The Times ran an article today featuring Japan’s Financial Services Minister’s manifest against capitalism:

Shizuka Kamei, Japan’s new Financial Services Minister, has launched an “astonishing”, full-frontal assault on corporate Japan, in which he charged the country’s largest companies with raising the national rate of family murders.

The domestic murder rate has advanced in Japan, he said, “because companies have stopped treating humans the way they should be treated”.

The article goes on to implicate big business encouraging excesses and an extreme fundamentalist-market attitude. He romanticises a time when companies encouraged ’sufficient’ profits. This sentiment reminds me of Muji’s recent positioning and the ‘enough’ message (see previous post).

Capitalism as a philosophy is always defined using economic terms. The study of economics, and certainly its main body of interest, does not place the human (or society) at its centre. Traditionally, economics treats people as production capital and does not consider human/social ramifications of excessive economic profits.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen challenges traditional economic theory by asking what happens if we replace human freedom for wealth accumulation as the ultimate goal of economics. Far from shunning economic theory, he is a widely respected economist that advocates a natural evolution of the practice to help us all progress as a society.

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, describes the reciprocal of this capitalist attitude as full-on consumerism. Alain de Botton, popular philosopher, describes at length the effect of hyper consumerism, American-style meritocracy and their negative effect on personal happiness.

In addition, more and more countries are considering a Bhutan-style Gross National Happiness (GNH) measure as a leading performance indicator for a country’s success.

Kamei, Sen, Klein and de Botton provide markers for the shift that is happening in society’s attitude toward notions of success, happiness, fair play and authenticity. At Brandinstinct, we believe that brands will benefit by demonstrating that they care about these notions, and this means through their everyday brand communications that ordinary people see, not just through the corporate CSR channels.

In order to remain relevant brands need to keep up with the zeitgeist. As such, McDonald’s and others have poured fortunes into changing their offers, cultures and images when they are targeted. In our research, we can track the positive effect that this effort has had over competitors such as Burger King, by just how civil minded the brand is perceived as being.

The spirit of the times is making a shift from full-on consumerism and extreme capitalism to more of a measured approach that considers the effect on society. We have seen extreme reactions against capitalism and consumerism including the remarkable decision of a total ban on advertising in the city of Sao Paulo.

We must begin treating capitalism for what it is: a philosophy. If this philosophy becomes too out of step with society’s expectations, then we risk the kind of negative reactions that we now witness more and more. Taken as a sum, these reactions provide ample evidence of the significant opportunities for brands to shift their offers, cultures and public image to a more social and civil trajectory.

We British love a bit of dark humour, but there are no hard and fast rules to help us draw the line between sharpish fun and plain cruelty. We found it interesting to contrast these two ads. The first is from WKD alco-pops and is about playing practical jokes on your mates. The second is from Burger King and tries to make a connection between the darkness of the Dark Knight (Batman) and people’s ill intentions.

Elevator Prank, WKD

Dark Knight, Burger King