Brand Valued: How Socially Valued Brands Hold the Key to a Sustainable Future and Business Success (Hardcover)

Acknowledgements xi

List of Figures xii

Introduction xvi

PART I Setting the Scene – The Tangled Worlds of Brands and Social Capital 1

CHAPTER 1 Congratulations – It’s a beautiful baby brand . . . 3

Efficient and rational – adjectives of an era 9

From utilitarian to hedonic – when needs explode 11

CHAPTER 2 Innocent bystanders or calculating protagonists? 18

Consume! Consume! Consume! 20

Which came first – brands or demand? 26

CHAPTER 3 The public gets what the public wants 32

Whatever you do, don’t panic . . . 33

The good guys and the bad guys 38

Devotees, Hostages and Critics 39

Concluding remarks 44

PART II The ‘Unsustainability’ of Sustainability and our Need to Understand the Era of Social Capital Rising 47

CHAPTER 4 Charge! 49

Once upon a time, everything happened 53

The wisdom of crowds 56

Symptoms and causes 66

CHAPTER 5 Water, water everywhere – How brands help us choose 70

Maximisers and satisficers 71

We can’t have it all 74

Frames 78

Opportunity costs and trade-offs 80

Why encouraging satisficing would be so much better – for everyone 82

CHAPTER 6 It’s been emotional 87

Wanting versus liking 92

Where have we ended up? 94

Concluding remarks 98

PART III The Elixir of Life – Literally. Why We Depend on Social Capital 103

CHAPTER 7 The ‘what’ of social capital 107

Social capital defined 109

Forms of social capital 112

Strands of social capital 119

CHAPTER 8 Trust – Small word, big impact 124

What, then, is trust? 127

Brands and trust 134

CHAPTER 9 The ‘why’ of social capital 141

Social capital, brands and society 142

Internal and external audiences 145

Education 147

Neighbourhoods 148

Democracy 149

Health and wellbeing 150

Harmony and social capital 154

Concluding remarks 158

PART IV Towards Social Equity Brands, and How a Social Capital Strategy Gets Us There 161

CHAPTER 10 Stand up Social Equity Brands 167

Social Equity Trait #1: Compelling narratives 169

Social Equity Trait #2: The power of emotion 175

Social Equity Trait #3: From consumer to citizen (who consumes) 178

Social Equity Trait #4: Value-in-use 180

Social Equity Trait #5: Dialogue 183

Social Equity Trait #6: Shared understanding 186

Social Equity Trait #7: Balanced social capital 187

Social Equity Trait #8: From ‘accessibility’ to ‘assessability’ 189

Social Equity Trait #9: Intrinsic trumps extrinsic 190

Social Equity Trait #10: It’s the experience that counts 192

CHAPTER 11 From the 4Ps to the 5Is – Social Capital Strategy 195

Interconnectedness 201

Inclusiveness 205

Ignition 209

Interest 212

Imagination 215

Inside and out 218

CHAPTER 12 Apples today, with oranges tomorrow – Measuring social capital 222

Measuring the structural component – Dialogue 225

Measuring the cognitive component – Shared thinking 227

Measuring the relational component – Trust 228

The Sustainable Futures Quotient – SFQ 229

Bringing talk, thought and trust together 232

Social capital and brand locus 236

Concluding remarks 243

PART V Broadcast Off, Dialogue On – Invitation to Form Bonding, Bridging and Linking Capital (Apply Online) 253

Ten brands heading towards becoming Social Equity Brands – a primer for conversation 256

Danone 257

Unilever 258

Pepsi 260

Walmart 261

Equity Bank 262

Vodafone 263

Toyota 264

GE 265

IBM 266

Starbucks 268

End Notes 271

Index 282