Thursday, 16 February 2012

CTS - Essay - 1st draft


'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.

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‘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.


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    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:

-       General information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike,_Inc.
-       Corpwatch pressure group articles


Images:

- All images have been sourced from Google images.





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