Branders
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Words of Branders
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Branders
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Quotes
Words of Branders Issue 13 | August, 2019
“Businesses must ask themselves what’s the most that they can do rather than the least they can get away with.”
Holly Branson
Chair of Virgin Unite, a Founder and trustee of Big Change and Co-Chair of WE Day UK.
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Branders Quotes Issue 13 | August, 2019
“The goal isn’t how much money you make, but how much you help people.”
Blake Mycoskie
Chief Giver at TOMS
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Branders Words of Branders
August 2019 ISSUE 13
Contributors
Annette Rosencreutz
Christopher Gavigan
Brand Strategy Advisor and CEO at Brandflight. Author of Managing Brand Me, Pearson
Founder & CEO: Prima // CoFounder: The Honest Company
Andy Last
Cristian Saracco
Founder of MullenLowe Salt Author of the book “Business on a Mission: How to Build a Sustainable Brand”
Founding Partner Allegro 234 | CMO zenziya | President aebrand | Member Medinge Group
Peter Brown
Nicholas Ind
Director of independent consultancy for strategy, corporate development and communications FischerBrown.
Lecturer, writer and brand consultant specialized in internal branding, cocreation and conscientious branding.
Nikolaj Stagis
Giuseppe Cavallo
CEO, branding expert, public speaker, management and change consultant, board member and author.
Founder of Voxpopuli, a responsible marketing agency in Barcelona. Expert in branding and storytelling.
David Blyth
Charlotte Otter
Founder Delta Victor Bravo & Africa Partner for eatbigfish.
VP, Head of Executive & Employee Communications at SAP. Member of Medinge Group.
Mark Irvine
Arthur Laumann
Communications manager (Strategic Research & Innovation) at DNV GL.
Communications & branding advisor who naturally embeds sustainability in his work for global profit & non-profit brands.
Jack Yan
Antonio Roberto
CEO, Jack Yan & Associates; publisher, Lucire and Autocade; cochair, Medinge Group.
CBO of Managic Office, a Brazilian consulting firm that has been conducting brand projects for more than 30 years.
Holger J. Schmidt
Sandra Horlings
Full Professor of Marketing and experienced brand management expert.
Brand & Business Strategist at innovation cooperative creating profit to be proud of.
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Table of contents
Branders
08 Editor’s Letter 10 TopBrand Top 5 Packaging Design Blogs 12 Business Follow the Money: why brands with a conscience are winning on Wall Street
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14 Personal Brand Is your personal brand for good? 16 Behind the brand Human Centered Brands 18 Brand Strategy Guilt-free and fancy, a strategy for all. Marketing for impulses will help scale sustainable living! 20 Storytelling Story: an ancient medium for modern times
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24 Cover Story The Desire to Empower Humans to Flourish 30 Branding The Conscious' Brand Roadmap 34 Branding Six ways of building your purpose brand 42 Storytelling Inspiring audiences for a better future 44 Branding Co-creating brands with a purpose 46 Technology Big Tech is not your friend
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Cover Story
48 Consumers The Red Queen and the conscious consumer 50 Technology Alexa, do you act with a conscience? 52 Behind the brand Smiles by bitts: The Power of Zero 54 Brand Gadgets 55 Events 56 Profile Scott Harrison
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Editor’s Letter
Is your brand working with a purpose? It’s not easy to establish a deep connection with your key audience, is it?
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hen your stakeholders align themselves with your purpose through your brand, it is because they feel a deeper connection based on shared beliefs and values. Consumers choose brands with a conscience because they think different, they have a higher purpose that creates value for all, they have a capacity for love and care, they promote authentic leadership and embodies a humanistic way of being. Brands have a broad responsibility to all their stakeholders, including citizens. That is the reason why our next issue will be focused on "Brands with a conscience." We believe is important to share with our readers how to identify their brand purpose helping them to create a better engagement with their key audiences.
It does not matter your industry, a tangible, actionable and visible purpose is becoming increasingly more important to consumer decisions making. People want to invest in brands with a conscience, they want to share their beliefs, their ideas and they want these authentic brands to be integrated with the ir everyday lives. We will have a great team of professionals participating in the issue, sharing their experience in this topic. Members of Medinge Group, an international think tank of brand experts and visionaries from around the world whose purpose is to influence business to become more humane and conscious –most of them are also authors of the book "Brands with a Conscience."
LUIS FERNANDO VERGARA CEO & Founder Branders Magazine @luifer_brander
This issue is focused to help you and your brand. The last thing you want to have is a brand with no soul, that’s not the type of company consumers want to engage with.
Editor in Chief : Luis Fernando Vergara, lvergara@vrandgroup.com COO: Carolina Gomez, carolina@vrandgroup.com Advertising Director: Elizabeth Gomez, egme27@yahoo.com Design: Branders Media Group The contents of this publication is exclusive and opinions expressed are responsibility of the authors. Reproduction from the contents of this publication is prohibited without authorization.
DIGITAL OFFICE United States +1 405 640 7391 | lvergara@vrandgroup.com Branders Magazine is published by Branders Group www.brandersmagazine.com
Branders
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TopBrands
Words of Branders
Brands with a Conscience
Charity: Water charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries.
This Bar Saves Lives It’s simple. For every non-GMO, gluten free, ridiculously delicious bar purchased, the brand gives life-saving nutrient packets to malnourished children around the world. Giving never tasted so good! Every time you make a purchase you send a packet of life-saving food to a child in need. Learn more at thissaveslives.com
This brand invest the money they raised into organizations with years of experience to build sustainable, community-owned water projects around the world. Their team works closely to ensure that every dollar is accounted for and then provides reports back to our donors.
