Brands were one of the most common intangible vehicles navigated into murky waters so that a few vested interests could perpetuate their process models. It is now depressingly evident that many of the powerful ways of performing late 20th century branding, have turned vicious: against customers, employees and pensioner investors. The global forms of these costly brands are also a major cause of conflicts between local cultures around the world.
However, the newly discovered mathematics of transparency mapping[i] means that managers, economists, policy makers and opinion leaders of organisational systems can now design and steward brands which respect living system dynamics. Win-win is a natural human construct which means that when you make different promises to two or more groups of people, you are doing so knowing how to keep all of those promises because they are mutually reinforcing. Today we can - and must - conceive promotions and deploy media that go well beyond mere image-making lifestyles to represent Total Brand Corporate Responsibility[ii] models of leadership which purposefully focus on reality-making. Will Beyond Branders be in time to reverse the decay of trust between local cultures around the world? Can we promote win-win relationship exchanges between people in ways that connect human inspiration and network greater value? I am reminded everyday of the urgency of this by my father’s chilling 1984 prediction written from his editorial desk at The Economist: by 2005 the gap in incomes and expectations between rich and poor nations was recognised as man’s most dangerous problem. Other system experts have called this mankind’s final examination.
