News & views
10 August 2010 /
by Bill Darling at 9:12 am 10 August 2010
Filed under: Branding, Press, Viewpoint
The thing that interests me most about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is how quickly public opinion turned against BP. After all, some years ago while the rest of Big Oil relegated ‘new energy’ to the last few pages of an annual report, BP effectively changed its name to Beyond Petroleum, and gave us the hope of a new world to come.
Unfortunately, BP put out the message that the world needed, but they didn’t put it into practice. They overpromised and under-delivered, and Tony Hayward took the fall for something that was created by his predecessor (most likely with the help of overly-eager brand consultants who no doubt also fell for BP’s promises).
So, as wells are capped and oil is dispersed, what are the lessons I take from BP?
Bigger Picture
As brand consultants, we have a say on what a company looks like, sounds like, acts like, and sometimes even smells like. In that process, we have an opportunity and responsibility to influence the bigger picture. Never send out a message that conflicts with reality.
Basic Priorities
What your company stands for should be coherent and simple. It’s a combination of what you do now, have done, and what you plan to do in the future. Don’t be too boastful about who you are. And most importantly, if you can’t deliver then maybe you shouldn’t be talking.
Bad Publicity (for them and us)
To overpromise is not only a mistake; it’s a disaster waiting to happen. How could any consultant recommend ‘Beyond Petroleum’ when it represents only a small fraction of what BP does? BP is and will be about oil. In my opinion, the disaster in the Gulf has been magnified by a misdirected brand.
The advice we give to clients needs to paint an optimistic picture of the future, but it also needs to be: a) true, or b) achievable (in an acceptable public timeframe or it will backfire)
I don’t have an alternate suggestion for what the new BP should be, other than a bit more honest. Maybe somebody else does.
3 August 2010 /
by Wally Olins at 1:46 pm 3 August 2010
Filed under: Branding, Press
We can’t help it. Globetrotting is part of who we are. So now we are partnering in one of the hottest areas of the globe, Brazil.
Saffron is delighted to announce its strategic partnership with UND Corporate Design. Based in São Paulo, which is of course the financial powerhouse of Latin America, UND has been pioneering in brand creation since 1978. It has an impressive track record and an approach to branding that strongly resonates with ours.
Saffron already have a footprint in Latin-America. We have had major projects in Mexico, Peru and Chile. With this alliance our opportunities will be much greater and our focus will be more intensive.
The opportunities in Brazil, just like São Paulo itself, are gigantic. Wait for more!
14 July 2010 /
by Wally Olins at 2:33 pm 14 July 2010
Filed under: Branding
It is typical of Tata, India’s most illustrious and admired brand and arguably its largest company that its head office should be located in a smallish, undistinguished 1920s building down a side street in downtown Mumbai’s Fort district, which ceased to be the financial centre of the city many years ago.
Tata has so elevated honesty, modesty and good behaviour linked to immense courage, self confidence and the sharpest eye for an opportunity that it seems entirely appropriate that its head office should be almost ostentatiously unostentatious. Only the building’s name, Bombay House, underlines Tata’s primacy in Indian commerce and industry. Everything else about the building seems to be, perhaps almost deliberately, undistinguished.
I first came to know Tata many years ago when I was head of what is now Ogilvy, the advertising agency, in Mumbai and some of the Tata companies became our client. At that time Tata’s boss was JRD Tata, familiarly known as ‘Jeh’, a family member, a pioneer pilot, founder of Air India and like his equally great, but quite different, successor Ratan Tata, a charismatic personality and a legend in his own lifetime.
The Group
I had never met a company quite like Tata before and I never have since. Tata, was and is, involved in the widest possible variety of businesses - software consultancy, steel making, cars and trucks, hotels, tea, consumer products, mobile telephones, power and practically everything else you can think of. This is pretty unusual in Europe and the US but is part of a quite familiar pattern in India – so that doesn’t make Tata all that special.
