Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
Is there such a thing as Ethical Branding? This essay will discuss Wally Olins theories on branding and whether branding can genuinely be ethical, or if it simply uses ethical values as a selling tool. In Capitalist society’s brands play a huge role in influencing people’s actions, from the clothes they wear to the foods they buy. There has been at least an attempt to brand almost everything from simple products and services to entire cities or countries. Olins (2003, p.14) states “Branding these days is largely about involvement and association; the outward and visible demonstration of private and personal affiliation.” It enables people to define their self-‐perception with a set of values or views through the choices of branded products and services they support. When studying the writing of Wally Olins it becomes clear how brands operate and how they connect with their target audience. He unpicks the corporate world and describes the essential rules for successful branding, defining the links between business, brand and customer. Olins theorises that brands can be broken down into the ‘four vectors’ that are, product, environment, communication and behaviour, Olins (2003, p.176) states “The product is what the organization sells. Environment is where it makes or sells it. Communication is how it tells people, every audience, and about it’s self and what its doing. And behaviour is how it behaves” One area that isn’t covered in Olins work is ethical branding, and although it can be applied through each vector, ethics could be considered another vector in its own right. Finn (2001, p.1) states, “Ethical branding could provide the company Contextual and Theoretical Studies Richard Miles
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Graphic Design
with a differential advantage as a growing number of consumers become more ethically conscious.” Ethics is a complex and somewhat unclear because there are no clear lines that delineate a definitive set of values. Essentially, many ethical values are excluded from the laws and guidelines of society. It is becoming growingly complicated to define where the boundaries lie within right or wrong because of globalisation with an integrated mixture of cultures. Robinson & Garratt (1996 p.5) puts forward that “ethics is complicated because our morality is an odd mixture of received tradition and personal opinion” When applying ethics to branding Fan (2005, p.3) also states, “Should branding be ethical? It might seem that the answer is obvious: most companies would answer yes. However, it would be more difficult to find a universal agreement on what ethical branding is.” Using this information and through deconstructing the work of Olins, it becomes apparent how ethics are implicated within brands. However the issue of what ethics and morals actually are, and if how they are utilised is immoral adds to the complexity of the question, is there such a thing as ethical branding? Olins states (2005, p190) that the core idea represents what the company stands for and why it exists, it provides the brand with coherence, consistency and a powerful emotional attitude or idea. For many, environmental and economical factors are a highly valued as they offer customers emotional satisfaction and contempt with their product or service choices. In addition to Olins theories, Fan (2005) puts forward that “branding is no longer just about adding value to a product; branding represents and promotes lifestyles and brands themselves become a kind of culture.” Contextual and Theoretical Studies Richard Miles
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
Olins states (2003, p.179) that when an organization is being branded or re-‐ branded the appropriateness of the environment is hugely influential on who will see it, how they will react and how successful it will be. The environment and the experience that it provides is something companies need to keep consistent with their core idea. When looking at food markets and similar environments such as furniture stores the layouts are designed so that you walk around the entire shop often picking up unnecessary goods before you reach the tills. This is morally and ethically questionable, as for the customer it would be more beneficial to have a more open planed environment allowing people to go directly to what they need and be able to directly pay and leave the store. When branding environments Olins (2003) states that people will often choose predictable environments whether this is consciously or subconsciously. Supermarkets in particular fit into this bracket with the alluring signs of simulacra. They create a hyperreality of a market environment and are designed to recreate the reality of markets and fruit stalls which could be done to exploit how people perceive the produce they are buying. The layout suggests a less corporate set of produce and more of a local and fair way of buying your shopping. When product branding, particularly that of food, ethical issues of fair trade and organic produce are highly valued. It can be analysed that these used to exploit insecurities and manipulate buyers into a state of panopticism where they gain a sense of moral satisfaction from buying specific produce. Also because of the busy environment customers begin to self regulate into this state because of the omnipresent eye that consumerism creates. Olins (2003 p.189) also states that a product will have to meet and maintain certain standards to assure that customers return, one bad experience could be
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
