A
Successful 21st-Century Brand Has To Help Create Meaningful Lives
An
enormous study of how consumers around the world interact with brands finds
that only the companies that make life better for consumers create impactful
connections.
Unless
you’re making a conscious decision to live off the grid, the vast majority of
your day involves interacting with brands and their products. Every decision
you--and consumers everywhere from the developed world to the developing
world--make in terms of what you buy, what you wear, what you eat, and
countless other decisions, is a vote for or against a panoply of multinational
companies all vying for your money and attention. A new global survey has
identified a key weapon for brands in that battle: Make consumers’ lives
better.
It
seems obvious, that people would spend their money on things that improve their
lives, but it isn’t always the case. "The real story of the global economy
is this: institutions aren’t delivering the level of well-being that people
want, need, and expect," says Umair Haque, the director of the Havas Media
Labs and Harvard Business Review blogger who writes frequently on how
business can create real value. "The next global economy isn’t just about
stuff, it’s about human lives."
"People
want lives that count, resonate, and matter in human terms--and it’s the
failure to live that way that leads them to mistrust institutions, instead of
respect, adore, and maybe even love them." Plenty of companies provide
useless, throwaway goods. Others corporate identities are so tainted that you
can’t feel good tying your name and dollars to them. But an increasing group of
companies is striving--intentionally or not--to focus on improving lives. It’s
these companies that rose to the top of Havas Media’s second annual Meaningful Brands Index, which was released today
and features Google in first place, followed by Samsung, Microsoft, Nestle, and
Sony. And it’s working: And index of Havas’s Meaningful Brands would have
outperformed the stock market by 120% last year.
The
next global economy isn’t just about stuff, it’s about human lives.
Last
year, Havas inaugurated a global survey
that measured how people around the world felt about a wide range of brands. This year, they’ve
expanded the survey, talking with more than 134,000 people in 23 countries
about their impressions of more than 400 brands, from Apple to Goldman Sachs to
Petrobras. They’ve found a rousing affirmation of last year’s findings: Brands that make life
better are thriving. Brands that don’t are--slowly--being punished.
The
fact is that most people don’t care about brands. People surveyed wouldn’t care
if 73% brands they used disappeared from their life, a number that remains
nearly the same as in last year’s findings. Haque says that this means
"that people’s relationship with institutions--mediated by brands--remains
broken. The findings from last year, far from reflecting a simple cyclical
story of economic upturns and downturns--which come and go--instead point to a
deeper story: that as the industrial age model of global growth continues to
dwindle, economies are failing to deliver the goods for many people (especially
the young, vulnerable, struggling, and middle class)."
It’s
important to remember that these brands aren’t necessarily brands that make the
planet or society better. A brand can improve a person’s life with great
environmental costs, for instance. But that’s becoming less and less true,
says, Haque: "Let’s say that you can deliver higher individual
well-being--but only by amping up your value chain’s carbon intensity. That’s
not really a strategy that’s competitive in 21st-century terms--it’s just
another empty tradeoff, that’s going to come back to bite you in the end in
both ways, when carbon costs rise, and when people realize those costs must be
paid for you to positively impact their lives." Managing those trade-offs
successfully may be what makes a truly long-lasting and meaningful 20th-century
brand.
Editor’s Note
Read
an excerpt from Haque’s recent book Business Isn’t As Profitable As
Betterness.
It’s
also important to remember that this is a global list. Sony, but no Apple?
That’s because there isn’t an Apple store in, say Jakarta (though one is coming). Sony’s been there for
years. People in the developing world, with far less disposable income, have to
make much harder choices about the brands with which they choose to interact.
Each choice has to provide much more meaning in their lives; there isn’t room
for throwaways.
What
separates the brands that made this list from those that didn’t? It’s a simple
question of philosophy. "CEOs are painstakingly trained to deliver
outputs: stuff like slightly better sneakers, phones, or cars. And that’s
exactly the problem, not the solution," says Haque. "Because what
people are really looking for are outcomes: the real human benefits those
outputs results in. … If you’re still seeing your business essentially as a
giant factory producing outputs, instead of as a system that creates real,
positive human outcomes--you’re still stuck in the industrial age, while the
rest of the world, especially your customers, are beginning to take a quantum
leap into what I call a human age--an era where a life meaningfully well lived
is what really counts."
Your
customers are beginning to take a quantum leap into an era where a life
meaningfully well lived is what really counts.
So,
what should the brands do that aren’t on this list? It’s not as simple as
retooling your offerings. You have to change how you think. "That requires
rethinking organization, strategy, and especially marketing. It means
rebuilding organizations to measure and track human well-being. It means
crafting a human strategy, to deliver higher levels of well-being across a
company’s constituencies, at two, five, and 10 year intervals. And it means
investing in marketing which doesn’t merely promise shinier stuff to
people--but ignites higher levels of human potential in them."
You
can see this play out in the top company on the list. The survey was conducted
before revelations about the NSA spying implied that Google was somehow
complicit in the government potentially snooping on our online information. Tech companies in general
scored high on the Meaningful Brands Index, and five of the top 10 are tech
companies, but the challenges that face them could cause that to change
quickly.
Tech
companies have had a long run of making life better for their consumers, but as
sticky examples like the NSA scandal reveal, or issues around Google Glass, or
other examples of the more dark side of technology, the industry is going to
have to change how they approach consumers: "People are developing a more
sophisticated, nuanced view of tech’s power to impact their lives--for good and
not so good. Hence, tech is going to being doing something it’s been pretty
uncomfortable doing in the past: not just engineering killer apps, or awesome
new products, but learning to engage with people about the messy, complex
reality of their imperfect lives."
Can
we ever achieve a world of only brands that are positively impacting people’s
lives? It seems doubtful. It will always be easy to offer cheap, bad solutions
that prey upon consumers (especially as long as government subsidies continue
to prop up some of the most disliked sectors like finance, energy, and
agriculture). But if these trends continue, the days when this is the norm may
be ending. "That’s precisely what the arts of both leadership and
entrepreneurship this decade and beyond are about: resolving the dilemmas of
the industrial age--not merely choosing one or more of yesterday’s bad
choices," says Haque. "Those that can do so successfully will
probably build the great brands--and the great institutions--of the 21st
century."
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