Because Tata is much more of a loosely held group than a tightly managed organisation, Tata companies vary a lot. Each of them is as much influenced by the sector to which it belongs as it is by the Tata way of doing things. Most of them are pretty good companies, a few are exceptional but I have to say that in my experience one or two are a bit below par.
Behaviour
But Tata has other characteristics which when put together make the organisation truly unique. In a country where bribery and corruption are an entirely accepted part of the commercial way of life, Tata companies don’t do it. I’m not seriously suggesting that nobody in Tata ever took or was ever offered a bribe, but what I am saying is that the Tata ethos is dead set against it – to such an extent that it almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Most organisations don’t try to bribe Tata and Tata companies keep away from contracts where bribery is expected. In India that’s pretty unusual.
In addition Tata behaves properly to its own people. Tata Steel (then called Tisco) introduced the 8 hour working day in 1912, 8 years before it was introduced in the UK; it introduced holiday pay in 1920, 18 years before the UK. And that’s just a couple of examples.
Responsibility
Then there’s CSR. Over the last 20 years or so large corporations around the world have tried to project their concern for the environment, their desire to eliminate poverty, illiteracy, ill health and everything else you can think of. Most of these heavily promoted CSR efforts are regarded with scepticism by articulate critics, because they feel, in my judgement, usually correctly, that CSR is a superficial add-on with no real roots inside the corporation purporting to be involved with it.
With Tata it’s different. A very high proportion of corporate profits go into various Tata charitable foundations and have done for more than 100 years and Tata doesn’t make a noise about it. It just happens and it always has. Tata trusts of various kinds own 65.8% of Tata Sons, the holding company. Tata Foundations are in everything, health, education, culture and art– the lot. And that is understood and accepted to such an extent that nobody in Tata talks about it much.
Most Tata companies make lots of money, a great deal is reinvested, some goes to shareholders and much of it to various charitable foundations. Tata people even at the very top don’t make huge fortunes. Unlike most heads of very big Indian companies Ratan Tata is not on the Forbes Rich List. He lives comfortably but quite modestly.
Pioneering
Another characteristic of Tata is that it is a pioneering organisation on a huge scale. Everywhere you look in India Tata was either first or one of the first – chemicals, commercial vehicles, fertilisers, steel, hotels. When the legendary Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay (now unhappily, widely known for the terrorist incident of 2008) was built in 1903 it was one of India’s biggest and one of its first.
Tata started building India’s first major steelworks at Jamshedpur, formerly part of the notoriously backward and corrupt state of Bihar in 1908. It was a beacon of light in a sea of darkness.
These pioneering efforts have been sustained. When Tata went global early in the 21st century it went in style. Tata bought Corus, formerly British Steel and the Dutch Hoogovens in 2007, and Jaguar Land Rover in 2008.
The Tata brand
I’ve worked happily with Tata and some of its various companies for more years than I care to remember. A few years ago I worked very successfully with Ratan Tata on a major rebranding programme for the whole organisation, so I feel I know something about the Tata world.
Tata’s attitude to its brand, like almost everything else about the organisation is pragmatic. Some very important bits are called Tata something like Tata Motors or Tata Steel, others, almost equally high profile like the Taj Group of hotels just have a small Tata endorsement. Some companies with a Tata association don’t use the name at all or only use it when they feel like it.
The name
Tata – the name itself, is of course a branding person’s dream. Its two repeating syllables are impossible to forget. There is no corporate name anywhere in the world like it. The word Tata works however you pronounce it in any language and if Tata felt like it, which apparently it doesn’t, not yet anyway, you could play wonderful and memorable games with it - like Tatala. Put another way – the brand has huge potential, which is not yet fully explored.
As a curious example of Tata pragmatism at work, I’ve just seen that Tata Tea has announced a name change to ‘Tata Global Beverages to unite all their beverage interests worldwide’. But steel and motors are global too. So what about Tata Global Steel or Tata Global Motors? Oh well!