enough to deter them from returning to the store as well as telling associates about their bad experience. Olins (2003, p.181) states that the way a brand communicates should to be closely linked to their core idea, it is all about how the product or service is advertised and promoted. It is used to bridge the gap between the target audience and the organization. When dealing with ethical values it is common for companies to express these connotations as a marketing tool. They create and alter customer perceptions of the brand and determine whether a brand is successfully established and eventually turns a profit. Finally Olins (2003) states that brand behaviour is applicable to the way a brand is seen, heard, felt and even smelt or tasted. Like brand communication it is applicable every time someone interacts with the brand. A successful brand should have consistent and organized behaviour unless strategically decided otherwise. The behaviour of a brand is used to ensure that the same desired brand experience is delivered to all audiences whether this is externally or internally, if the desired message comes across to the employees then the same message should effectively be delivered to the customers. In the competitive, corporate climate, rebranding is often needed to rejuvenate or revamp a companies values and public image. Brands tend to have readily comprehensible messages of socially ethical values, but it could be said that they are using this as a way of connoting a lifestyle to sell their products or services. However rebranding is particularly complicated because of a brands history, Olins (2003, p.186) When you invent a brand there is no business, nobody works for it, there isn’t an office, you start literally with a blank sheet of paper. But when you re-‐invent a brand it’s quite different; there’s already a culture, a tradition, an attitude and a reputation, often a very long-‐standing one. And there’s Contextual and Theoretical Studies Richard Miles
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
also a name. There are employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers. How much can or should you change? When analysing at the rebrand of the Co-‐operative by design studio Pentagram through these four vectors it becomes easier to deconstruct and understand the ideas and strategy behind the rebrand. When describing the process behind the branding Wiedemann (U, p.109) confers The Co-‐Operative movement began in 1844 as a response to the inequality caused by the industrial revolution, forming numerous co-‐operative societies in retail, agriculture, and housing. Each society was owned and run by its members and worked for the benefit of its local community. The Co-‐Operative group was formed from the merger of many independent retail societies. Research shows that the Co-‐operative, was formed as an ethical and moral organization. The core idea behind the rebrand was one of unity across all fronts of the organization as well as getting the employees to maintain and portray the same values. The first step in the rebranding of communication was the name change, the Co-‐ op was often synonymous with low quality products and dated retail. The name change to ‘The Co-‐operative’ re-‐connected the strong ethical credentials of the organization. Also with the likes of super giants like Tesco and Sainsbury’s pioneering new levels of value it was clear that the Co-‐op had to change its public perception and reach out to a different market. Wiedemann (U, p111) states We changed the name back to the ‘Co-‐operative’. This name felt like a straightforward and authoritative straightforward statement of fact and reconnected the business with the roots that were central to its ethos Contextual and Theoretical Studies Richard Miles
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
The second development of brand communication was changing from the 1993 logo, which was still based on a cloverleaf to a modernist, sans serif, Helvetica logotype that portrayed a higher quality and value of products and service. There was also a dramatic colour change from blue to green, often theorised in colour theory as a connotation health and the environment. This was applied across all fronts including signage, shop fronts and other more appropriate colour schemes were applied to the rest of The Co-‐operative businesses. Bold statements of the company ethics were delivered through out the store as well as across the face of the store. It could be said that again these statements, despite being true, were as a tool of panopticism, making existing customers pay more and expanding their customer base. The rebrand of its environment also played a huge role in its reecent success. Wiedemann (U, p.110) states that this in turn with its communication was about creating a consistent brand across all fronts that reconnected it with its fundamental principles of fairness, responsibility, and community ownership. The start for the environment but summultaniously linked with brand behaviour was the internal initive of ‘together’ which united employees under one common business vision. The store interiors were redesigned and provided customers with a joyful experience, this is closely related with the product vector. Olins (2003, p.179) makes this comparison Nobody would go to a hotel twice, however beautifully designed, furnished and located, if the food and service were lousy. But it is the environment that set the tone. The internal rebranding of the store has connotations of health and an ethical ethos, using green signage and keeping the type consistent with the logo. Contextual and Theoretical Studies Richard Miles
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
