Discussion

Nicholas is also the author of many books, somewhere between 11 and 15, I think, closer to 15. Do you know how many? No, many books on branding, innovation, leadership, that sort of thing. Yeah, it's on. What I thought I would do is, well, we're all here today, some of us were in the literature school yesterday. I thought I would just sort of try and summarize very briefly what I think of and how I think we might learn to do. In a way, I don't think what I've learned is absolutely new. But it's actually something that's sort of, probably before you've been back by now, suddenly you come up with a new program. And I think the first thing I'd do is talk about narrative. But for a long time you talked about storytelling in branding. Then it really came to light when you talked about journalism equals marketing. So you had this sort of phrase, because of this journalism factor, that you're coming to the medium of God, of branding, challenges, very much from this narrative perspective. How do we tell a story? I think that was also true in the book we were talking about earlier today, about the political parties and their different positions, about one narrative versus the other. What does that make? I think when we think about branding, we all pay attention to that sense of storytelling. The other thing that struck me was, again, with both those cases, was the, it was always in English, which I meant to translate, was the serendipity. Does it mean anything in English? It means lucky accidents. So a sense of you quoting questions, but also everything about other cases. Of course you set out sometimes with a plan to do something, but it's quite the area of what often happens. But actually what happens is you do something, what happens, you react to your role, you change, and you develop the process. And I think whilst we are conflicting the rate of things that appear, it actually stops. And it's how actually you pass on your feature on in adapting to change, in having whether you're successful or not. I'm still quite much about trust, and it seems to me maybe we're subject to our cultural environment here. I mean, I guess that Copenhagen and Denmark is a high-trust society, and therefore you just do these sort of things we were talking about. Maybe there would be more difficult to replicate another culture. Maybe if you were going to Italy where you had lower degrees of societal trust, you would find greater challenges in doing these sort of projects. People would be questioning what the more. And I think we were talking about works very well here because of the implicit trust in what people are saying and what people are doing. So I think maybe there's some cultural specificities that happen there. The fourth point is about competition, which again feels particularly dangerous. I think it's really fundamentally important to think about brands in general, but we have to try to involve and participate if we really aim to enable brands to grow. You said you could hear me. Oh, you can. My last point. Good call. And I wasn't quite sure how to phrase this, but in a sense when we started out 15, 16 years ago, we had a political agenda. But I don't think we've ever used the word political. And I thought today, perhaps because we started with a presentation about politics, it feels to me that we have a really good opportunity to realize and utilize more political stance towards branding, by which I'm not fully sure I know what we mean. That would be an interesting point to discuss. But the way we use branding, we can use it as a way for political gain. When I say gain, I mean gain for the world at large to do the right sort of thing. And I think all the presentations have that to a certain degree. I guess one of the things is when you're working as a brand consultant, you're focused on client projects. What does the client want, as Chrissie said? And you work down and you sit down and you look at the brief and you come up with a solution. And maybe you don't put your head up and say, yeah, what's the political issue here? But I think when we look at these examples of people being activists and doing their own things like Chrissie was talking about and pushing things in a different direction, you can really challenge the accepted ways of doing things. And I think that's a really big and unrealized opportunity. So that's a sort of a very brief summation of the way I see it. I mean, I think this has been a really rewarding two days, different in tone on each day. It's been really nice today to have Sandra steering discussions and us being more interactive. And that comes with a smaller audience, I think. But I think from our Medinger point of view, it's been really interesting to have this sort of discussion and hear what's your views on things. So that's by way of leading into a discussion. But if I say political, does it make any sense to you? Do you know what I'm talking about or is that just me talking to myself? Which might be the case, of course. Yeah, I certainly think that it makes sense in a very practical way in terms of my own presentation where I'm actually struggling with politicians to help them. Actually, because I believe I'm trying to do something that's good for the place, but everybody might not agree or have the same view on things. So that's a very practical or physical way of struggling with politicians that you want to do something else. And then I think the WeFood case is a very good example because one of your challenges was to change the laws or the legislation, which you succeeded in doing. So I think