information to isolated communities in the developing world: to date, over 100,000 Lifeline radios (powered by Freeplay technology) are being used in humanitarian projects in over 20 countries.

IKEA
http://www.ikea.com/
   Highly ambitious and detailed work is being done by this huge concern with some 150 retail stores around the globe. Especially interesting is IKEA’s firm stance against corruption,
perhaps the most serious obstacle for a better world in developing countries. In Russia an invited group of 350 VIPs, including the Swedish ambassador, returned home after IKEA refused to pay bribes to the local government needed to obtain the permit to open a new Moscow store, an incident later reported in The Financial Times. The Medinge Group further acknowledges IKEA’s extensive programmes for ecology and social responsibility.

Red
http://www.joinred.com/
   A brand which demonstrates the power of collective action and a simple idea that everyone can get. It’s a business model (not a charity) that works for both people and business, and for the image of ubiquitous founder Bono. As their manifesto says: ‘If you buy a Red product or service, at no cost to you a Red company will give some of its profit to buy and distribute anti-retroviral medicine to people dying of Aids in Africa.’ A modern, inclusive brand, Red has a distinctive and attractive identity that is shared by like-minded brands. It’s a brand that partners personalize and promote on their own sites. And it is a brand where you can easily see the results of your actions. As MySpace, one its sponsors says, ‘Collectively, we can do good in a big way’.

Virgin Group/Virgin Fuels
www.virgin.com/aboutvirgin
www.virgin.com/news/default.asp?sy=2003&amp;ey=2006&sm=6&amp;em=9&cid=0&nr=12&p=1&kwd=-&newsId=786
   On September 10, 2006, Virgin Group announced that they will apportion 100 per cent of all of their transport-related profits over the next three years into a new enterprise called Virgin Fuels. This equates to approximately $400 million in renewable initiatives over three years. Virgin Group and Richard Branson have the brand strength, voice and financial muscle to make a massive difference in this high polluting and otherwise lethargic sector. Virgin Group and its companies already have an enormously healthy and well-recognized position as an innovative, exciting employer with a humane focus on its staff and customers. Virgin Fuels has taken a thought-leading position that only a handful of organizations can occupy.

Whole Foods
www.wholefoodsmarket.com
   Among its many laudable initiatives, the world’s largest retailer of natural and organic foods recently committed to ongoing contractual relationships with local farmers to help supply each of its stores, thus truly supporting sustainable (and energy- or transport-efficient) agriculture.

The Colin Morley Award for excellence by an NGO: Shakespeare’s Globe
www.shakespeares-globe.org
   Shakespeare’s Globe is an educational charity whose founding purpose is dedicated to the study of Shakespeare in performance. Aspects of interpretation and the attainment of personal relevance are central to its activities. At its home on London’s Bankside, the Globe manifests its purpose in three main operational areas: Theatre, Education and Exhibition. The theatre space itself is the most celebrated and architecturally sensitive Elizabethan reconstruction in existence; an inextricable linkage to London past and present. The Globe functions without Arts Council funding, thus, it is a business model for the arts. It explores the humanity of Shakespeare, himself a timeless commentator of the human condition, on the only site that can ever be the home of his performances. A genuine concept, it is wholly inclusive in how it tries to involve the world (e.g. Zulu Macbeth, a touring Tent for Peace made from love-or peace-themed Ophelia handkerchiefs)—perhaps the UK’s most underutilized, but potentially potent brand.

Images
Images for this release may be downloaded from <http://www.jyanet.com/061221pr0.htm>.

2006 BWAC Committee
Malcolm Allan
Paulina Borsook
Pierre d’Huy
Ava Maria Hakim
Thomas Gad
Sicco van Gelder
Patrick Harris
Nicholas Ind
Tim Kitchin
Johnnie Moore
Stanley Moss (chairman)
Simon Paterson
Tony Quinlan
Anette Rosencreutz
Ian Ryder
Jack Yan

About the Medinge Group
Founded in 2002, the Medinge Group first published a brand manifesto of eight statements encapsulating a vision of healthy brands for the future. In 2003, the group authored a collection of essays entitled Beyond Branding, which explored the ways in which brands could add value within alternative business and social models. In 2004, the group established the annual Brands with a Conscience list to recognize organizations who epitomize humanistic behaviour; in 2006, Medinge added a special category of recognition named in honour of its late colleague Colin Morley, which acknowledges excellence by an NGO, in keeping with Colin’s humanistic vision. The Medinge Group maintains an online, automated speakers’ and experts’ bureau
accessible through its web site, www.medinge.org.
In 2007, Medinge launches its newest online resource, The Journal of the Medinge Group, a digital anthology of papers and publications by Medinge members.

Related sites
The Medinge Group http://medinge.org
Medinge Säteri www.medinge.com

Related documents
The Medinge Group fact sheet
The Medinge Group Q&A
Brands with a Conscience criteria
The Medinge Group Brand Manifesto
The Medinge Group members’ roster