Articles Directory

Do you ever have the feeling that you're being lied to about just don't know what? That there's something wrong with the way society defines your success, but you just can't put your finger on it? Do you question that there has to be more to life than getting a job, making some money, working until you're sixty, then retiring to the country

The corporate sustainability, and responsibility, movement has considerable implications for and impact on the discipline of brand management. It creates pressures to which the discipline must adjust, and new growth opportunities for it to enjoy. In Elsie Maio’s view, “brand” permeates all aspects of the corporation and therefore the values of the brand can serve as an effective touchstone for all corporate behaviours: in the Boardroom, in financial markets, in negotiations with employees, in customer interactions, in dialogue with other stakeholders. Moreover most corporations already have “plumbing” in place (the organizational substructures and processes to manage their brand), that can serve as effective conduits for nurturing values-driven behaviours and measuring them.

What’s happened to brand integrity? What are the essential ingredients that make a brand authentic rather than simply manufactured wishful thinking?

Communication is pivotal to life. Perhaps communication could even form part of a definition of life, because things that do not communicate do not live either.

In our "developed" society the methods, tools and techniques of communication have developed too. We now have an astonishing array of specialised communication, which support our way of life.

Sadly the biggest users of communication are also often the biggest abusers of communication. Governments and big business have sponsored the development of communications thinking through the employment of advertising, PR and other communications agencies. These agencies have developed techniques for helping their paymasters conceal or invert the unacceptable to persuade us the buying and voting public to accept and even support things that poison us and disempower us.

This article examines why reputation is increasingly a business critical issue and how this intangible asset has to be better understood and managed if it is to survive the complex set of forces that are circulating business.

Speech by Mark Barden of Barden & Jelly:

Advertising and the transition to sustainable capitalism

Mark has written and delivered a sublime invitation to the global advertising industry. Mark is inviting advertising agencies to find a new sense of relevance for their creativity in helping their clients to work for sustainability. It is a quite brilliant balance of good business sense with idealism. It was originally written and delivered as a speech to an advertising industry conference in San Francisco. Mike described the response he got as “overwhelming”, he will be writing more about that response in the next issue.

One of the big challenges for managers in organisations is the need to get others to do things accurately and on time. How to motivate others to do the tasks they need to do? How to communicate requirements in a way that ensures that they actually happens?

For many years marketers were in control and advertised their products and services in order to sell as much as possible of what they produced. However, there has been a seismic shift in recent years and it is now the consumer that calls the shots.