Marketing Opinion South Africa

A worldwide corporate metamorphosis

The historian will have to be very kind to this global financial meltdown and should reward it for the most-needed rude awakening call forcing a dramatic change of traditional business models. Right now, all over the world, this crisis is teaching CEOs new things: first, face the music and change the tune and, secondly, appreciation for finer details and anger management during this extremely-hyper-loss-count.

Why our world suddenly became a massive junkyard, crowded with junky-ideas on junky-promises with junky-finances, is now where brand new corporate philosophies and structures will harshly collide with the wide range of old business models.

Totally collapse or fully transform

Survivors still engaged in the market need to be congratulated for their stamina, as even more chasms have to be jumped. The landscape clearly points to an eventual metamorphosis where businesses will either totally collapse or fully transform into new butterflies.

Currently, for every great successful business, there are easily a million businesses that are uncontrollably rolling down the hill and, despite all the resistance, their organisational units keep falling and crumbling. Simplifying in general terms, the most identifiable business problem today is the lack of funds that are often due to lack of sales, which at times - despite great product lines - are due to lack of right image and branding, which is often blamed to some disconnected brand name identity or image positioning that never grabs the attention or the cyber-branding that never catches online customers.

This chain reaction seriously pulls down the entire corporate entity, often into darkness, and this constant deprivation to visibility keeps the business gasping for more oxygen. Of course, there are many other complex factors also.

Image of dying dinosaur

The auto industry has damaged hundreds of brands, year after year, as their image and name identities were never allowed to mature enough; most ended up in some quick alphanumeric soup and eventually ended up being bundled under the umbrella identity of the manufacturer, which in most cases only projects the image of an old dying dinosaur.

Banks, too, all over the world simply got short changed on their image by having their names abbreviated to the point that there was no differentiation. They, too, kept pushing the similar products and services and most are now in one giant bowl of hot alphabet soup.

Of the top 50 business sectors, from agriculture to construction or from technology to consumer goods, the highly skyrocketed cost to stay under the spotlight will now have to turned off. Excessive waste and useless fame both will be replaced by truly streamlined operations and what's 50% or 90% trimming of wasted operations if it puts through a sophisticated metamorphosis?

Dying old business models

But first, an open discussion about pushing of the dying old business models is needed before it has to be completely reinvented. So long as the boardroom-fear-factor inhibits the critical questions and so long as corporate expansion strategy simply remains unaligned to its external image - just not fit enough to catch the right fish - the business stays gasping in the dark. Corporations with great products and services can easily check why 90% of the targeted customer base is not lined-up outside their doors, and panic will surely make the cash run out.

For those leaders with any brilliant business idea and great selling proposition, their efforts will be completely useless unless they are properly branded in the right language, creating the maximum value for its targeted customer base, and they will be equally wasted if their brand name identity ends up sending wrong signals.

The current times are filled with very powerful hidden opportunities, visible only to open-minded thoughts leaders with foresight, and opening of such debates and reforms will bring teams together and encourage the next quantum leap.

Still spending billions

Despite all the gloom, the world is still spending billions all over the place and this meltdown has simply moved the bars up to a much higher notch, where more advanced strategies are the minimum new-pre-requisites.

Today, being reliant upon panic cutbacks or sudden surges is not the answer. Re-conversions, re-emersions, and re-evaluation - leading to a total corporate metamorphosis - is at play and it's time to plan the hatching out of the old cocoon into a new butterfly.

About Naseem Javed

Naseem Javed is widely recognised as a world-authority on global image strategies and corporate nomenclature issues. Author of Naming for Power, Naseem introduced The Laws of Corporate Naming in 80s and currently is lecturing on global cyber branding and the ICANN's new gtld platform. Email Naseem at .
Let's do Biz