Competencias específicas en función de perfiles profesionales

the nobel Prize is one of the strongest brands in the world. But un-til 2008, they haven’t seen themselves as a brand. now they’ve hired their first ever Marketing and Communications Manager, Merci olsson, nobelprize.org. i’ve known Merci for many years, so when we met we felt comfortable in stretching the brand to exaggerated lengths.

so, what are the limits for a brand? in the case of the nobel Prize, if you lose control of how the brand is used, it risks losing its significance.

this is where Merci comes into the picture to help her colleagues make the brand and its history more visible. Up until now the brand has been used by many different groups without any sort of quality control. in my opinion, the prize has been too “high class” to stoop to considering itself a brand and has paid the price that comes with this sort of hubris. even if the brand is an invaluable human asset, it also has a concrete commer-cial value that must both be cared for and capitalized upon. so how do you use the brand and develop its meaning? one way is to spotlight the technology that the prizes have honoured. one of the prizes in physics, for example, was given to scientists that developed the technology that

made ultra-small hard discs possible – iPods and other MP3 players, for example. so why not use the same technology that you have rewarded to spread the message to the world? there’s no shortage of university lecture material on itunes; why not add nobel Prize winners and their work?

this would strengthen the brand and its reach and inspire future prize-winners. or, it might perhaps motivate young people to pursue higher studies by working with high profile media. How about using Mtv to challenge teenagers to find solutions to global warming? a great way to increase interest in the sciences would be to build programs around the prizewinners, something the major universities would surely be interested in along with companies such as apple. the grassroots appeal of a Podcast can both extend the appeal of the brand and create genuine connections that can release the enormous power that is generated when ignorance or apathy is suddenly transformed into the thirst for knowledge.

going from intangible to tangible values means finding a balance between historical tradition and credibility on the one hand and getting the most out of a commercial brand worth billions on the other.

“It’s all how far you have the courage to go in blurring the borders between commercial and non-commercial.”

Merci olsson, Marketing and Communications Manager, nobelprize.org

Merci explained that she plans to focus more on the people behind the prizewinners, who they are, why they chose the path they did and what drives them on through long hours in the lab. times are changing – the boundaries between institutions and the commercial world are more dif-fuse. More and more, we will see companies such as Youtube and google blur the distinctions between media and learning, something that the nobel Prize can be part of. the connection is quite natural: google is already a sort of university. Perhaps the bonds between google and the nobel Prize could be strengthened through some sort of filtered search for scientific information.

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Working with a brand name that causes the phones to ring all day long, is a privilege. of course, few brands have a history that dates back to 1901. to keep the brand up to date, you could use google earth and let the global Positioning system (gPs), alert your iPhone when you pass by the house of a historical prize winner. naturally, the information would be linked to nobelprize.org and nearby libraries and bookstores where you can learn more. What makes this kind of connection so valu-able is that it is so unique. this uniqueness creates word of mouth about the prize and adds a personal human element to the history behind it. Just as there is a U2 special edition of the iPod, there could be a nobel Prize iPod. i think it’s just a matter of time.

there are endless opportunities; everyone wants to bask in the cred-ibility that shines from the nobel Prize – magazines, newspapers, films, even tv series. By opening up to cooperation with more commercial media such as Cnn, BBC and the new York times, the nobel Prize organization can both increase their control over their brand while cre-ating mutually beneficial sponsoring arrangements with influential it companies such as Honeywell or top pharmaceutical companies that can have an interest in being associated with the prize. this is an excellent example of how advertising and PR can work together.

or in the words of Merci at the end of our interview; “it’s like work-ing in a candy shop – there’s just so much chocolate here.”

If Apple wanted to become an educational institution, it could achieve it with the ease of switching playlists on an iPod. Just think how much of the PC market would shift if Apple became a university. Not just any university, though. With mobile phones, computers and iTunes, Apple University wouldn’t even need a physical campus; it would be located everywhere. They could even franchise the idea to Harvard, Princeton or Stanford. What’s more, becoming a university could give them better access to the talent that will create the Googles and Nobel Prizes of tomorrow.