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...

I am writing this article on a BA Comair flight to Johannesburg.  I am on this flight not by choice, but because Sun Air crashed (metaphorically) taking with it a service that truly did outshine the rest.

And this, we are told, was precisely the problem:  Sun Air over-serviced the customer.  How can this be?  Look after the customer and the profits will look after themselves, is a message I come across more and more often in management thinking, enlightened corporations and the topsy-turvy world of e-commerce.  We know that poor service sends companies to the bankruptcy courts, but can good service make you go bang, too?  Life's not fair, but it's certainly confusing.

For a few years it was giraffes.  Wherever tourists to South Africa paused you would see endless herds of wooden giraffes.  I visualised giraffe making factories in Limpopo, or Mpumalanga, only to discover that they were made by the container-load in Indonesia.

The giraffe-market now seems to be in decline – another victim of the oversupplied world

It is a difficult time for the bipolar capitalist.  In a dog eat dog world, it’s munch or be munched and so you manically munch.  At the same time you see poverty, unemployment, disease & crime – the four apocalyptic horsemen threatening to tear apart the fabric of society – and you want to retreat into your shell.  

Mega-corporates find themselves shedding people to please shareholders, small enterprises battle to stay solvent.  Helping others - in South Africa by way of Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment - becomes a department removed from the business - another expense and a hundred more forms to fill.

Brands are more vulnerable than ever.  A few years ago the largest bank in the world was outed by an obscure action group – and Citibank changed its investment criteria based on a few ads plus a lot of passion.

Then the second largest bank in the USA, Bank of America, changed its policies on the threat of being outed.  Rainforest Action Network (RAN) 2  Banks 0.

Because when you tell me my money is invested in wholesale destruction, I will pay attention.  Eradicating rain-forests is a no-no on my agenda.  While providing sustainable employment opportunities in Southern Africa is a great, big yes (so long, of course, as I get a decent return).

“Ethical products are the last great commodity differentiator.” Wally Olins, UK Brand Guru.

You walk into a UK Tesco to buy a bottle of wine – you have green intentions.  An organic wine from Chile grabs the eye, then you see Spier, the first South African wine to qualify for the Wine Industry Ethical Trade Association (WIETA), but as you hand reaches out you see next to it a bottle of Thandi, the first Fairtrade wine and black-owned to boot so you can be on the side of the angels and Bono with trade not aid, until you read the carbon footprint and think maybe you should go for the Burgundy, or is Bordeaux nearer Chipping Sodbury?

If you ever doubted that a butterfly flapping its wings over Tokyo will cause a tornado in Texas, consider the global financial chaos.

If  you want to  relieve the world’s deadliest diseases,  go shopping.  Preferably at Emporio Armani, or Gap, or buy a pair of Converse shoes & use your American Express Card – so long as it’s Red.  

One month after the Tsunami

In the movie, The Man who sued God, Billy Connelly plays a disgruntled lawyer turned fisherman-dropout.  When his fishing vessel and home are destroyed by lightning, his insurance company refuses to pay out, claiming it is an Act of God.

So Connelly goes back to his legal roots and sues God.  He attempts to prove that the "Act of God" clause is an insurance company scam.

Nowadays, if God had a lawyer he would sue us – Acts of Man are making the world an increasingly violent, unpredictable place.