that's actually also a very concrete way of changing what politicians are thinking and doing in order to achieve a better world. But do you think there's any works in the public arena when it's a WeFood project or you're doing something for colding, for example? Can it work for, if you were doing a project like you have done, Simon, for Berry Brothers? Could you adopt a more political philosophy, do you think, in the way you work commercially? Or is that not realisable? I think companies are going to be 400-year-olds, family-age, blind and spirit merchants, and I'm trying to think about whether the process will be political. I don't think that in their age at all. But what I think is interesting is that people seem to be talking about this, I know it's a cliche, but empowering people to grind up in whatever form, whether it's an entrepreneur, seems to be the most effective way. But then we have public institutions that we have with this. I think the day should not be here as a facilitator is a fantastic thing. So is that political? I suppose it is in one sense. But I don't know, I'd have to think about it because clearly you're right, we started today with some very political discussions. But I don't have a strong view either way, but I do think the kind of facilitation role that exists between public organisations and business is a really interesting one. And your challenge, you said, that you have to kind of engage with business here more effectively, is really interesting because it would feel like at one level it shouldn't be that hard. So I'm interested to know why it is challenging. Just an attempt to sort of widen the conversation and bring something into the Berry Brothers example. Niklas, I'm also thinking about the opportunity for us as brand consultants, for instance, to sort of bring a commercial brand to have an impact on, let's say, politicians. So I'm thinking in that, if we follow that line of thinking, it would be how could Berry Brothers further help the British environment or the British society to think about spirits or trade or other things that might be in line with its brand or something? Is that what you're thinking about, Niklas? I think when we work on commercial projects, we work for a commercial orientation on how do we make this more effective. But if what we were talking about yesterday about organisations, brands being responsible for society in a broader sense, I mean we ought to be saying, yes, fine, but how can we extend this idea of what we're trying to do to actually generate societal benefits? And of course you might make resistance from that if you go to a customer and say, well, I fear about your brief, but you need to think in this sense. But I think we ought to be pushing organisations. If you look at the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, they are taking stand for their ideas about what societies would look like in a better world, I wouldn't say ideal world. So I think they are taking a political point of view. And what I thought was interesting about the presentation from Peter this morning, it's about being held accountable for the statements you make. And it's even easier to do so maybe as a commercial brand than when you are a political brand. Maybe that's the struggle in politics. But also with Chocolonio, it was inspiring that he was arguing about challenging the system, not accepting the way things are, but really pushing it. Haro. Okay, what I'd like to share is a mashup of the ideas that have been shared between yesterday and today. And I'd start with Nicolae's last slide where he had the question, working with the political system, and we had a question from the audience saying it needs to be bottom up rather than top down. And I think the answer that he gave is exactly what I've been facing and experiencing back in India. So the more we tell the political system that whatever policies that you make, which is actually meant for the better of the people, it needs to emanate with a collective consciousness that comes from bottom up, because at the end of the day, that is where the ideas get implemented. But it is very difficult to drive that point across when they hire us as consultants, because we know that is the way in which people at the bottom are going to embrace it. So we devise our own conniving mechanisms through which we put it in the system where the glory for that action is taken up by some politician or not. Because we try and look at the bigger picture and use a very devious way of getting it implemented for the larger good. And coming back to Chrissy's presentation, we had run a similar concept in 2010, but the purpose was very specific. That is where we integrated design as well. So our purpose was to promote India as a nation brand looking for solutions. So what we did is we ran a global contest. One was design and one was entrepreneurship. And the themes that we had were the themes that Indians and the Indian government do not like talking about. Poverty, hunger, water problems, energy problems, education, health care. So what we thought, what we told the government was the only way in which you can engage with the world is not hiding this truth. The world knows everything that is happening this side of the world because of the advent of digital media. So you need to be honest. You need to engage people and ask, create a sharing platform. You crowdsource solutions. You tell people sitting anywhere in Europe or America or Asia, ask them for solutions to these problems. Because what happens is through that process, people sitting in various parts