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By Elsie Maio, Maio & Company
 Five
years ago it felt like a huge risk at DMI’s 10th Annual Identity
Conference to predict that a tsunami of corporate accountability
would change the standards for business behavior. Since then, wrenching
social and economic drivers appear to be doing just that. In the
process they are washing away layers of outdated business norms.
While the storm has wreaked havoc with much of the professional
services sector, (accountancies not the least of them), those services
that align with the flow of prudent, genuinely responsible business
management are defining a new wave of growth.
Two forces seem to be driving the transition: deflation of hyped
financial markets and the rise of the empowered stakeholder. The
impact has come with a series of thuds, accelerated by e-commerce,
Internet activism and the rise of NGO influence. First evident in
Europe, the UK, and perhaps Australia, consumer, investor and employee
passivity is wearing off even in the States.
The trend shows itself in choices constituents make across the economy.
For example, the fastest growing financial instruments are those
that demonstrate transparency, accountability, responsibility, and
respect for stakeholders - the screened investment funds. A booming
market for so called ‘healthy, sustainable lifestyles’
is raising the bar in mainstream food and leisure sectors. The best
and brightest graduates prefer employers that integrate social values
into business practices. And finally, the value system of Paul Ray’s
“Cultural Creatives” is coloring mainstream marketing
messages. Promotions from the financial sector (Citibank) to automobiles
(Toyota), are leaning heavily on the halo effect of environmental-
and social-sensitivity. “It’s cool to say you care”
could be the new marketing mantra. We can only hope it’s also
becoming essential to prove it.
What Euroland has dubbed “civil society” is demanding
business transparency and tangible adherence to social values. And
this is where the empowered stakeholder is shaking the branding
business to its core. Audiences are turning away from advertising
and other marketing pipelines that have forcefed numbed consumers
for so long. In some circles the term “branding” itself
is tainted with the hue of over-commercialization and abusive self-interest.
The true test for corporate management now is in living up to, or
“being,” what clever, entertaining, brand messaging
used to simply promise.
Accordingly, an evolved approach to brand management plays a central
role in helping the CEO to capture the economic value of the evolving
norms. Historically brand managers were content to sample audiences
periodically, remotely, if you will. Now they are asked to embrace
them as stakeholders: interactively, collaboratively, almost continually.
The payoffs for business range from risk management at the low end,
to the more direct economic value of deeper customer relationships,
greater trust, and the advantages of market-driven innovation.
How does it work? To begin with, a formally inclusive approach to
managing brand can itself help build an authentically values-driven
culture. Here, the primary role of the brand is to establish the
standards for behavior: not in rules and regulations, but in the
spirit that drives ethical, balanced decision-making throughout
the organization.
Second, the corporate brand is a multi-stakeholder asset now. Managed
as such, it can be enriched by these activist partners. If not,
their relentless scrutiny will shape it de facto. Accordingly,
CEO stewards of this ‘shared’ asset tend to do seven
things to keep it healthy – with the support of a renewed
professional services sector, or without it:
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Take a real stand for matching the talk with the walk
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Take the long, strategic view
Listen deeply Build social value(s) Dance with more stakeholders, more of the time Facilitate rich, chaordic, solutions rather than “asking
the expert” Know, and heal, the corporate value system.
The Role of Design
One of the stunning,early lessons I learned at McKinsey & Company
was the power of design in business consulting. The Firm’s
visual communications guru, Gene Zelazy, still wields a felt tip
like Michaelangelo, freeing from petrified decks of data the kernel
of compelling truth that moves clients to see and to act with understanding.
Gene’s gift, not unlike Edward Tufte’s is to convey
in immediate human terms a gestalt that integrates the left and
right brain messages. Later, through my colleagues in the corporate
identity field, I saw this same gift in other applications. In talking
about design intent, Gene Grossman and Ken Love showed me how graphic
design could engage the human spirit in business.
Since focusing on SoulBrandingSM
over the past five years, we’ve discovered other designers,
architects, materials engineers, who are incorporating the balanced
social/business agenda into their design intent. They are using
design to fulfill the promise of the “cool to care”
positioning. We believe this is one of the significant growth opportunities
for the field.
Now, the world seems to be on a threshold, culturally, politically
and economically. One professional opportunity immediately in front
of us is to help humanize business so that the humans it serves
can trust, respect and contribute more fully to the mutual benefit
of their relationship. In collaboration with other change disciplines,
design has a big role to play in discovering, communicating, and
delivering on that intent.
Elsie Maio guides CEOs to capture the business
value of their corporate values. Maio and Company’s proprietary
SoulBrandingSM (www.soulbranding.com)
Method features prominently in the new book by Michael Levine, A
Branded World, John Wiley & Sons.
© Maio and Company, Inc. 2003. SM
SoulBranding, SoulBrand are service marks of Maio and Company, Inc.
1997-2003.
This article appeared in the Summer 2004
issue of DMI News.
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