The brand guru Wally Olins says "All organisations have a brand or corporate image, whether they especially manage it or not and whether they are aware of it or not." There is no single definition of what a brand is, but if you are a social enterprise, you've got one.
If you want to make the concept a tangible thing, then you can apply this simple truism: brand is synonymous with business. Everything you do and everything you say is an expression of what you're marketing. However, there is a problem – and a particularly contemporary one at that – owners frequently lose control over their brand. This problem may present an opportunity for social enterprise to find its defining brand position.
There are some regularly cited criticisms of business that make it tough for today's brand owners to manage their property effectively. These include criticism of corporate greed and environmental or community damage in the pursuit of profit. To add to this, we now see evidence of increasingly fickle consumers and disenfranchised employees.
Commercial brands are making attempts to address these issues with sophisticated corporate social responsibility programmes and transparent business practices, but the inherent paradox of the profit motive versus community or environmental benefits remains. One example is the rather cynical green wash advertising employed by some supermarkets that claims to defend the small farmer while systematically pushing down the price of the produce the farmers supply.
However, while these issues show why it is tough to manage a commercial brand, and also perhaps indicate why social enterprise brands might thrive, it does not, I believe, reveal their defining brand position. That may be revealed more clearly by looking into how brands are constructed and how this construction process has made brands unstable in navigating a choppy climate such as today's.
Over the years, I've been dissatisfied with the brands I've designed. Not because they were badly designed or unsuccessful, but because they felt artificial. It took some time before I realised that my work was premised on the assumption that brands must necessarily be artificial constructs, created to fit the vision their owners wish to communicate. This may be close to the definition of what a brand is, but I've since wanted to question that assumption; it is, after all, unsatisfactory to think this way when brands themselves aspire to such genuine expressions of authenticity.
What does it mean to say brands are artificial constructs? Many brands, including very successful ones, are not only constructed to fit the vision of their owners but are increasingly sophisticated in their effort to communicate this vision. Brands are now three- or even four-dimensional. They have personalities, generate emotional responses and even connect spiritually. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that brands are not real. If there is a disconnect between what brands say and what their owners want them to say, then their lack of authenticity is exposed, making brands difficult to control.
A more stable future might be found in brands' construction through shared dialogue and a model of joint ownership and management. Furthermore, this dialogue could be expressed by brand stakeholders, not just via brand promiscuity or critique but in the growing desire for active involvement. We can even go so far as to say that this desire for active involvement is actually a positive trend among today's consumers, whose aim is to collect experiences rather than passively consume products or services.
A way to explore these ideas of brand as dialogue is to look into brands that have community at their centre. Social enterprise brands offer some of the most promising forms of meaningful involvement for multiple stakeholders since they frequently adopt forms of participation, such as membership, exchange and reliance on community support to operate. Unravelling the connection between brand and participation should lead to useful guidelines for creating authentic brand experiences that stabilise and strengthen brand. For social enterprise, we can perhaps design opportunities for active brand experiences by tapping into the motivations behind participation, thus helping to strengthen and sustain the brand as a genuine expression of the dialogue between stakeholders. This is in contrast to the top-down attraction that commercial brands attempt, and is far more attuned to the contemporary climate of brand through negotiation.
It is in this way, that social enterprises can avoid defining themselves by the standards of commercial enterprise but rather express their unique position in the brand landscape. If social enterprise brands offer themselves up as genuine expressions of their inherent nature, they will not only define themselves as recognisable alternatives but also open the door to the possibility of brand leadership in the future.
If you are interested in this topic please take part in the short questionnaire. These questions form part of the research for a postgraduate dissertation by the author.
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