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What Does Wise Leadersip Mean? (Forbes India)
Wise leaders are self aware, aware of their prejudices, their social conditioning and thus able to moderate the tendency to be over-optimistic with their intuitive instincts. Click here to Read More
Half an hour on the phone with Professor Mike Thompson and my mind is racing with big ideas of the ‘self’, ‘spirituality’ and ‘stewardship’. Read More
GoodBrand's Dean Sanders and Richard Evans were invited to speak at the New Growth Conference in Hamberg in November 2012. Click here for full details of the conference or view Dean Saunders speech here (in German)
Dean Sanders of Goodbrand invited to speak at IUCN conference in South Korea.
Dean Sanders of Goodbrand was invited to participate in the conservation campus at the world conservation congress in Jeju, South Korea. The conservation campus was focused on how businesses can create economic value from conservation and sustainability and Dean's talk focused on the role of brand social equity as part of that debate.
Dean presented the new expectations that citizen consumers have of brands in the age of uncertainty and austerity and showed the opportunity for NGO brands to partner with corporate and commercial brands to build co-branded partnerships and improve brand social equity scores leading to higher brand preference and loyalty. Brands of the future will need to have higher levels of brand social energy. You can download the presentation and find out more about social equity index by contacting us.
Euro-China Centre for Leadership and Responsibility Hosts Nespresso Sustainability Forum
Dean Sanders (founder of GoodBrand, the sustainable enterprise consultancy) and Jerome Perez, Head of Ecolaboration, Nestlé Nespresso led a Forum for MBA students at CEIBS Shanghai on 13 September titled: "FROM 'GRAND CRUS' COFFEE BEAN TO CAPSULE - THE NESPRESSO AAA STORY". Students were given the taste of 5 from 16 products and learnt how Nespresso have cultivated strong relationships with their coffee farmers in Columbia.
Many factors are putting at risk the sustainability of the flower sector. This is why Florverde Sustainable Flowers (FSF) is workin g with flower producers in helping them become more resilient through the use of better and cleaner production methods and new technologies.
FSF is one of the oldest sustainable certifications systems with more than fifteen years of experience. Today, more than 2,000 hectares of flower farms have been certified FSF.
During 2011, FSF underwent a strategic review and in collaboration with GoodBrand adopted a new governance system, brand identity, and communication plan. It will also be conducting an independent impact assessment in order to further demonstrate its value to the flower value chain. For further information please visit.
Executives reach breaking point
Mike Thompson of GoodBrand is quoted in the following article around executive burn out in China. Could this be the future for British executives and how can you combate this issue in a world where competition is so high?
By Mike Thompson, Associate of Goodbrand
China's conspicuous consumption trend has unique local traits
Is Chinese brand attitude different to Western brand attitude? I think it depends on the category. Online brands like Baidu Inc and Facebook are prized for their functionality and innovativeness rather than the social status they confer.
But clothing and accessory brands are more sensitive to our social identity. Value brands appeal to price-sensitive consumers in China, as they do in Britain. And luxury brands have status appeal - or do they?
What is your organisational purpose and does it really have any value?
(A review of Jim Stengel’s 2011 book ‘Grow: How Your Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the 50 greatest Companies’)
There’s a lot been written in the management and leadership literature recently about the importance of discovering an organisation’s true underlying purpose, as a way of building commitment from customers, employees and other stakeholders. A good example is Jim Stengel’s 2011 book “Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s 50 Greatest Companies” (Virgin Books, 2011).....
Our Definition of Developing Brand Social Equity
Marketers are familiar with the concept of developing and tracking brands on a range of image attributes. Typical brand attributes that companies seek to build include differentiation, relevance, expertise, quality and dynamism. But none of these traditionally--measured brand variables capture the contribution (positive or negative) that a brand is perceived to make to society and the world around us. This is what we mean by brand social equity – the concept that a brand can be a “force for good” – changing the world, and the society we live in, for the better.
Brand social equity captures this concept and is the central measure within the GoodBrand Social Equity Index. It is made up of a series of component factors including the company’s relationships with its customers, the communities its serves, society as a w hole, the environment, its workforce and its suppliers. It is possible for brands - and categories as a whole - to perform well on all, some or none of these individual social equity factors.
Our Definition of Employee Engagment
Employee Engagement is the extent to which employee commitment, both emotionally and intellectually, exists relative to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organisation. Engagement can be seen as a heightened level of ownership and behaviour where each employee wants to do whatever they can for the benefit of their colleagues and customers, and for the success of the organisation as a whole. We believe an engaged employee is a valuable (and under estimated) asset to a company - they are enthusiastic ambassadors who will endorse your company internally and externally and are often at the interface with your company's consumers. A company with fully engaged employees tends to attract talent away from its competitors.