On the whole though I admire Tata with all its strengths and its one or two weaknesses very much. To tell the truth I actually admire Tata more than any other company I know. There’s something truly magical about it.
Wally Olins
29 June 2010 /
by Ben Knapp at 12:23 pm 29 June 2010
Filed under: Branding, Identity, Nation Branding
Mario Testino, Peru’s prodigal son, returned to Lima for the re-opening of MALI, the Museum of Modern Art Lima, with his traveling exhibition ‘Portraits’ first shown in London’s National Gallery in 2002, which features a series of celebrities shot by Mario during the last 15 years.
Accompanied by his muse Kate Moss, Lima’s glitterati cheered at Mario’s opening remarks “Que dificil no ser Peruano” (“It must be so difficult not to be Peruvian”). This statement captures the euphoric spirit the Andean nation finds itself in these days (by the way the statement eventually became a t-shirt, isn’t it funny this human need to wear our beliefs?).
After decades of violence and terrorism Peru is finding its place in the global marketplace. Its 9.8 percent growth rate last year was one of the world’s fastest. And record commodities prices, coupled with China’s insatiable demand for raw materials, are helping the mineral-rich nation weather the financial crisis better than most other countries in the region.
The excitement is palpable, from the boom in construction to the revival of Peruvian gastronomy. As I was walking through the hotel lobby, sporting a cotton bag actually bought in Mexico a woman cheered at me “how lovely, how Peruvian”!
What came first, the pride or the fast growing GDP? It’s a bit an egg and chicken question, but one can’t help but smile, and wish hardworking Peruvians the best, in their newly found spot in today’s global mesh…
1 June 2010 /
by Ian Stephens at 5:18 pm 1 June 2010
Filed under: Branding, Identity
It’s somewhere around eleven in the morning on a Sunday and I’m on a flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. I’m flying on Indigo – one of India’s many new low-cost airlines – and of course as we’re all used to these days the actual onboard experience is pretty much identical to any 737 flight: new plane, clean seats, nice uniforms, smiling staff, M&M’s and Coca-Cola on the menu.
But what strikes me as more profound is that when I look up at the group of passengers that I can see from my vista in seat 12b I could be mistaken in thinking I’m on a flight from Columbus to Chicago, London to Lisbon or even Dubai to Doha. Yes there are a few more saris than you’d expect in Lisbon but not so many – what strikes me looking at the magazines people are reading, their hairstyles, the gadgets they are playing with and many of the clothes they are wearing is that you know that most of these people would be quite comfortable striking up a conversation with fellow low-cost travellers stuck in a queue anywhere in the world.
We’ve gotten used to the idea that brands are becoming more global – especially in luxury and b2b markets where it’s long been argued that the target audiences are globally mobile so brand inconsistency will be punished and consistency rewarded. But beyond the super-wealthy and premium business sectors the driving force for consistency has been more to do with internal ‘supply’ side pressures than external; it’s more efficient to manage one strong brand position, with all that entails for consumer insights, international sponsorships and investment programmes, than to manage 20 or 30 different brands for similar products in different countries. Companies like Unilever and P&G have been exemplars of this for some time now – and it’s why it the UK we’ve had to get used to new names for old brands like Snickers and Cif.
But my low-cost companions aren’t super-wealthy – and most of them don’t look as of they’ll be heading straight for the new Louis Vuitton flagship store in London’s Bond Street next time they’re in town to snap up the latest designs. Nevertheless the similarities in this thoroughly middle-class strata of global society are more striking today than I’m sure they would have been only 10 years ago – even imagining low-cost airlines existed in as many places.
So what? Well if there is growth in opportunity on the ‘demand’ side for more global brands then this could change the way that international companies develop and launch new products for these audiences – not just looking for ‘supply’ side efficiencies from similarities but expecting to find them in unexpected and new places. More new brands launched simultaneously in India and Germany? More advertising campaigns being developed with genuine insight across multiple countries? More products with apparent cultural appeal in one part of the world, finding new markets in another – in healthcare for example?
