'How do the
consistent changes in society force businesses to rebrand themselves to achieve
sustainability within society?'
Society
has forever been in a state of change and development, whether its to do with
our opinions and the importance of our values as consumers or the manipulating
power that brands manifest to influence us through marketing and branding, the
society we live in consistently challenges what we consume and who we consume
from. Ultimately these changes have become more and more rapid and demanding in
recent years and have put a greater pressure on big corporations, their brands and
more over their sustainability. Focusing on the development and socioeconomic
evolution of the Nike brand we can investigate and challenge some of the theories
behind a suitable business identity and the changes a corporate brand must
undergo in order to adapt and survive the harsh and ever more detailed scrutiny
of consumer society.
The behavior of businesses and corporations
today was much different to that of the businesses and corporations sixty years
ago. They built mostly inwards and didn’t engage with the consumer on a
personal level. This, however, doesn’t mean to that they were unconcerned for
their customers, they remained well known and reputable but through an opaque
business front. They focused in a lot of cases on building an internal loyalty
with their workers and would even go to the extent of creating working
communities in towns and villages that would export their products from one
place.
‘Most companies who
built brands in the early days were anonymous entities lurking about in the
business pages of newspapers. Although heir brans were well known to the
consuming public, the companies behind the brands tended to keep themselves in
the shadows.’
(Olins W. 2003 On
Brand page 112)
This
opacity and ambiguity allowed the businesses of the day to be ‘command and
control organizations’, they were in charge of the markets and believed
themselves to be the ones that could manipulate the consumers views through
brand alone and disguise or withhold anything that may tarnish it. This,
evidently in the past decade, has developed into quite the opposite. Corporate
brands have become increasingly more transparent and we can see directly what
they have done in the past and what they plan for the future.
In
NIKE’s case there was the initial brand boom of this new athletic product in
which customers were infatuated with and blinded by its ‘cool’ factor. In the
decades to come, more and more light was shone on the NIKE marketing strategy.
Highlighted in particular was the manufacturing methods and exploitation of
sweatshop and child labour in several different countries. This being brought
to the consumers’ attention at the time caused critical damage to the entire
business and there was a demand for change as society began to boycott and
refuse to were a brand with such poor concern and neglect of its suppliers. It
could be argued that it wasn’t NIKE’s fault for the way the contracted
suppliers treated their workers, however, this issue caused such a disturbance
with the corporate identity that NIKE were forced to change their attitude.
This
transparency gave the consumer an insight into NIKE’s moral standpoints and
their personal attitudes, and with that insight the consumers form an opinion
based upon those attitudes. As this progresses the brands value to the
corporate organizations increase whilst the security of the brand itself
decreases.
‘The brand is very
largely the corporation’s tool. When the corporation has problems, when it is
perceived to be deceitful, greedy, dishonest, heartless or incompetent, the
brand suffers. But in addition to the corporate issues with which it is
lumbered, the brand also has it own problems. Although from the outside some
brands may look as though they are conquering the world, all brands are always
insecure’
(Olins
W. 2003 On Brand page 218)
We,
as consumers, give the brands the power they possess as market icons and
equally we can take it away. The constant change of our opinions, tastes and
views has left brands in a permanent state of insecurity. In other words,
consumers are tastemakers and are ruthless. If a certain brand doesn’t satisfy
them on certain levels then they form these opinions, tastes and views. The
only real control corporate brands have these days is how they can address
these levels of consumer satisfaction.
With
public concern on the rise as to what companies get up to and how they treat
their workers and make the business function, the brand is subjected to
increasingly heavy scrutiny. The behavior of a corporation now has a direct and
unavoidable impact on the brand. Identity of the brand now plays a bigger part
in the role of a business’ sustainability more than ever as the consumer
society has developed such a powerful and demanding voice. The power has
changed hands and corporations have succumbed to answering societies demands
with what they want or they will otherwise succumb to failure.
Publicity,
corporate transparency and pressure, leads to more responsible corporate
behavior. NIKE, like traditional business’s remained ‘In the shadows’ but as
society pressured for more transparency, the publicity of the sweatshop labour
from their suppliers tarnished their brand, inevitably a change of morals and
ethics towards it’s corporate family followed.
