How will brands change the world?

The climate crisis, third world development, and the next frontier

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How will brands change the world?: The climate crisis, third world development, and the next frontier
by Chris Maclean

At Interbrand, we have a mantra Brands have the power to change the world. This is a bold statement, but a true one. Brands are everywhere, influencing our daily lives. We are shaped by the brands we buy into, the opinions we align ourselves with, the lifestyles we aspire to, what we spend our hard earned cash on. In fact, our world has been dramatically changed by brands. We live in a world where more people know Coca-Cola than Jesus. There are close to one billion computer users in the world, 90 percent of which sit down to Microsoft everyday. Advertising has a grip on us all. Our behaviors, our attitudes, and our opinions are all influenced by brands on a daily basis. Bands have already changed the world, but how might brands change the world in our uncertain future? How might brands affect issues such as climate change, famine, or human exploration for better or worse? The hot topic Brands are facing a tough time right now. Climate change is on everyones lips. Brands are under attack for issues such as carbon emissions, power consumption, recycling, waste disposal, and the impact of packaging. The list goes on. A Havas Media report revealed that consumers are calling upon brands to tackle the climate crisis. They have long given up on the government to solve the problem and are turning to brands to create change. Consumers are also wise to which companies are credibly making changes and those that are not. 79 percent of consumers would

rather buy from companies doing their best to reduce their impact upon the environment, while 89 percent are likely to buy more green goods in the next 12 months and 35 percent are willing to pay a premium for those goods. Brands are being forced to embrace doing the right thing. Research done by The Climate Group, indicates that consumers are generally receptive to companies that are working to tackle climate change. In the UK brands such as Tesco, BP, The Co-operative, Marks & Spencer, and Sainsburys are being praised for their leadership in tackling the climate crisis. Brands around the world are also taking notice and taking measures to remedy the climate problem. In Tokyo, February 2008, 12 leading companies including Allianz, Sony, Nokia, and Nike signed the Tokyo Declaration a commitment to reduce emissions and the impact on the planet. Brands are heeding the desires of their consumers and acting responsibly and taking action to combat climate change. Meanwhile, due to a carbon footprint of two percent of world emissions, the IT industry takes a lot of criticism for its contribution to climate change. Apple, HP, and Microsoft have taken this to heart and come out as clear leaders in this sector. They have active environmental policies and are able to communicate them effectively to their market. Apple has made a host of promises in its environmental policy that includes

removing toxic chemicals from products and a rigorous recycling program. HP has committed to reducing its energy consumption by 25 percent, recovering two billion pounds of electronics by 2010 and reducing the worlds emissions with their energy efficient products. It strongly promotes its sustainability stance, encouraging consumers to follow suit with advice on how it too can help reduce their carbon footprint. Increasingly brands are adopting environmental policies and are promoting them through advertising campaigns. This is in response to consumers desire for their brands to be environmentally responsible. Businesses have realized the potential of being sustainable and doing the right thing its profitable. By communicating their commitments to environmental responsibility, they win loyalty from consumers and profit. For this reason, brands have the power to change the world in a big way. If the brands are responsible for the emissions and are now prepared to change their ways due to consumer demand, then perhaps there is hope for the planet yet. The third market Brands and the developing world have generally not been a success story with horror stories about human rights, exploitation, and harsh working conditions. But brands have a tremendous power to change developing nations for the good. Simon Anholts book, Branding and Third World Development raises an interesting idea about how brands can benefit third word nations. The idea is that third world countries export

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too much raw primary produce for wealthier countries to process, package, and sell as brands. If these countries could reverse the process, producing the finished product themselves, they could export it for a higher margin as a branded product. This would raise employment and have other economic benefits. Examples exist where this has already happened such as the Indian perfume Urvashi, which is popular in Paris, and Red Stripe beer, Jamaicas first brand which is exported all over the world. Likewise, with climate change, consumers are ready to back brands that are making attempts to do the right thing. Proof of this can be seen with projects such as (RED), a not-for-profit brand, co-founded by Bono, that distributes medicine to AIDS and HIV patients in Africa. Leading brands release a limited edition (RED) product and donate a percentage of the profits back to (RED) to distribute medicine, at no extra cost to the consumer. Brands that have become (RED) include Apples iPod, American Express, Emporio Armani, Converse, Dell, and Microsoft Windows. (RED) is keen to point

and Melinda Gates foundation has an endowment of US $38.7 billion and it intends to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty globally. In the United States, the foundation aims to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. It must donate at least five percent annually which amounts to a minimum of over US$ 1.5 billion. Is the foundation not only an attempt to do the right thing, but also to develop a new customer base for Microsoft? No doubt IT is on the agenda for developing Africa. Initiatives have already begun to capture this lucrative market. The One Laptop Per Child Association (OLPC) is a non-profit organization responsible for overseeing the creation and distribution of an affordable educational device for use in the third world. Sponsors of the project include eBay, Google, and News Corporation each of them donating two million dollars. The XO-1 is the current project a low cost laptop, previously called the Hundred-dollar Laptop. It can be hand cranked for power and has a specially designed operating system based on Linux; an open source operating system, meaning it is open for developers to add to, or improve the code. Apple had originally offered its OSX operating system for free but the designers declined because they wanted an operating system that could be tinkered with. However, after a deal with Microsoft, the XO-1 will now be offered with Microsoft Windows alongside an open source alternative. It seems that Microsoft is showing a very keen interest in this market, as are a few other big IT companies. But are they attempting to solve the third world problem for karma or for commercial gain? Time will tell. The final brand frontier Nearly forty years since Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words on the

