Our conscience is a real irritant. Just when we are about to have some real fun, get some long-awaited revenge, show our absolute dominance or vanquish a long-term foe, this little voice kicks in and suddenly the victory begins to feels hollow, the need for revenge gets diluted by compassion and our dominance does not seem so absolute anymore.
As we move into a new world, things are changing fundamentally within us and far faster than we can imagine. Apart from a non-white US president, in our own neighborhood the landscape is changing too. The electorate actually gives one party a real mandate, instead of being driven by purely local self-interest or social factors. A longstanding war seems to be coming to an end. Governments that turned a Nelson’s eye to extremists are now pursuing them with what seems to be real intent. Rebels willingly become part of the politics of democracy instead of trying to undermine it. In the rest of the world, “green” issues are beginning to take an ever-increasing role at the center of many economic revival packages. People seem to be tired of unrelenting consumerism fed by debt and what seemed to be an insatiable appetite for the good life. Temperance may just be winning over avarice.
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| Rupin Jayal |
It seems as though as the minds of people of the world get more connected, the “conscience muscle” gets strengthened. This muscle may be reinforced by the force of circumstance, the fear of a greater lack of sustainability and a future that seems increasingly unpredictable, but the fact is that the collective mind of people, rather than retreating into isolationism or the politics of race and violence, seems to be veering toward creating a world with a collective conscience.
So are brands reflecting this? Are their actions going beyond tokenism while seeking to engage in a very real way with people? This does not refer to intelligent or innovative responses to the current economic downturn or utilizing the move toward green to create products that will appeal to the increasingly vociferous group that is seeking more environmental-friendly solutions to their everyday needs. The question is, are brands actually showing the leadership that they have done in other spheres such as technological advancement and creating new categories where none existed in the area of building a conscience?
Brands are no longer just names for things. By their content, personality and actions, brands actually impact a far larger domain than just the aspiration, acquisition and ownership imperatives of people. Media brands represent points of view on the political spectrum. Brands such as Virgin and Apple reflect the social attitudes of those who choose them and not just their aspirations. Insurance brands do not just talk about safeguarding one’s future, but also reflect our social attitudes such as individual versus collective, how we view the future, what we are seeking as people rather than just as consumers etc. For example, ICICI’s approach toward retirement, from being “the golden years” to becoming an escape from the demands of a working life, reflected a change in the way we perceive our so-called “productive” working life and the role of “retirement”—retirement from work, but not from life.
However, given their access to knowledge both in terms of technology and their knowledge about people through exhaustive research, it is time for brands to turn reflection into leadership. Some brands have played that role in the past through innovations that changed the way people interacted with a particular category. Swatch changed the meaning of a plastic watch; Walkman made music very personal; Virgin got people to buy a philosophy first rather than just a product or service; Saturn reflected a different relationship between people and their automobile brand imbuing it with greater honesty, transparency and collectiveness; and Snapple and Ben & Jerry’s provided a contrast to the hyperbole of traditional brand posturing. But all these were usually with reference to category codes or emerging trends amongst large enough groups of people. Leading brands today have access to the kind of information, knowledge, insight and ability to communicate that can enable them to play a much larger role in people’s lives. It isn’t a wild coincidence that the most recent presidential campaign has been compared to the strategy and tools employed in marketing a brand. His use of a pithy and evocative “base line” to encapsulate his “brand promise”, the way channels of communication were harnessed, network marketing methods, driving word of mouth etc are all the tools of the brand marketing trade. Even in India the winning side in the latest political grand prix attributed its success in no small measure to a smart messaging and marketing strategy.
Marketing has permeated almost every sphere of life. Even the decisions we make about who we choose to rule us are significantly impacted by marketing methodology. In our lives marketing begins to play a role right from the school stage—in the activities that kids do in school and very importantly, when they try to sell a school initiative or during school elections. Today, we are all brands trying to get the best deal for ourselves in the career marketplace. People increasingly turn to marketing “experts” to help them position their businesses, take advice on how to move forward with their careers and understand the emerging economic environment. Possibly, the Keynes and Friedmans of the future will be marketing gurus. Maybe economic thought will assimilate more of the expertise of human behavior that drives marketing that seems to have eluded it so far when it claims that people are essentially rational. Behavioral economics already seeks to do that. Far from the role of marketing diminishing, it is actually becoming all-pervasive and is no longer just the domain of traditional marketers.