of the world can understand and appreciate our problems much better. So that then they have a different point of view towards poverty so that they can empathize with our situation of growth. So this entire thing where we are crowdsourcing design ideas and solutions then gets developed as a basic form of social entrepreneurship, which can then be implemented in the market with the support of the government. So that is what we did for a year. And that further got evolved as a public diplomacy module, which we ran as a youth engagement program between India and Africa. So I don't know where and how whatever I've shared with, but I think politics, design, the idea of brand, place brands all come together seamlessly. So there is a role depending on how you practice it and get it implemented. Peter. Two things. First, a very, very simple observation. We talked yesterday a lot about the difference between cooperative and associated and family-owned businesses and PLCs, limited companies. I think there was a report recently. The economy, the worldwide economy is increasingly being driven by large corporations, which are not family-owned businesses. They are the Googles, the Apples, the Amazons of this world. They're shareholding businesses. I think the only way you're going to shift the debate is either through the shareholders, i.e. ethical, strategical investment or profit, very simply, or the consumers. So either we have to make the consumers more conscious and conscientious in their purchasing habits. I think this is particularly appropriate for younger people, the generation that's coming in now. How can we mobilize them? As the Italian gentleman said yesterday, that every purchasing act becomes a political act. You are choosing to purchase ethically. And that might mean a trade-off in terms of price or value or comfort or the softness of the toilet paper or whatever it was we were talking about yesterday. So we need to think about the role of the consumer, but we also need to think about the role of the shareholders and the strategic investors and how do we motivate them to think in a more conscious and conscientious way. And just as a little footnote about politicians and business people working together, the current Vice Chancellor of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, who is a socialist or social democrat, before he became Vice Chancellor, he was a climate change secretary, an energy secretary in Germany, and he was also the Minister President of Lower Saxony. And the biggest employer by far in Lower Saxony is Volkswagen. This is way in the days before the current scandal. And he was left in an interesting position because he was pushing the climate change platform and needing to go into various conferences of the nations to negotiate for Germany. But at the same time as the ex-Minister President of Lower Saxony, he was very conscious of all the employees, all the distributors, the whole value and supply chain of Volkswagen, and he talked to them very openly, what do you need, what do I have to do to make sure that your business is not ruined by these negotiations and to have a positive position on the climate change discussions. And it became a very balanced and a very nuanced argument and then presentation to the international conference. So he always had in mind his local big business. And it was a very successful negotiation. Just to ask you, the profile of the people who actually shop in WeFood, is it young people primarily or is it very broad? The poor part is old. And the people that want to do the right thing are young. Absolutely, young and they have money. So for them it's a political choice. It is. I think that's interesting. We'll see if as you expand, if that still remains the case. Interesting. Nicholas, I have a comment to something completely different, which was the first thing you said. Is it okay to shift the subject? It was just when I was also inspired by Maurice's talk yesterday on storytelling basically. And I think one of the points he had was the bigger the problem, the better the story. So you really so and obviously Pierre is using some of the same mechanisms as a journalist. You were talking about a good story. So good branding for you is a good story basically, right? And then sometimes talking about branding, talking about storytelling or talking about authenticity, people will say, well, that's just new wine on old bottles or it's just the same as we've always said. But actually when Maurice was telling about this yesterday, I did find it profound and sort of it reminded me of something that I've known for many years. But it's still profound and it's still important. And I think I just had this reflection that there is a reason for talking about this stuff, even though we know it already, because it's actually quite difficult. And that's the reason that many brands do not succeed in telling good stories and they do not succeed in becoming great brands because it's difficult to get people just internally in an organization persuaded to actually do the big stories and care about the big problems and so on. So I think that's possible maybe at the Danish Church Aid because that's what you do. You solve the big problems of the world and maybe for Maurice, but because he's the only person who has to sort of decide whether he wants to do it or not as the as the founding person for a company. But I think in many large organizations, that's actually quite difficult to get them along on a project where you want to solve a big problem. And so even though it's sort of old and a repetition