Although this seems an innocent and neturally uninfluential it could be said that these ethics were used as a tool of manipulation, in turn a system of panopticism, Olins (2003, p109) makes similar perceptions about bottled water. But bottled water has emotional connotations of health, purity and fitness which seem to have a special resonance for the Western World. And very many peole, including me, are perfectly willing to pay relatively large sums of money to pay for the emotional satisfaction they derive from drinking it. The rebranding of the product included all of their self-‐branded produce, which the Co-‐operative (2008, www.co-‐operative.coop) claims to be more ethically sourced and produced than other corporations on the market. The designs were kept consistent with the rest of the brand communication sticking with Helvetica Neue and simple green black and white colour scheme, delivering the same consistent and coherent message of unity. The Co-‐operative (2008, www.co-‐operative.coop) claims that new packaging designs were produced using sustainable, recyclable print methods and materials. Although statements these statistics were used to promote the organization, it is environmentally beneficial and will hopefully pioneer a new attitude for rest of their competition and eventually become a standard. Finally within the product branding of the company, many of their self branded and named brand produce is organic or labelled with fair trade, the same issues of price difference and using ethics to create higher income for the company could be suggested. However it is questionable as to whose responsibility this is, some might say its up to governments who should change laws disallowing corporations from using unfair methods of trade, (2001, brandchannel.com) argues Brands are not guilty of social and environmental damage – nor are they
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
even a symbol of unethical working practice Corporations are guilty and laws that allow unethical practice are guilty When analyzing brand behaviour of the Co-‐operative, its ethical values are consistent with the rest of the corporation. The ethos behind the organization is based around being a fair and beneficial part of the community. The Co-‐operative website (2008) states that they are involved in multiple schemes to help benefit local communities and environmental progress, just to name one they support saving the world bees because of their positive impact on the environment. Again although these initiatives could be said to have underlying intent, the more the organization raises the more attention the cause gets, in turn the more money will be raised. In conclusion of the composing four vectors in relation to The Co-‐operative, it is obvious that they entice customers through healthy, ethical connotations but they do stand strong in their effort to apply their values to the rest of the corporate world. Essentially it’s very hard for such a large corporation to be ethical, because of the constant demand from customers after ever-‐cheaper prices. Again it is always going to be susceptible to opinion whose responsibility corporations ethical values should be, if the governments changed laws on trade and fair trade was the corporations would have to comply. Because of alternating positions and opinions on ethics and its unclear boundaries it is possible to analyse the brands ethical morals based on personal opinions. One side of the argument is that brands like the Co-‐operative should be allowed to use these tools of manipulation to seduce buyers as they play a larger role in raising equality in the world. But at the other end of the spectrum it could be said that these tools of manipulation are wrong and unfair on the unsuspecting customer. Another argument is that it is up to the customers to research into this information and make the decision for themselves. Contextual and Theoretical Studies Richard Miles
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
In conclusion the Co-‐operative does run and rely on its morals both for marketing and on principle but whether it is truly an ethical brand is susceptive to personal opinion. This leaves brands in an endless cycle where overall satisfaction is near impossible. In conclusion the only way to progress is for everyone to take a more proactive role including customers, governments and the corporations to avoid unethical business.
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Matthew Tucker
Graphic Design
Bibliography Books DAVID, M. (2005) More than a name, An introduction to Branding. Switzerland: AVA Publishing EDWARDS, H. & DAY, D. (2005) Creating Passion Brands. United Kingdom: Kogan Page Limited FOOT P. (2002) Theories of Ethics. United States of America: Oxford University Press Inc Ind, N (2003) Beyond Branding. Great Britain & United States: Kogan Page Limited KLIEN, N (2000) No Logo. Great Britain: Flamingo LAFOLLETTE, H. (ed.) (2002) – The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd MONSA, Brand and Branding (2009) Bilingual Edition, United Kingdom: Monsa Publishing OLINS, W. (2003) On Brand. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc ROBINSON, D. (1996) Introducing Ethics. United Kingdom: Icon Books Ltd SCHULTZ, M. & HATCH M.J. & LARSEN, M,H – The Expressive Organisation 2000. The United States: Oxford University Press Inc WIEDEMANN, E.J (2009) Brand Identity now!. Germany: Taschen GmbH TV / Film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011) Film. SPURLOCK, M. United States: Sony Picture Classics No Logo – Brands, Globalization & Resistance (2003) Documentary Film. KLIEN, N. United States: KLIEN, N Online
ELLEE (2001). The Co-‐operative Revolution Rebranded. Ellee Seymore, Weblog (Online) 03/2011 Available from http://elleeseymour.com/2011/03/29/the-‐co-‐ operative-‐revolution-‐rebranded/ (Accessed 24/12/11) The Co-‐operative (2008) Ecological Sustainability, Webpage. Available from http://www.co-‐operative.coop/corporate/Sustainability09/ecological-‐ sustainability/ (Accessed 08/12/11)
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