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Guest Column
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, firstly, 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. 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 organizational units keep falling and
crumbling. Simplifying in general terms, the most identifiable business
problem today is the lack of funds which 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.
Auto industry has damaged hundreds of brands year after year as their
image and name identities was never allowed to mature enough and most
ended up in some quick alpha-numeric 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?
But first an open discussion about pushing of the dying old business
models is needed before it has to be completely re-invented. So long the
boardroom-fear-factor inhibits the critical questions and so long
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 are not lined-up
outside their doors and panic will surly 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, opening of
such debates and reforms will bring teams together and encourage the
next quantum leap.
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 very higher
notch where more advanced strategies are the minimum new-pre-requisites.
Today being reliant upon panic cut backs or sudden surges is not the
answer. Re-conversions, re-emersions, and re-evaluation leading to a
total corporate metamorphosis is at play and its time to plan out of the
old cocoon into a new butterfly.
Naseem Javed, widely recognized 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. nj@njabc.com
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