G8 fallout: 3bn people want a go on the roller-coaster

Submitted by Patrick Carmody

“Globalisation is making low-impact people into high-impact people faster, in greater numbers, and with greater impacts than at any other time in the history of the world.” — Thomas L Friedman, The World Is Flat

Imagine telling a couple of kids that have been patiently waiting in line for the roller-coaster that it’s not as fun as it looks. They simply would not listen. This sums up China and India’s non-committal response to carbon-dioxide reduction at the recent G8: we don’t care if it’s dangerous, you’ve had your turn, now move aside.

But those with one foot off the ride make a good point. There are some chinks in the track and it’s certainly can’t hold another three billion people.

The US and Europe have come full circle in consumerism — from the brand-fuelled buying orgy of the 1980s and 1990s to the “live simpler” mantra that seems to be permeating the consciousness. Since the 1980s, business has relentlessly taken branding way beyond the simple practice of naming a value offering. Marketers realised that those with the best memes can manipulate perceptions of value and values to the benefit of their bottom line. The result is an economy loaded with vacuous assets, rampant consumerism and a blur of offerings that offer hardly any sustainable value.

From beer brands to BMW, leading brands leverage this distorted notion of value by engaging our emotions. The most primal emotional hook that they employ is when they associate their brand with social acceptance or the converse of this: fear of being rejected by peers. This gives brands a lot of permission to fail (through the entire supply chain) and stalled us from challenging them.

Have your cake and eat it
The message to the developing giants should be that you can have your cake and eat it in a connected society. We just need a “quieter economy” where real value replaces promises. In other words a strong brand should be the consequence of a well-executed business strategy (deep difference, real value). It should not be the strategy itself. This is when consumer value is blurred.

Companies should focus on rolling out deep difference as quickly as possible, instead of doing the same with perceived difference. The world’s leading fast-moving consumer-goods brands did the opposite — the incumbents got rapid distribution without having a deep difference — based on the relationship with the retailer. The “TV-industrial complex” worked wonders in this category.

This is not an anti-capitalist sentiment as a connected society allows “lean consumption” and economic prosperity. The stories of branding had velocity in a broadcast world; sustainable value has velocity in a connected world as consumers interrogate and demand more from companies and brands.

Patrick Carmody is an independent strategist and navigates the field of applied branding and marketing at Vega, The Brand Communication School