In the 1980s, my work took me to 30 countries and another mind-opening privilege of meeting 100 or so top marketers , ie at national or worldwide director level of the largest brand companies. In those days, about 20% got what I valued as true marketing - ie systemising better quality and low cost- never destroying marketing's value multiplication by being governed by just one (leave the company rather than let a new CEO dictate such a vicious end)

However a crisis (mathematical mistake) started to be spreadsheet in the late 80s that is now spinning so fast around marketing's value multiplying competence (on which humanity's progress has always actually depended -read DSrucker 1956 Practice of Management if you need to support this claim - whatever other professionals like accountants or lawyers adminbstrate with). It is a mathematical mistake of sufficient compound order to mean this wil be humanity's last century as elaborated here
To propagate this post's conversation far and wide and deep, what we need to agree is that global branding (which is of course also only as good as deep local cross-cultural goodwill) introduced a 3rd dimension - whether each industry sector at a global level is being stewarded around futuure expoentials that sustain human life or compound its destruction.

Just as quality over time was hard enough for marketers to include in the system against such marketing destroyers as Wall-Mart has mathematically mistakenly (world's largest corporation) with its dictation of ONLY always lower cost of every category, SO too sustainbility of a global sector goes way beyond what a marketing director alone can steward unless the whole board stands up and says: as human beings, we value our leadership of our industry category sufficeintly to insist that all our competoitors colaborate transparently over our sector's greatest compound risk to the sustainability of the human race and earth. This is quite a big reality conversation to raise- one that marketers of goodwill need to find matching goodwill counterparts in every discipline. And then all professionals of goodwill need to connect to devalue all professionals of badwill. What are the chances of this happening in time? What system mappers know is they go down every year.

Back in 1984 The Economist's economist forecast that the BBC would NOW have a critical impact in raising this conversation around the world. The Queen Elizabeth's challenging end of 2005 speech "Humanity turning on itself?" is exactly on this inquiry. Every British journalist could stand up and join in this royal inquiry of whether each global sector as currently being governed is compounding sustainability or death of humanity. Every Indian journalist is being given the same empowerment thanks to owning the secod largest public broadcaster in the world after the BBC and the most extraordinary 21st C leadership duo of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Singh (an economist who's up there with the very best that Cambridge University has ever mentored). Journalists like brand marketers do , at the end of their day, interact with ordinary people so this suggests one simultaneous way everyone in a true democracy has a chance to join this debate now. Another way our journalist sugested in 1984 was project30000

Do drop me a line at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk if you can think of other ways or cracking the 3 dimensional problem that Beyond Branding marketers are now at the world's valuation epicentre of. 2010 will be way too late for marketers to start the global mobilisation of transparent mapmaking networks that 6 billion beings now need to emerge. posted by ..., 1:40 PM  permalink