It’s difficult for big/old brands to promote diversity – especially when they have been held up to criticism for not having society’s best interest at heart from time to time. The Grease campaign did tremendous damage to the brand along with a myriad of other challenges in local markets.

Not long ago, the McDonald’s brand was failing many doubted it could make the journey it did. Without getting into the detail of McDonald’s virtues and sins, I remain impressed with the scale of the change effort the leadership has put into coaxing this brand in the 21st century.

In the meantime, introducing diversity topics is an interesting way to build goodwill, restore some of the nice-guy image and deepen the meaning of the brand. It’s a good example of how to increase brand equity in a new area while repairing a brand in an old area.

The ad seems to dovetail nicely with this Swwedish employment ad put out recently. American observers say that the ‘gay’ ad will never get play in the US and this might be true. Maybe it does not matter whether diversity ads can be used across different countries since diversity issues vary from country to country. McDonald’s can easily find the right context to promote the overall theme of diversity in the land of freedom in order to continue to build on this platform.

+ 34 McDonalds innovations (just good clean fun)
+ Knowmore.org report on McDonalds

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.

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.