Category: Strategy

After two days at the B Corp Summit in Amsterdam, I gained the inspiration, the energy, and the motivation to become a corporate sustainability activist. Activist? Oh, that sounds uncomfortable.

Yes, that sounds like stepping out of the comfort zone.

But change is only possible when there’s friction. There’s no business on a dying planet, so we better embrace and deal with the change. A systemic and an individual change. A shift of mindset, from a short-term profit-focused one to a long-term balance that puts the environment, people, and profit on the same level.

Let’s not underestimate the importance of standing up, both as businesses and as individuals. This climate emergency requires courage, leadership, collaboration, trust and empowerment from all of us. We’re the last generation of business that can do something about it. What we have to do in the next years is monumental. And your customers are expecting that you do something about it.

The B Corp certification is a great starting point for any business. No matter if it’s a small, medium company or a large corporation. It’s an inspiring ecosystem and community of game-changing brands that are doing an incredible job in balancing the triple bottom line of planet, people, and profit. B Corp community includes brands like Ecoalf, Tony’s, Goodwings, Ben&Jerry’s, Innocent Drinks, Patagonia, Fairphone, Veritas, Triodos Bank, HolaLuz, and so on.

A total of 3.000 B Corps worldwide united towards a common goal: to be the leading force of good. To move from an extractive “take-make-waste” business model to generative companies.

We all know that businesses are not perfect, and we will be making mistakes along the way. But as Jay Coen Gilbert, B Lab co-founder, mentioned in his final speech of the B Corp Summit, “we have to start walking and learn by doing.”

We are business strategists, we are innovators, we are creatives, we are digital experts. We have the tools and the resources to be heard. To build local consciousness. To recruit more agents of change. To challenge businesses as usual. To inspire industries that can force the needed regulations.

Come join us on this. Things don’t just change. You have to make them change.

A few days ago, as a result of a work meeting in Logroño -the cradle of Spanish wine- I had the chance to discover a unique and iconic place, the Bar Soriano on Laurel Street. The place does not stand out for its lengthy menu, nor for its architecture or for the Michelin stars that do not hang on its walls. Since 1972, Bar Soriano offers a single dish: the grilled mushroom tapa. And this is how it has forged a reputation that transcends borders, which fills the place at all times with locals and pilgrims who arrive with their Lonely Planet guide in their hands.

I keep a similar memory of the night that my colleague Hidetoshi took me to dinner at his favorite restaurant in Tokyo: a tepanyaki grill serving only chicken skewers. Of course, the repertoire included all the hidden parts of the poor chicken in skewer format… ideal for someone who does not eat giblets. The queue in the place was remarkably long but luckily, my friend knew the restaurant enough to book weeks before our arrival in order to ensure a place in the bar.

I deeply admire these places that have bet for a single gastronomic option, therefore throwing away an endless range of possibilities. I cannot stop thinking about the analogies in the world of branding, where there are very few cases of brands that have kept the focus on a single product throughout their history.

Surely Brompton, the quintessential brand of folding bicycles, is one of the most paradigmatic examples. They have been manufacturing and improving a single model for more than 40 years outside London, overseeing even the smallest detail and devoting the necessary amount of time to launch any small innovation. In 2012 we visited the factory to discuss a special collaboration with Will Butler-Adams, CEO of the brand. I remember that during the tour of the facilities, he introduced us to an older man, sitting in a corner. He seemed isolated, thoughtful, fully involved in a dilemma that only he knew. He was Andrew Ritchie, founder and creator of Brompton who confessed to us that he had spent more than a year dedicated to improving a single part of his bicycle.

As a brand, dedicating to a single product means giving up all others, means playing 100% of the business to that product. It also means putting all the knowledge and effort into improving that product, making it almost perfect, without being distracted by any potential line extensions. Finding the focus of a brand is complex, but it is even more difficult to bet a 100 % on your vision and not give in to temptations and pressure from investors, advisors and consultants.

The pressure on results leads many organizations to try and save on production, replace original materials with cheaper ones of dubious longevity, open franchises that roughly reproduce the product of the original branch, or think that the creator can easily pass on his knowledge and dedication to newly landed managers with an MBA on his Linkedin.

Jiro Ono is the nonagenarian owner of a small restaurant in the Ginza subway station in Tokyo, considered to be the best sushi restaurant in the world. 50 years after the opening of the Sukiyabashi, awarded with three Michelin stars and admired by great chefs like Ferran Adrià, Jiro states: “At my age, I have not yet reached perfection”. You know, it takes a lifetime to do something properly.

We can all agree that everyone enjoys a good story; whether it’s telling it or listening to one…proof of it is the irrational online-streaming binge watching most of us have inexplicably given into at one time or another.

During the last 5 years or so, “storytelling” has become a buzz word in the brand-building industry. An understandable trend given the fast-paced/ constantly-changing/ difficult-to-get-a-hold-of market reality we live in. Stories help things make sense, they give a full-circle argumentation to our choices, and have the quality to make what is being offered (a.k.a. products/services) feel more authentic; either because a) they are put in a context we can relate to, b) the story is built around a rising tension we connect with, c) because we feel attracted to the way (form) it is being delivered, or d) all of the above.

As in any genre, to build a good brand story you need good material to build it on; otherwise it just won’t hold up. A good example of a brand that last year built its storytelling over shaky ground and immediately suffered the consequences: the infamous Fyre Festival. It just goes to show that brand storytelling is (for now) the best and harshest test for any brand; it separates – relatively quickly – the ones with true content, from the empty shells. It can even take you out of the market, because as consumers, we are developing a keen sense for quickly detecting and rejecting trivial brand stories. Brand storytelling is ultimately the sword of Damocles in modern day branding.

So in the end, I personally feel happy and relieved for this trend; it’s making brands look inward, try to understand their “why”, think hard to define their story arch, and sometimes during the process even question and reformulate their business outlook to make it connect better or stronger with their customer’s needs and lives. Which should be a good thing, no?