GSIF09 SUMMARIES
Plenary 6: Branding for Social Change Friday, 2 October • Elim Chew • V.P. Sharma • John Feenie • Gumilar Rusliwa Somantri Moderated by • John Rehm The perceptions of brands and what branding is have changed dramatically over the last 25 years. While in the past nobody understood what branding was, regarding it as a piece of communication, a logo or a marketing gimmick, now organizations have to think seriously about what branding is about, as they have great power to effect change. Brands are powerful social, emotional connectors, which engage people because they feel a personal need to be involved in a cause. To be a real leader in making change in a certain area, one needs a real passion and a real knowledge of what you are trying to do. To make a brand last, it is best to find a need in a social sector, the corporate sector, or a confluence of the two where one’s cause can be best served. Social innovation allows governments, social organizations and corporate organizations to come together in the same space for a common cause. However, the social cause supported has to be linked to what a brand means in a particular business, because people will see through branding what is not genuine. So, one’s social cause has to have resonance or a link between the mindset of one’s brand and the social change one is trying to bring about. To build a dynamic communications program, one needs to work in a way where the organization is helped as well as society. One needs to look at where there is a need for society to be served, while being in line with the company’s needs. For example, a company dealing with sporting goods could sponsor a sports movement to get kids off computers and onto the streets to play sports, and a supermarket chain could cut its carbon footprint by using fewer paper bags. The important thing is to realize that in change there is still a lot of consistency. While some things change, others don’t. Thus, the position of a brand has to be synchronized with the minds of consumers as they change. For example, Pepsi likes to be associated with the younger crowd; hence it has launched a rock band competition to promote its brand. In the age of Facebook and Twitter, organizations are still in the early stages of learning how to deal with their impacts. However, these are tools for creating social change as they bring many different people from the public and private sectors together. It creates sustainability in social enterprise by raising capabilities of social entrepreneurs—letting others know what they are good at and how organizations can contribute to the cause while improving the image of their brands. To leverage on branding to ignite social change, entrepreneurs have to see if the brand is a good fit for the cause they are trying to promote. Most organizations do not think enough about their brands and fail to make it come to life by thinking holistically about what they are trying to do and their raison d'etre (why they exist). This will give them a way to solve the problems at hand. People are thinking of branding as something like going out there and communicating with as many as possible, but in the end one may compromise one’s goals and brand. Thus, having clarity about who one is in the world and delivering on it are more important. Most social entrepreneurs start small. This means they often don’t have a share of voice; hence the brand has to work harder for them. The starting point of the brand is what is it that one is trying to change. Understanding this will result in much better brands, much better emotional depth. It’s not just a piece of communication, a logo, or a message; it is a whole philosophy. There is now a rise of a different consumer that does not mind paying more for a brand as long as it supports a cause he or she believes in.
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