I want to put a ding in the Universe. Steve Jobs

The hero's journey is a story celebrated in art and life. "The Lion King" opens with a happy young cub. Then thrust out into the wilderness, tough lessons are learnt. In the third act, re-entry to the magic kingdom, the most extreme test awaits. Now consider the career of Steve Jobs. One of the great garagistes, his early & quite clunky personal computers heralded an age of digital deities. Then, losing his war against the carbonated drink CEO he had appointed, Jobs wilderness was animation. Called back to the magic kingdom, at a time of dire trouble, he needed to fight his greatest battle - against the rampant Microsoft. The value of Apple surged past Microsoft some time back, & a few weeks before Steve Jobs announced his resignation as CEO, Apple became albeit briefly, the most valuable company on the New York Stock Exchange. Is it the beginning of a new world order where what's in your head is worth more than what's in the ground? Can oil & gas - the lifeblood of our world today be less valuable than premium priced consumer electronics - essentially a middle-class luxury? ...

One Small Step for Man in Bamboo Socks I’ve been reading about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area larger than the USA, where abandoned fishing nets, plastic bath toys, computers & plastic pellets wash around endlessly and wondered if I would find my odd socks and lost pens there.

Or perhaps Steve Jobs had charitably combined the talents of Apple & Pixar Studios with global MacBooks animating socks & pens in the dead of night, then directing them to march off and find the one-legged penless of the world.

These thoughts propelled me around the socks section of a Cape Waterfront clothing store, grumpily looking for replacement pairs.  Cotton-rich socks (unspecified percentage) with multi-coloured toes momentarily appealed to my hidden hippy, until I came across bamboo socks.  I knew that bamboo was eco-friendlier than most wood, so it had to be better for the future of humanity than water-gulping cotton.  They were in plain black or caramel – but fashion be damned, I was flashing my green credentials.

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Brand-building in the Time of Conspicuous Conservation  

Joel the Tailor was in a dilemma. It was approaching the time of the Jewish New Year and his synagogue asked him to take out a half-page ad in their annual magazine. Joel had no problem with this, the synagogue was in a poor area and struggled to make ends meet. The ads from local tradespeople helped. Some ads prominently promoted the advertiser - so his first effort was: "Be a Mensch in a suit by Joel the Tailor". Then the Rabbi advised him that the highest form of charity is when the giver is not known. That was fine, but business was slow and where did charity begin if not at the tailor-shop - after all, no customers, no ads next year. He resolved his dilemma with his ad, which read: "This space is donated by Joel the Best Tailor in the Mile End Road - anonymously". While the story, told by my late father, may well be apocryphal, it resonates with a human truth - we like to be recognised for doing good. On a larger scale, we have...

potjiekos

(poi-key-cos) - is a stew cooked slowly in the potjie… prepared outdoors in a cast iron, round, three-legged pot using wood, coals or charcoal. Traditionally potjiekos is made with lamb, beef, fish or poultry but always together with vegetables. The potjiekos is "built" in layers with the meat and hard vegetables at the bottom of the pot and the quicker cooking vegetables towards the top.

David Ogilvy once remarked he never heard two housewives on the bus discussing the choice of the Garamond typeface. They saw or dismissed the whole ad.

So it is with consumers and brands. Brand-owners, as they grow, create divisions for advertising, sponsorships, promotions, electronic marketing, corporate social investment and so much more, with separate budgets, objectives, agendas and measurements. Meanwhile, the consumer reacts to a whole brand. The low awareness, lack of affinity and increasing mistrust that many brands suffer in the marketplace, reflect confusion within.

The value of your brand is the sum worth of all your efforts & dreams – as seen through the eyes of others. Trillions of dollars, a huge chunk of the global economy, depends on perceptions. And recently these perceptions have changed.

Consumers are looking deeper into the brands they do business with – and many of these brands are finding their strength has become their vulnerability.

Sir Richard Branson had his epiphany in Tokyo one afternoon. He was driving his Mitsubishi car, listening to the Mitsubishi radio, when he went past a Mitsubishi bank.

In the West, great brands were usually associated with one product – Levi’s makes jeans, Campbell’s makes soup. In Japan, brands are seen differently.

Many great brands have brand mantras that in a few words capture their spirit. The mantra is not a slogan - it is the golden thread that holds everything together, from what a company makes, to its hiring policies.

A mantra instills in employees and marketing partners what the brand means to customers, giving all actions a common goal. It is a Sanskrit word, meaning an insight in the form of a chant that leads to the fulfillment of what is desired

The Portuguese say we can’t call our ports port, the French say we can’t call our champagnes champagne, the Italians say we can’t call our grappas grappa; & now Americans say we can’t call our rooibos, rooibos. It’s brand colonialism.

Yogis brand and copyright their positions and breathing. Monsanto genetically modifies nature to brand staples like soya and maize. The South African government seeks judgment in Switzerland to overturn an American corporation’s right to own and exploit southafrica.com – in the war for the consumer’s mind, enter the battalion of lawyers.

Award winning commercials come and go; ideas that grow with time are rare and far more valuable. What are 10-year ideas? In a word, simple. Here are four paths to the brand gold-mine:

• promise, large promise
• larger than life characters
• a big attitude
• a big social vision

Traditionally, Africa is the commodity peasant of the world. From gold & diamonds to tea & coffee, economic colonialism dictates that nature’s treasures are taken from the ground here, beneficiated & branded elsewhere.

We celebrate when gold touches $1000 an ounce. It travels to Italy or India, where machines make gold chains that come back to us at ten times the price. Or they are sold at Tiffany’s for more than a miner earns in a lifetime.

However, things are changing. Whilst production will increasingly migrate to the lowest cost countries, the art and science of branding will cluster in areas where the talent is to be found - and one of those clusters is right here, in South Africa.