Our Definition of Sustainable Leadership
Our premise is that sustainability cannot be embedded in a company without the right leadership, and that cultural change leadership programmes that do not embrace sustainability are ignoring the most powerful opportunity available to demonstrate the company’s values (internal factors) to consumers, customers and key stakeholders (external factors) through company behaviour. Companies who can connect the Internal factors with the External factors and demonstrate their CSR strategies through their behaviour are more likely to be seen as a positive force for good and therefore gain and retain greater loyalty from both employees and .
Based on the responses of over 5,000 UK adults, the GoodBrand Social Equity Indexprovides key insightsinto consumer perception of the social equity of 340 of the Top UK brands & companies. Is the brand you’re interested in seen as a “force for good”?
What Defines Great Leadership in Businesses that want to Create Shared Value?
GoodBrand Insight Report Series - 1st May 2012
Michael Porter and Mark Kramer’s article in the January 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review made ambitious claims for the concept of creating shared value, to the point of suggesting that it provides an approach through which we can redefine both capitalism and the role of corporations in society. The central premise behind creating shared value (CSV) is that the competitiveness of a company and the health of the communities around it are not in opposition but in fact are mutually dependent. So, no longer is there a trade-off between “doing good” and “making profits” - instead, the two are mutually inter-dependent. Moreover, Porter and Kramer argue that there are significant opportunities for the creation of competitive advantage from integrating a social value proposition into corporate strategy.
Will the Lloyds Bank branch acquisition dilute Co-operative Bank’s brand values?
GoodBrand Insight Report Series - 15th December 2011
Yesterday, Lloyds Bank announced that Co-Operative Bank is the preferred bidder for the 630-odd branches that the EU requires Lloyds to sell, following the state aid it received in 2008. The acquisition would triple the Co-op's current size from 300 to 900 branches and is expected to boost competition between high street banks.
Supermarket Price Wars (and why money can’t buy you love…)
GoodBrand Insight Report Series - 6th December 2011
Times are tough and we all need to make the money in our pockets go further and work harder. As one of our nation’s favorite supermarkets says, “every little helps” - and it certainly does. However a recent BBC Panorama program entitled ‘The Truth About Supermarket Price Wars’ raised the question of whether these ‘not to be missed’ deals are all they really seem
Can the Virgin brand essence rub off on Northern Rock?
GoodBrand Insight Report Series - 18th November 2011
Yesterday’s announcement that Virgin is buying the “good” parts of Northern Rock, and entering the world of branch banking for the first time, has been welcomed as potentially ushering in a new era of heightened competition and improved service in the world of personal banking. After all, Virgin’s track record in re-writing the rules of competition in favour of the consumer – across many of the industries it has entered, from airlines to mobile phones - is pretty strong....
How the big banks can become the “citizen brands” of the future
GoodBrand Insight Report Series - 4rd November 2011
Bob Diamond, the CEO of Barclays Bank, took the opportunity of the inaugural BBC Today Business Lecture last night to set out his vision for banks to restore public trust by becoming – and, critically becoming seen as – more positive citizens in society.....
the ethical consumer – passing fashion, or a new era for brand building...?
GoodBrand Insight Report Series - 3rd August 2011
Consumer marketeers have long known that trust is a cornerstone of building strong brands. And for many consumers, brand trust now includes the concept of a brand’s social responsibility – its overall contribution (positive or negative) to the world it inhabits. This report, built on GoodBrand‘s proprietary research, examines the emergence of “ethical consumerism” and reveals which brands are currently most strongly positioned as a positive force in our society...
are UK consumers ready for the Big Society?
Published by the Guardian on-line 6th April 2011
Much has been written on the UK leading the world in ethical consumerism…until the recession that is, since when just as much has been written about the death of the UK ethical consumer.
Almost as much has been written about the failure or otherwise of the launch of the Prime Minister’s Big Society concept. And yet, we at Goodbrand believe that the negativity of both ideas are,in fact, ill conceived. The UK actually plays a leading role in both...
connecting csr to governance & investors
By Mike Thompson and Tim Werkhoven, EURObiz March/April 2011
marketing with integrity - why?
From China Europe International Business School (CEIBS)
Published in The Economist Intelligence Unit, 6 April 2011
Quite simply, ethics is about behaviour and responsibility with the remit of discourse enlarged by growing evidence that the consumer society is giving way to the emerging sustainable society. Marketers are now expected to be savvy about the social context of branded communications as well as the competitive context: social insights as well as consumer insights...
Mike Thompson: Jan 2010
There is an ethical crisis facing brands:
1. the basic challenge to the honesty of branded communications and
2. the underlying moral imperative of sustainability which is the claim that it is morally wrong for the current generation to devastate the environment and economy because future generations of people will suffer loss or harm...
does sustainability really create value?
By Astrid de Reuver and Alan Wagenberg, Jul 2009
Sustainability has become an increasingly important part of business practice – the UN Global Compact comprises more than 4,700 businesses committed to adopting sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to reporting on their implementation. In addition, the investment community has increasingly concerned itself with environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors - approximately 11% of assets under professional management in the U.S. – nearly one out of every nine dollars – are now linked to socially responsible investment (SRI)...
