Parámetros de diseño de electrodos

We feel that the time has passed for grumbling vaguely and unproductively about ‘brand bullies’ – and, indeed, for grumbling about the people who do the grumbling. It is time for a positive initiative to help organizations – whether they are companies, governments, NGOs or community initia- tives – learn how to take advantage of the benefits of branding while staying fully aware of the ensuing responsibilities. This transfer of skills and knowledge should be aimed at improving the lives of the stakeholders of these organizations through value creation that is aimed at providing them with the means of emancipation. Emancipation, as we see it, is a process of liberating people from their daily burdens and providing them with the opportunity to shape their own lives and those of their families. The means of emancipation can consist of better wages, education, healthcare, infra- structure, security, cultural engagement, and the list goes on.

There are several ways in which branding skills and knowledge can be transferred to less-developed nations, and each has its own specific advan- tages and drawbacks. First of all, there is the possibility of sending branding and marketing experts to Third World and former Communist countries as volunteers to aid local organizations in their brand-building and marketing activities. This is the basic intention behind an initiative called ‘Aidvertising’, which one of the authors of this chapter is launching

in the United Kingdom.3_{The advantage of this approach is that direct} hands-on expertise can be delivered to those in need of such know-how. The main stumbling blocks for such an approach are the potential for miscommunications and misunderstanding due to cultural differences, the possible mismatch of what the branding professional has to offer and the local organization’s needs, and the unfamiliarity of the volunteer with local circumstances. Most of these issues can be remedied by the proper selection of candidates (eg only those with sufficient multi-country work experience) and the thorough examination of the organization’s requests and carefully matching that with one or more professional volunteers. However, this is only an option when a short intervention is likely to have the desired effect – for example where a local company is having diffi- culties moving its branding efforts ahead.

The second approach is to encourage multinational companies (MNCs) to transfer their local branding knowledge to local organizations, and these might include the suppliers or distributors of the MNCs. One inter- esting scenario might be where a big brand-owning corporation, anxious to reassure the public that it genuinely supports ethical labour practices in its overseas manufacturing, could help its manufacturers to develop their own brands alongside the corporation’s. The deal could be that the brand owner gives design, branding and marketing expertise to the manufac- turer in return for a stake in the new brand; the corporation could even act as the new brand’s sole distributor for the developed world, and position the brand as a companion to its own. Whatever the ultimate success of the new brand, the corporation has proved its integrity and commitment to social justice in a highly visible and imaginative way; if the brand succeeds, it owns a valuable stake in a growing brand and positive new brand equities deriving from its close association.

A project like this would also provide the corporation with many more free column-inches in the international media than it can possibly achieve with yet another grudging 10-cent pay rise for its sweatshop workers in the Third World. A lot of the ‘ethical’ gestures that big corporations make are just that – gestures – and fail to convince an increasingly sceptical public: this is mainly because they are reactive (a scandal is uncovered, and the corporation does something to put it right), and tend to give the impression of an evil global corporation that would prefer people not to think of it as evil, rather than a global corporation that actually isn’t evil. Of course there’s a risk attached, and potentially a high cost, but that’s in the

nature of benevolent gestures: they don’t mean a thing unless they cost you something.

By helping their local business partners to apply branding in these and other ways, the MNCs may help them to become more professional and better able to act as local or regional representatives of the global brand. In addition, the branding of such business partners provides the MNCs with an opportunity to employ some of these brands as so-called benefit brands, branded ingredients or components that enhance the main brand. And by helping their business partners to benefit from branding, the MNCs can also shift some of the brand responsibility towards them. In other words, the use of branding provides local companies with a higher profile and should subsequently involve increased accountability of behaviour.

The third and perhaps least direct approach to branding skills and knowledge transfer is to aid national, regional or local governments to brand themselves. This implies helping them understand the strengths and weaknesses of their territories in terms of natural and human resources, and determining how best these can be applied to tourism, export branding, inward investment, foreign relations and representing culture (Anholt, 2003). The question of a country’s image crops up over and over again in marketing literature these days, and it’s clear that countries (and, for that matter, cities and regions too) behave, in many ways, just like brands. They are perceived – rightly or wrongly – in certain ways by large groups of people at home and abroad; they are associated with certain qual- ities and characteristics. Those perceptions can have a significant impact on the way that overseas consumers view their products, and the way they behave towards those countries in sport, politics, trade and cultural matters; it will affect their propensity to visit or relocate or invest there; their willingness to partner with such countries in international affairs; and whether they are more likely to interpret the actions and behaviours of those countries in a positive or a negative light. In short, the perception of a country determines the way the world sees it and treats it, and the more enlightened and expert a government is about branding and ‘reputation management’, the better it will be able to use these effects to its advantage.

A good example of successful ‘nation branding’ is Singapore, where the government set a clear agenda for knowledge intensification, starting with import substitution in the early 1960s, followed by an export orientation from the middle of that decade, accompanied by a shift to high-tech indus- tries, followed by a shift from skills-based to knowledge-based industries

in the 1970s. From the 1980s onward, Singapore assumed a greater role in regional growth and development using the skills and knowledge it had acquired. In the 1990s, Singapore strove to become ‘The Learning Nation’, thereby clearly articulating a purpose for the nation brand (Hampden- Turner and Trompenaars, 1997). In the present decade, Singapore is trying to encourage its citizens to rise to the next level of know-how: how to apply creatively all their learning.

But among the most dramatic illustrations of the combined power of brands from a country and the branding of a country are Japan and South Korea. Japan went from a nation shattered by war to the per capita richest OECD member in less than 50 years; the Republic of Korea had the same GNP as Cameroon – indeed, was substantially worse off than North Korea – in the 1960s, yet is now the United States’ eighth-largest trading partner and the eleventh-largest economy in the world. Between these two coun- tries, many millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, and it is hard to reconcile these facts with the view that international trade does not help growth and growth does not help the poor.

Not coincidentally, both countries produce world-beating brand names in valuable and profitable product sectors, notably consumer electronics, information technology and motor vehicles.

None of this has happened by accident. Economists often assume that such miracles are primarily the results of free trade, whereas develop- mental capitalists put it down to industrial policy and systematic state intervention to support growing industries. In these cases, it would appear to be the latter rather than the former: both Japan and South Korea have followed a policy of first excluding foreign imports in the market sectors that they have earmarked for development, then copying and improving on the foreign products, and then doing everything possible to encourage the export of branded domestic products.

Of course, in these and in many other cases, one can endlessly debate whether the commercial brands have done more to build the country brand or vice versa, and which came first, but the reality appears to be that the rise of both brands is intimately and intricately linked: the brands help to build the country’s image and the country’s image helps to build the brands. The more consistent and planned the effort that a country’s government and private sector put into developing both, the more likely these two effects are to build upon each other and create a powerful and seamless whole.

Obviously, the approaches we have discussed are neither mutually exclusive, nor are they likely to succeed independently. Unless national, regional and local governments in developing countries provide an envi- ronment conducive to entrepreneurial initiatives by people within public, private and non-governmental organizations, no amount of nation or commercial branding will change the lot of the population. Likewise, unless (foreign) corporations at least tolerate – and preferably encourage – local companies to gather the fruits of branding, there is little incentive for them even to try their hands at it. Finally, even if companies in developing nations successfully employ branding to create wealth for themselves, when they fail to pass on the benefit to their stakeholders they face a public backlash that will defeat their ability to sustain their newfound prosperity.