Living the Brand

Citation

Ind, N. (2002), "Living the Brand", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 136-136. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij.2002.7.2.136.1

This book on brand management is published in association with marketing, the marketing and advertising weekly, yet is mostly about employee participation. What has this to do with marketing and especially brands? The subtitle states: “how to transform every member of your organization into a brand champion”. Moving beyond the cliché that the workforce is a company’s most valuable asset, the book shows, through a range of interesting and informative case studies, that all stakeholders of a business enterprise need their values to be addressed in their interactions and relationships. In the commercial sphere of life the book suggests these values are “embodied” in brands.

Ind’s book is written for communication, marketing, and “human resources” professionals who want to engage workers in the imaginative pursuit of a common cause. This requires that work purposes, processes, and products have valued meanings. Workers and customers need an authentic and valued reason and return for their participation in the promise and delivery of brands. Ind shows how people are the definers of a brand and how this is fundamental to well‐being and sense of worth. Cases from diverse situations include Nike, the Ventura‐based Patagonia company, Unipart, Apple, UNICEF, VSO, Virgin, and others.

Brand ideas, suggests Ind, must be capable of engaging people in worthwhile activity. They must thus be imaginative, authentic, courageous, and empowering. That is, we need to believe in what we do; and to act honestly and distinctively in committed participatory working arrangements. This then, is the agenda for the wider problem of managing corporate communication for genuinely productive purposes – people as makers of brands, not merely mediators.