The Future Global Peace: Brands

One aspect of our lives today that is negatively affecting the whole world is the transformation of the meaning of brands.

Just few generations ago, most big names associated with popular products, were controlled by members of families that had a long term vision about their businesses and often, a strong commitment with their communities.

Frequently, the work capacity and creativity of the founders of these enterprises gained great respect from their relatives and employees. Each generation took care of the various industries for something more than their individual’s incomes, it’s fair to say that in many cases the main source of energy was the parent’s (or past generation) love for their children. A way to be sure that their descendents would be protected and would be capable of offering the same heritage to they own children.

Well, I don’t want to be too romantic and ignore that many times behind this reality there were less honorable motives commonly present in any human activity, like geed and selfishness also.

However, it seems very clear that the former picture has been changed. Globalization in many cases affects the smaller, more independent and even traditional businesses; taking away a market that they had struggled to obtain for a long time. Transformation and new investment comes from banks and public shares, and are controlled by executives form the big city.

Often, the optimization of the businesses leads to concentrate the efforts on the brand and how consumers perceive it. Production, transportation, environmental impact, and social issues; are secondary in the case they are present. Does any relationship between a wonderful TV commercial and working children sound familiar to you?

The fact is that the world needs to recover the best aspects of the old model. I mean a long term vision and a commitment with the human race and our planet.

A practical way to achieve this is to enrich the people’s perception of brands with information coming from environmental and humanitarian organizations. For example, making the ranking of certain group of brands public; based on measurable and undesirable effects on populations.