Clearly, if the role of marketing is becoming more powerful and pervasive, then the role of its greatest creation—brands—should become more impactful in the lives of people rather than just in the domain of aspiration and consumption. If that is the case, then given the challenges we face and the uncertainty of the future, brands need to become beacons of practical conscience. This means, at the most basic level, creating brand conscience keepers who are not tied down by an obsession with quarterly results, but by the welfare and interests of the people who prefer the brand. It means an automobile brand that insists that its owners have the requisite skills to drive responsibly and safely. A food brand that spends a significant portion of its revenue building awareness about responsible eating habits and creates infrastructure that contributes to education even at the school level so its adherents are discernibly healthier than its competitors. It means redefining competition itself. Anyone who watched the most recent season of American Idol would have seen the two finalists as totally committed competitors, but who also exuberantly celebrated each other’s success. When they sang together they complimented each other and created a performance that transcended them both individually. Sure, some would say that this was a competition and not the “real” world, but winning meant contracts, the launch of what could be a hugely successful career, immediate recognition as an artiste and the leapfrogging of many, many years of struggle. Surely it doesn’t get any more real than this? Yet competition did not mean a gladiatorial contest, but instead it became a celebration of two very different “brands” of talent. So will the brands with a conscience in the future treat competition differently? Will the nature of competition itself change?
Clearly, insatiable greed for growth has not really brought long-term stability and prosperity. Enough has been written about the financial sector and the dividend from its greed. Other sectors are saddled with huge over-capacity that may never be utilized. Yet other sectors are increasingly becoming commodified as people see less and less differentiating value. In the future, brands that lead by a fundamental drive to create a more livable world, a world governed more by a conscience than just the economics of aspiration, will be the brands that endure. They may not grow prodigiously quickly, but they will not crash spectacularly either. They will help form public opinion and not merely reflect it. They will shape the future rather than try and predict it. To build a brand conscience there are some principles that should be considered:
- Measure, evaluate and mediate the real impact of the brand in people’s lives and on the environment. Credit cards deal with expenditure, debt and interest. They also deal with affordability, the management of income and prudence. Credit card brands that truly see themselves as becoming an important part of a sustainable lifestyle rather than as a means of profitably fueling consumerism will have a conscience. Washing machine brands that use water, release detergent, consume electricity can have a powerful role to play in influencing how people treat these scarce or polluting resources. Microwave oven brands that not just encourage, but vociferously proselytize healthy eating with functions, knowledge and alliances with “good for you” food brands to further the cause would be brands with a conscience.
- Evaluate the nature of competition. Who is your brand’s competition—not just other brands, but other categories as well? Is there room for ‘co-operation’—can alliances be formed so that people benefit? Can, as a start, the waste that cut-throat competition implies be reduced—not just for reasons of economics, but because it would benefit the environment and hence the people who inhabit it?
- Have a brand conscience keeper—maybe this is the role for the head of the company. This role implies driving the brand’s responsible behavior, it means not taking a quarterly view of the brand, but having a commitment to a longer-term vision and acting accordingly. It means trading immediate profits for long-term dividends because if brands do not do so, reality can strike suddenly, with increasing ferocity and without warning as we have seen most recently in the world economy.
- Build brand conscience internally—within your organization and reward conscience keepers. For that a ‘charter of conscience’ has to be created and adhered to as assiduously as are the rules of the company. The charter must evolve over time to ensure that the brand maintains leadership and its conscience does not become a reaction rather than proactive action.
- Ensure that brand conscience is inherent in the core values of the brand and not an add-on. Hence, for example, for a food brand the health of its “flock” is inherent to the brand. For durable brands, the way they use natural resources becomes inherent to the brand. For an automobile brand responsibility, safety and the safeguarding of the environment becomes a paramount concern and forms a critical part of the brand’s core.
Just as our conscience isn’t something we choose to have when it is convenient, but actually forms what we refer to as our character, so too conscience should not be reduced to a brand attribute, but be a part of the brand’s DNA.
The author is Director-Strategic Planning at M&C Saatchi.
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