‘How brands look, how they present
themselves is a crucial part of their make-up. As the old, but often true,
saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’.’
(Lury G. 2001 Brandwatching: Lifting
the lid on branding. Page 54)
The NIKE logo from this point of change was
never to be seen in the same light. The logo and the brand being far to
valuable to the company could not just be discarded, however the logo now
brings new meaning to the viewing consumer. It no longer just represents the
‘cool’ factor that came with wearing and owning the apparel but it has become a
sign of the greed, the initial attitudes and values and the unethical treatment
of the corporations’ suppliers.
The logo of a brand can define a company.
If the company has had bad publicity due to its behavior or its attitudes it is
then imbued in the logo. By the point the point of NIKE’s exposure by Corpwatch
the logo was already mass produced and the rippling effect of the negative
publicity unleashed connotations of the mistreatment of workers in foreign
countries which are still retained today even after consistent attempts to
rectify the issue. The idea that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is an
understatement when applied to branding. The logo is a symbolic reference to
everything that has and ever will come to pass with the company it represents.
If people are wearing and purchasing a tainted brand then they themselves
become part of the stereotype that comes with the logo on the purchased product,
the attitudes and values of that brand may not necessarily be in harmony with
that particular consumer.
The articles published by Corpwatch may
have afflicted NIKE’s reputation but the company has remained in tact through a
constant pursuit of quality and advancement in fields of technology and
promotional campaigns such and the Waffle outsole and the ‘Just Do It’
campaign.
The sporting and promotional world was much
different when NIKE brought out these new developments and it shows just how
NIKE has managed to sustain itself through innovation. Creating the Waffle
outsole caused serge of public affection as copious amounts of popular athletes
across a broad range of sporting disciplines adopted it. Equally the Just Do It
campaign launched in 1988 took a major personal stand point, probably for the
first time in NIKE’s promotional history and targeted people to get them to
become fitter by purchasing and generally investing in the brand.
This has since been revived by NIKE+, which
combines both advances in technology and the personal fitness motive of the
campaigns and embodying them within the product. From comparison of the
previous campaigns and the most recent it is evident that Nike has been able to
achieve some level of sustainability through finding new niches and gaps in the
current markets the consumer society has offered alongside its metamorphic
outlook on businesses.
Wally Olins, in his book ‘Corporate
Identity’, talks about how ‘Companies are concerned with loyalties, with
creating a common culture, shared values and a clear sense of direction’. This
has become the spearhead for the majority of modern business strategies,
basically building their mission statements around meeting the demands of
society as well as allowing customers to meet them on some of their demands.
With greater values and considerations economically and environmentally comes a
higher overhead for the business and an increase in the price of retailing. In
most cases and customers ethics are defined by affordability and they will
still remain faithful to a company that has been subject to exposure of harsh
truths and vulgar publicity through no choice of there own. In juxtaposition
the consumer society being the turning point of many businesses morals it can
also have the effect of increasing the turnover through the knock on effect of
the brands affordability. In short it forms a double bind on the brand.
The consumer as a being is unpredictable, a
loose and loaded cannon of opinions, values, attitudes, demands and needs. The
consumer society will continue to change and throw businesses about like ragdolls
until they are satisfied. In hindsight, the only real way a company, a business
or a corporate identity can maintain a sustainable brand in the current
consumer society is to watch, listen and respond accordingly to the customers
and pressure groups.
Bibliography
Literature:
- Roberts L. (2006) 'Good: An introduction to the ethics in
graphic design' AVA Publishing SA 2006, Lausanne.
- Dowdy C. (2003) 'Beyond Logos: New definitions of corporate
identity' Rotovision SA.
- Olins W. (2003) 'Wally Olins. On Brand.' Thames & Hudson.
- Lury G. (2001) 'Brandwatching: Lifting the lid on branding'
Second edition revised and enlarged, Blackhall Publishing.
- Olins W. (1989) 'Corporate Identity: making business strategy
visible through design.' Thames & Hudson, 1st paperback edition 1994,
reprinted 1999.
- Ottman J. A. (1998) 'Green Marketing: Opportunity for
Innovation' Second edition, Publishers unknown.
Web
sources:
- Corpwatch
pressure group articles
Images:
- All
images have been sourced from Google images.
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