Charity Progress 38,113 Water projects funded 9,628,786 People will get clean water 37 Local partners 27 Countries
Virgin Unite Virgin Unite is the entrepreneurial foundation of the Virgin Group and the Branson family.This organization started with the aim of bringing people together to encourage them never to accept the unacceptable, to turn challenges into opportunities and to always push boundaries that make both business and the world better. Their goal is to unite people and entrepreneurial ideas to create opportunities for a better world.
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Sept. 30th to Oct. 4th
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New York was the city chosen to host the 13th International Brand Innovation Week, the annual event held since 2004 in London as an extension activity for the New Branding Innovation MBA of Faculdades Rio Branco - São Paulo.
Talks with renowned professionals, technical visits to consultancies and an authentic place branding experience in one of the most exciting cities on Planet Earth await you.. Contacts: antonio.roberto@riobrancofac.edu.br atendimento.pos@riobrancofac.edu.br whatsapp antonio roberto: +5511 977828246
scan to know the schedule and register
SÂMARA IRUMÉ
DEBBIE MILLMAN
LUÍS IRUMÉ
ANTONIO ROBERTO
ANDY STARR
MATT DAVIES
or type this link in your browser: bit.ly/13thbrandweekny
Follow the Money: why brands with a conscience are winning on Wall Street
Photo by Rick Tap on Unsplash
Business | Brands with a Conscience
It seems that everyone’s searching for the purpose these days. BY ANDY LAST
Founder of MullenLowe Salt and advises organisations on how they can use social issues to drive growth, and how communications can effect change to bring about better business results and social progress. Author of the book “Business on a Mission: How to Build a Sustainable Brand” @saltylast
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raduates seeking fulfillment; CEOs pondering legacy; marketers eyeing awards. The talk about purpose and greater consciousness in business has certainly centered on these areas: on how purpose can help attract the best talent, guide corporate strategy, and create cut-through for brands. It is in this third space, marketing, that the debate around brands with a conscience has largely taken place, about what it means for a brand to have a conscience, the impact this might have on engaging consumers, and whether brands talking purpose but without conscience are guilty of ‘purposewash’. But one place that has not typically been associated with purpose or assumed to be interested in whether a brand has a conscience or not, is the finance department. The 12 BRANDERS MAGAZINE • 2019
CFO’s interest has typically focused on the bottom line – what growth is the company generating, at what margin, and what do I need to satisfy my investors? They may have asked questions about whether the company’s risk profile was too high in supply chains or environmental impacts, but not about whether the company had a purpose or the brand a conscience. Until now. Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $6.5 trillion in assets under management, caused some raised eyebrows among analysts and cheering among campaigners, when he said in his 2018 annual letter to the companies his firm invests in (of which there are a lot) that, “Without a sense of purpose, no company, either public or private, can achieve its full potential. It will ultimately lose the license to operate from key
stakeholders. It will succumb to short-term pressures to distribute earnings…, it will remain exposed to activist campaigns that articulate a clearer goal.. And ultimately, that company will provide subpar returns to the investors.” His letter was heralded as a tipping point in the question of whether capitalism had to be ‘conscious’, and he followed it up in his 2019 letter by saying, “Profits and purpose are inextricably linked. Profits are essential if a company is to effectively serve all of its stakeholders over time – not only shareholders, but also employees, customers, and communities. Similarly, when a company truly understands and expresses its purpose, it functions with the focus and strategic discipline that drive long-term profitability……
Companies that fulfill their purpose and responsibilities to stakeholders reap rewards over the long-term. Companies that ignore them stumble and fail.” So, just as marketers are turning to ‘brands with a conscience’, investors are turning to companies with solid ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) credentials. Not because they have a burning love for brands with a conscience, not because they’re hankering after a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their work, not because they suddenly want to save the world. But because it makes for better returns on their investments, and their traditional financial models have failed to
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assess these risks and opportunities adequately. Blackrock’s turn to the purpose and wanting to invest in companies who understand and act on their environmental and social obligations and opportunities is underpinned by their own research1 that ESG funds will account for 60% of the global growth in exchangetraded funds over the next decade. Many investors – public pension funds in particular – will not invest in companies without a clear and credible purpose, while private equity firms are appointing heads of ESG to assess and manage their
investees’ performance in this space. Whether passive or active, investors are encouraging companies to improve their social and environmental performance. Why? Because they have watched, researched, analyzed and interrogated companies’ performance (more than any protestor, regulator or activist citizen was ever able to do) and come to the conclusion that companies who are not acting on their material environmental and social impacts are not worth investing in. For those of us who aren’t in a position to analyze and interrogate company
Just as marketers are turning to ‘brands with a conscience’, investors are turning to companies with solid ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) credentials. performance to quite the same degree, brands with conscience provide us with a shorthand for making choices in line with our own values. The Medinge definitions of what constitutes a brand with conscience – including having a visible conscience; promoting the value of caring for one another;
acknowledging that we are all fundamentally equal; and being visibly accountable for all its actions – are simply human expressions of what the investment community is now looking for, and why it makes sense to follow the men and women of Wall Street and invest our own time and money in brands with conscience.
1. https://www.etfexpress.com/2019/03/06/273724/blackrock-launches-six-new-sustainable-etfs
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