Branding.

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8 Two central uncertainties for branding <strong>Branding</strong> is of course also going to be a diverse phenomenon ten years from now. The purpose of this report is thus to outline the range of possibilities through different images of the future. What trends in branding will be the dominant in ten years? What new trends will have arrived? As a start, it is interesting to note that the development in the dominant corporate branding even today seems to pull in two different directions. On the one hand it is by now commonly acknowledged that a company can't be something for everyone. That you have to probe the terrain and formulate your unique traits and your values. That communication should be consistent in order to penetrate. And that the goal is to become a strong and unambiguous corporate brand, which the stakeholders will follow. With this increased focus on corporate branding we have in a way come full circle history-wise, since once again it is the company (the grocer), not the product (the brand as interface), that is in focus. Note that the customer is somewhat absent in this relation. On the other hand, the ethical focus, as expressed in the idea of the triple bottom line, outlines a path towards increased ambiguity. The focus is directed away from the company towards the surrounding world. If corporate branding is an attempt to create clarity in a complex world by introducing an unambiguous culture (values, rules, order, safety), this trend is rather an attempt to reflect the complexity and hence operate on the terms of the centre-less world, where it no longer is possible to view and comprehend the world through a single optic. The triple bottom line can thus be expanded to a strongly differentiated communication towards all interested parties in and around the company. In its ultimate consequence this will lead to an atomisation of the organisation, held loosely together by a loosely defined structure. I.e., no overarching common values, but a heterogeneity that in principle can exist all the way down to the level of the individual person and can reflect the increasing individualisation in society. THE CENTRE-LESS WORLD is described in the book Det hyperkomplekse samfund (The Hyper- Complex Society) by Lars Qvortrup. The idea is that the world no longer has a single central point; it no longer has a centre. Earlier societies had as their centre God (the deocentric society) or man (the anthropocentric society). This determined the cosmos, since you had one point of view from which to organise the world. In the centre-less (or polycentric) world, society is so complex that it can't be understood through a single optic. It can't be communicated in a single code. Instead one has to adopt varying optics and communicate in varying codes. A requirement of organisations in this perception of the world is thus to observe and communicate with the surrounding world with a set of optics that match the complexity of the surrounding world. Here e.g. the triple bottom lone represents a systemisation of such varying codes and communication modes How do we handle individualisation? In line with this dual development, we have in the scenario work for this report asked ourselves whether the employees, consumers and individuals of the future are willing to give up some personal sovereignty in favour of commercial community (or communities as such), or if we increasingly wish to retain the high personal autonomy and strong personal freedom of choice brought us by the lengthy process of individualisation. This uncertainty describes the horizontal axis of the scenario cross: The individual level: a desire for continued high personal autonomy, or a willingness to limit personal autonomy in favour of new communities? The question on the individual plane is thus how we choose to govern our individualisation. 'Individualisation' means that the individual human being increasingly shapes and chooses its lifestyle and manner of living. Mankind has become autonomous or culturally liberated, as expressed by the German youth researcher Thomas Ziehe. The term covers the thesis that the development since the middle of the previous century in our part of the world has meant that mankind ideologically and in reality has been freed from family relations, class, religion, state, and in part also from age and gender: the organised communities that in earlier societies made the world familiar and "The concept of 'cultural liberation' … is an expression of the necessity for retaining dissolution and liberation, loss of tradition and new fields of opportunity, as two sides of the same cultural process of evolution. Through this, Ziehe underlines a fundamental principle of the modernisation process: Only through retaining both extremes do you become able to relate in a productively critical way to the chimerical nature of the modernisation process" Elo Nielsen about cultural liberation in "Pædagogik og frisat ungdom"
9 homogeneous over an extended period. These communities implied a clear bond, since the individual was prevented from shaping his or her own life. At the same time, though, life was in many ways easier because the responsibility for how life turned out didn't rest on the individual's shoulders to nearly the same extent that it does today. Hence, increasing autonomy and cultural liberation aren't necessarily true liberation: When everyone else has become autonomous and liberated, we no longer have the same certainty of how others will act in the future and can't use this as a basis for our own actions. The total impulsiveness is also a kind of bond: a bond of never-ending choices. Precisely this ambivalence is central in the society of the future. Hence, the question in the field of branding is what we in the future want to use with our autonomy and freedom of action for. Do we wish to buy into a large and pre-formulated story through a global brand like Nike - or do we wish to tell our own story through active orchestration of consumption, personal signals and personal statements? Do we as employees want to be part of a working community with fixed values and a specific image - or do we want to express our own values, be part of a loosely defined network and create our own image? We could also ask whether we in relation to society, workplace and consumption generally move towards true individualisation or group-individualisation. The extremes are outlined in figure 1. FIGURE 1 Desire for continued high personal autonomy Willingness to limit personal autonomy in favour of new communities Zeitgeist/logic Atomism Liberalism Holism Communitarianism The individual Self-oriented Desires free choice Desires pragmatic values Community-oriented Desires solutions Desires principal values Driving forces Self-confidence Mobility Surplus of knowledge Desire for identity Anchoring Surplus of information Note that we don't question individualisation as such as a megatrend. The division is not between the atomised world and the traditional, destined communities. The division is between two worlds that both have individualisation as prerequisites. Are we going to see an end to all the emotionality? In 1999 the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies published the book The Dream Society. In this, we presented a cohesive expression of what had been the Institute's main message up through the 1990s: We were heading towards the storytellers' era - towards the domination of emotions, dreams and the immaterial in all spheres of society. A condition that already at the time of publishing was a reality in parts of the business world and which in many ways explains the societal development that is the basis for branding. The Dream Society is born of a growth in wealth in the Western world, which has provided a financial surplus and has placed the individual in the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We have become rich enough to prioritise the immaterial and emotional in the shape of experiences, stories, reflection, ethics, religiosity and spirituality - and to assume that the material, functional and rational works and exists as a matter of course. When general consumption increases, we also increasingly spend resources on immaterial products like service, insurance, travel, phoning, "After having discussed and filled the blackboard with 50 examples, the conclusion was clear: Stories appeal to the heart rather than to the mind, was the general theory … the term 'Dream Society' was obvious. The market for dreams would gradually become larger than the market for realities. The market for emotions would overshadow the market for physical products" Rolf Jensen in "The Dream Society", the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
Page 2 and 3: Contents: Part I: Branding. The sym
Page 4 and 5: 4 Part I Branding. The symbol as ar
Page 6 and 7: 6 The brand as corporate metaphor T
Page 10 and 11: 10 and adventure. Services that ver
Page 12: 12 The precise future to come may n
Page 15 and 16: 15 1. Create and Brand Yourself Lif
Page 17 and 18: 17 ability of the individual and on
Page 19 and 20: 19 personal and the unique. All thi
Page 21 and 22: 21 extended family. However, we are
Page 23 and 24: 23 designer'. Trend spotting is of
Page 25 and 26: 25 moving from being a citizen to b
Page 27 and 28: 27 sure time is corroding. Values a
Page 29 and 30: 29 4. The Logic of Great Solutions
Page 31 and 32: 31 tools, it has become possible to
Page 33 and 34: 33 Personal branding on the wane Th
Page 35 and 36: 35 H. Lundbeck A/S (2003) Lundbeck

Branding.

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