Coca-Cola’s new Share the Happiness viral film, based on their Open Happiness global strategy made us very happy. It is brilliantly conceived and executed, managing to convey a perfect mix of anticipation, surprise, delight, joy – happiness indeed.

The economics of happiness is being debated today at the World Economic Forum in Davos today. Measuring happiness as a measure of a nation’s success (Gross National Happiness – GNH – as distinct from GDP) is cropping up more and more in political rhetoric, and this seems progressive to us.

But the big question we are asking ourselves when the happiness topic comes up is: “But is it Civil Branding?”.

Valuing happiness for the effect it has on people’s productivity  sounds like it might make for a better society. Then the question is: “But is it really happiness?”. How do we promote real happiness? What about people who want to keep their happiness all to themselves?

The answer to whether or not this Share the Happiness film is civil branding lies in the word ’share’. It gives us a taste (excuse the Coke pun) of how much fun shared experiences can be, as opposed to solo experiences; it reminds us to share. It also supercedes the image-conscious, cliquey behaviour of students, bringing them all together through their simple, child-like joyful reactions.

Happiness is an universally desired end-state. Promoting happiness narratives gives us the widest possible target audience (virtually everyone). However, when we are promoting wide or even ‘terminal’ values, we need to keep the following three guides in mind:

1. Don’t mix up the means and the ends. We need to enrich the meaning of brands with views on how we achieve values like happiness, but not get side-tracked into swapping out means (sharing) and the ends (happiness) altogether. Coke does this nicely by describing a path to happiness being about sharing and makes it all believable.
2. Make it accessible. Widely sought after values must be promoted in an accessible fashion. When we promote a value (e.g. achievement) but make it less accessible (e.g. unattainable) we alienate not only customers, but large groups in society. Brands like Coke, McDonald’s, IKEA and the like make it a mission to democratise their values and make being happy for the many.
3. Promote the people. Customers aspire to values and brands need to demonstrate that they appreciate this perspective. It’s the difference between a bank speaking about itself versus speaking about its customers. We all know which is the right mode by now.

Johann Hari has written a fiery article in The Independent damning leaders of America and China for not cutting emission targets in Copenhagen. Hari uses this article as a call-to-action for groups of people to organise and make an impact since political leaders have failed to do so:

The time for changing your light-bulbs and hoping for the best is over. It is time to take collective action. For some people, that will mean joining Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or the Campaign Against Climate Change and helping them pile on the pressure. But those who can go further – by taking non-violent direct action – should do so. Every coal train should be ringed with people refusing to let it pass. Every new runway should be blockaded. The cost of trashing the climate needs to be raised.

It works. Look at Britain. Three years ago, eight new coal power stations were being planned, and the third runway at Heathrow was all but inevitable. A few thousand heroic young people took direct action against them. Now all the new coal power stations have been cancelled, and the third runway is dead in the water. Here in the fifth largest economy in the world, they have stopped coal and airport expansion. Politicians felt the heat. That was done by a few thousand people. Imagine what tens or hundreds of thousands could do.

Civil Society is all about smaller groups getting together to take action and change the agenda. Likewise Civil Branding is about changing the agenda through company’s brands.

Ronald Regan famously said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. While small government is a republican/conservative idea, the idea that government cannot solve all problems is a more universal and timeless belief.

The Copenhagen Conference highlights the opportunity for brands to help citizens organise around climate issues where the government has not been able to meet the task.

Climate change is essentially a tragedy of the commons problem, where everybodys’ needs do not need to adversely affected, but due to opportunistic tendencies (read human nature), we end up causing the worst result for all concerned.

So the solution, at least in part, needs many actions and many different agreements. One could argue that the problem of climate change is simply too complex for government to take on. Many kinds of efforts are required, but they are the kind of efforts that will put one company at a disadvantage over another if all companies to not conform to a minimum level of practice.

Beyond changing your own company’s behaviour, we have the opportunity to help change the agenda and help organise groups of people to apply pressure in the right areas. Here are a few ideas:

• Putting effort into badging information on how sustainable a product is including a lot more detail on its manufacture and transport.
• Encouraging the formation of citizen groups and supporting their organisation through brands.
• Setting up self-regulatory bodies that develop practice guides in an industry that become an industry standard and then later enforced by national and international laws.
• Supporting lobby groups to change national and international policies in order to create a more level playing field and promoting these lobby groups with company brands.
• Aligning brands closely to important movements like Coke has done with the Copenhagen Conference.

Many of these kinds of activities already exist when coming up with basic regulations. So, there is often an infrastructure for just this kind of activity.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi exchanging tweets caused a stir yesterday. Arch-rivals talking to each other, albeit just one very short exchange. One colleague here at Brandinstinct thinks this is a classic example of social age hype, but Uri’s a social media veteran so he would think that.

Prompted by Amnesia’s Iain MacDonald, this seed exchange could be the start of a new way of rival brands communicating with each other that is civil (talking to your opponent leads to a civil form of competition), rather than the classic baiting and one-upmanship favoured by airlines in particular. If you accept that Twitter is a brand communication channel, then what we have here could develop into more discussions taking place in this civil dimension.

We’ll keep an eye on if/how this Coke-Pepsi civil dialogue progresses. Read the full article on AdAge.

Coca-Cola’s interest in taking a stake in Innocent is a classic example of a wealthy elephant company seeking to share in the goodwill of a virtuous mouse, like Cadbury’s stake in Green & Black’s, L’Oreal’s stake in Body Shop and McDonald’s stake in Pret. The goodwill that Coca-Cola and other interested parties value in Innocent is consumer preference that is rooted in the socially-progressive narrative that Innocent communicates. See earlier post about the HBR paper on Social Brands for more on this topic.