What Communism And Traditional Branding Have In Common

It just hit me while sitting in The Prov reading the Financial Times (yes sorry I do) that there is a strong correlation between what brands and agencies are facing today, and the collapse of communism. Does ‘the death of central planning’ and the ‘entry of millions of new participants into the globalising world economy’ sound familiar to you?

Exchange ‘the globalising world economy’ for ‘the globalising communications world’ and you have the entry of millions of new participants into the globalising communications world. This is basically the reality brands (and therefore agencies) are facing today – a reality of no more control and very little power.

Both systems will have failed for the same reason. The world in which we live and communicate, like a country’s economy, is made up of too many factors, too many unpredictables for any outcome to be planned, controlled and then manipulated. In the face of this reality, what need is there for a middleman (government/agency) and therefore a central planning function (economic/brand planning)?

If the answer is none, where does that leave agencies and their planning role? I guess it is similar to today’s financial crisis, impossible to know where we are going, making it difficult to answer that question.

Having said that, the fall of free-market capitalism has shown that the world economy can benefit from some intervention – when needed (and boy is it today), welcomed and/or asked for. So maybe there is a role for a group of people who plan for how to deal with, embrace, and benefit from the unpredictable, a group that within that environment facilitate and sometime drive what is needed, welcomed and/or asked for by the people. So obvious, yet practiced by so few…actually no one really when I think about it!

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2009
06/17
CATEGORY
Thoughts
1 comment
    • liriandersson
    • June 17th, 2009

    Good point from Tim at OMD via e-mail…

    Hey Liri – I like it!

    An excellent thought, but where does that leave us? I agree, we can’t control the sea but we can surf! I’m thinking it’s more about orchestration…

    Truth is that the info is there, more now than ever given the realization of the universal library, but inherent practices (that oxymoron of ‘received wisdom’) means that business will eat itself.

    As a comparative thought consider this essay in Wired about collectivism: http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all

    And still in the communist vein, I’m amused to think that Coke perhaps labored under the false misconception of Lysenkoism when they attempted to ‘vernalise’ Dasani.

    Tim OMD

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