of something we all know, it's just still interesting, I think. And it's a very good reminder that you actually have to do that and think about what is this brand doing and what's the big story. Yeah, yeah, I'd say I think it's sort of the conversations we've had the present. It just brings things to the fore, brings them into focus. And I think sometimes even if you've been doing them, they're lurking in the back of your mind. So that's what I've felt has been very useful over the last couple of days. But just to ask the non-medicare people, I mean, has this been useful for you? Interesting, useful, interesting, a nice way to spend an afternoon? Well, everything you do is a choice. And I think the people that are here that's not in your club yet, they know maybe more about consciousness. So I will guess that the people that are here also choose to buy different things because it's good for them or the health or something, something bigger. But the people that is not here and the reason you're not in the opera or something like that is because people are not conscious. And as someone said yesterday, the more you know, the less you need. And I think that's something to think about. Yeah, very good point. There's a comment back there. I promise it will be a short one this time. There is somebody who categorized everything in the world. It can be classified in three different categories. The first category is things that you know, then things that you know you don't know. And the final one is things that you don't know that you don't know. But I personally think in branding, there is actually one more category, which is things that you don't know that you know. And that is precisely where storytelling and branding and we put all the subconsciousness and consciousness to above the sea level to the tip of the iceberg and what we're trying to do. But in a way, it's also for the consent. So, yeah, I think it's a short one. Thank you. Yeah, Monica. And also just a short comment from here. I think it's also been very valuable to be here today and thank you for inviting us once again and for being able to co-host this event. And as I just said as a disclaimer on the stage there, we are not the branding experts. We are more the design and counseling experts. But it's been definitely very interesting to have all these concrete cases that's also design driven and a lot of design approach, both with the with the curling example and a lot of the with the we food as well. It's very interesting. It's given me a lot of good cases to think about and to answer your question. One of the challenges why it's difficult in businesses, it's with the design and actually getting more businesses and design couple together. It's there's a few different reasons for that, like in my point of view. But one of them is that there's actually the transformation that I talked about in the design definition is still going on. So a lot of people are still thinking about Danish design or even just saying design definition of designers as this as as these chairs and a lot of is kind of a maturity process going on in the Danish businesses and in business in general. That's still worth talking about and discussing because it's still for many also kind of abstract of how is designed if that's processes and strategies and branding campaigns as well. So what is it then? Or how do we somehow make it more conceptualize this? Or how do we make it more tangible? So I think that's one of the challenges. But but also, yeah, we have come a far way and we've seen in a recent research that we did that that the that people working strategically on on with design actually also creates more growth and also experience that they have a lot higher branding value. So it is, of course, interconnected. And that's definitely a point to take. Yeah. Maybe we should wrap up for the day. It's been a full day, I think, with lots of good comments and questions and good presentations. So thank you all for coming. Thanks to the meeting and members to to fly here, especially you, or you flew a long way longer than most of us. And that's good. And thanks to our guests for joining us. There is cake and coffee and water and so on. You're more than welcome to hang out for just a few moments or half an hour, an hour, whatever fits. There are three books that you can buy or look into. There's first of all, the relatively new meeting a book Brands with a Conscience. There is our member and one of the founding fathers of the meeting group. Thomas Gart has written a new book, which is customer experience branding. You can buy that as well. And my own Danish book, The Authentic Company, is is also on the shelves. So you're more than welcome to take a look at those. Otherwise, see you again on Facebook, on Instagram or on our website. Or somewhere else. And you're pointing. Sandra. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. Yes. So most importantly, Christine and Katrina is working in my office at Stegis, and they have actually coordinated the entire thing, the program, making sure people got here. And I'm sure they're going to make sure that we get out of here again alive. So thanks a lot for taking care of all of us and making sure that it was possible to do this. Thanks a lot. And also thanks to Danish Design Center for hosting us and to 23 who have been video casting the full day. And that's why we had microphones that had to go around, because we actually have viewers who have been watching along with us here in this space. So thanks to all of you and thanks again to Christine and Katrina.