surface of the moon, there has been little advancement in human space travel. When President Kennedy captured the imagination of the world with the space race, it was an exercise not only to put a man on the moon, but also to stick one to the Russians giving the voters what they wanted on two counts. In todays political climate, heavy investment to land a man on Mars seems unlikely. The estimated cost of the space race in the 1970s was about 100 billion dollars in todays money. Counter that to the 600 billion dollars spent since 2003 on the Iraq war. It seems unlikely that the US will be repeating such a world-uniting act in the near future with overheads like that. We need to look to alternatives to government funded space programs if space exploration will continue. Private enterprises, or brands, have the funding for commercial space travel. This may sound like fantasy until you discover that the first venture for commercial space travel, SpaceShipOne, is solely funded by none other than Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen. The craft was developed by aviation legend Burt Rutan and built by his company, Scaled Composites. It will carry six passengers on flights that will last two and a half hours, reaching a speed of Mach 3, into suborbit for a few minutes of zero gravity and to see the humbling sight of the earths curve. Richard Branson has recognized this hugely untapped market and Virgin will be the worlds first brand to license the SpaceShipOne technology with a new company Virgin Galactic. It is expected that around US $120 million will be invested in developing the new generation of spaceships and ground infrastructure required to operate Virgin Galactic. Virgin expects to create around 3000 new astronauts in the first five years. The price of a ticket, which includes three days of preflight training, will be about US $200,000 for the first 100. The next 400 will pay a deposit between US $100,000 and US $175,000. All passengers after that will pay a deposit of only US $20,000 each not your average beach holiday and initially only for the super wealthy. However, the cheapest seat

As with climate change, consumers are ready to back brands that are making attempts to do the right thing.
out that it is not a charity, but a business model. Proof again that brands recognize the financial gain from sustainability. The fact that consumers are willing to back brands that participate in changing the world points to a promising outlook. If consumers can shift brands attitudes to world issues and vice versa, there may be hope yet. Bill Gates has taken a major step down from his position at Microsoft to concentrate on giving his billions to charity. The Bill

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to date for a space flight on a government spacecraft cost over US $15 million. Bransons ticket is at least competitive, yet youll most likely have to pay for the cost of a sandwich on top of that. Interestingly, among the first wave of passengers will be William Shatner, Sigourney Weaver, Steven Hawking, and Paris Hilton spot the odd one out. The whole project came about by the X Prize foundation, which gives prizes to teams that fulfill a pre-set goal that will benefit humanity. In this case it played the role of President Kennedy offering US $10 million to the first team to launch a reusable, manned spacecraft, to an altitude of 100 km, twice in two weeks. In 2004, SpaceShipOne claimed the Ansari X Prize. The follow up spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, will begin taking passengers in 2010. But, theyre not the only player in this game. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos has privately funded Blue Origin, a suborbital space tourism operation due to take passengers once a week starting in 2010. Armadillo Aerospace is a startup aerospace company that plans to not only join the suborbital space tourism market, but has also stated plans for orbital space travel. Other competitors include Rocketplane Global, Inc., which plans suborbital space tourism flights for about US $200,000, and EADS Astrium, which are expecting to begin flights in 2012 at a cost per ticket of about US $315,000. Space Adventures has been operating space tourism flights since 2001, albeit at a cost of US $20 million a seat. We are about to enter a new era of space tourism and within a decade or two commercial space travel will be a possibility for a large number of us. Maybe well see brands such as Qantas, British Airways, or American Airlines take to the challenge of competing in the low orbit space travel sector. Branson has already stated his goal to give access to space for many countries across the globe so competition seems inevitable. In years to come space tourism could become a highly profitable business as brands start to look further afield for holiday

destinations. Failing active research and development from governments, brands may invest their own profits into advancement beyond earths orbit. Who knows one day, maybe Mars? Perhaps space exploration will have to be driven by private enterprises, or brands. Only recently, Virgin and Google have joined forces to launch Virgle a project to colonize Mars. In the absence of a contingency plan for when Earth becomes uninhabitable, these two brand powerhouses have announced their 100-year plan to set up the city of Virgle on Mars. The first manned mission is planned for 2016. The plan is to terraform the planet to make the atmosphere breathable. Colonization will be in its advanced stages by 2108. So, it seems that brands might have the power to change other worlds too. The future is bright It is clear that brands will undoubtedly play a major part in shaping our future. But can they counter heavy carbon footprints with proactive environmental responsibility? Anything is possible. Because consumers are open to supporting environmentally friendly brands, brands could play a major role reversing the problem with their own action and their message to consumers. Brands are also recognizing the potential for doing the right thing for the third world. As Simon Anholt suggests, branding itself could be the answer to improving economic wealth by allowing nations to export finished product rather than raw produce. And as more brands begin to associate themselves with aiding the third world understanding that consumers support brands that are actively creating change for the better they may contribute to finding a way out of the poverty and economic struggles in this region as well. The IT industry, in particular, seems interested in developing Africa and other developing nations. Perhaps their interest in this untapped market can get us all on the same page technologically.

A number of brands are interested in picking up where governments have failed to deliver and are pioneering a new wave of space tourism experiences. With brands at the helm of space tourism research and development, who know where they could end up taking us? One things for sure wherever it is, youll still be able to get a Big Mac and Coke. It seems the future is bright. The futures green, healed, developed, and fed. Perhaps when brands have cracked the worlds problems we can get back to what used to be important developing humanity. That really would be giant leap for mankind. Maybe, one day, brands can take us there too.

Chris Maclean As the Creative Director for Interbrand Australia, Chris Maclean is responsible for the creative output of both the Melbourne and Sydney offices. Chriss approach to branding is always about ideas ideas that make you think, amuse, and engage an audience. Chris is a contributor to Marketing magazine and has been the recipient of numerous prestigious design awards including D&AD, Type Directors Club, New York Festivals, and the Clio Awards.

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