Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is not from technocratic ideas or the notion that we are liberating more of the economy, but by growing entrepreneurship. The city will take the most socially responsible, entrepreneurial start-ups and act as an agent to grow them (with an agreement that they remain in Wellington, of course) and create the capital flows to get them funded. I realize there is Grow Wellington already, but their ambit will be shifted.
So, itâs economic growth from the bottomâup.
Then (italics added for this post):
The clusters have naturally formed but they can get so much stronger. If the city is being them, then there is no reason Wellington cannot become internationally known for them. I think in this last week I have shown that borders mean very little to me, and anyone who wants to be mayor in the 2010s needs to have a similar mindset. We are not competing just for national resources, but global ones; and by being part of the global community, we might start bridging more communities and getting some greater global understanding. The nationâstate as it was understood in the 20th century is dying as a concept, and governments have only themselves to blame. Things are shifting to the individualâcommunity level, and you are right, real things happen when it is people acting at the coal face. Those who distance themselves will not be equipped for this century.
The day the current mayor, Kerry Prendergast, announced her intention to stand for a fourth term, I was asked by a few media colleagues what I thought. The wittiest reply I gave to Salient, as it was an email interview, and I seem to be cheekier in writing than I am in speaking. I wonât spoil it yet, but letâs just say one learns an awful lot from television.
This morning was a very good start to the day, giving a guest lecture at my Alma Mater, Victoria University, thanks to my friend Helen Baxter, who has begun teaching there. In fact, I taught out of the same building in 2000 when the campus was shared with Massey University, and the A on the front was not mounted backwards (typography students must have taken note by now).
One thing I hit upon, and I donât think I have shared with readers, is the concept of personal branding taking on corporate behaviours. We know that corporations and countries have been swapping roles a bit in the 1990s (Wally Olins wrote a book on it, called Trading Identities), but I donât think it has been properly addressed at the personal sphere (corrections welcome).
We have corporations trying to look mean and responsive, and speak with a personal voiceâthe One principles that Stefan Engeseth has talked about, and the idea of one-to-one from Christian Grönroos. They are trying to look like individuals, so the person in charge of the Tweetstream is the âvoiceâ of the organization.
Meanwhile, people are becoming aware of branding themselves, of differentiating who they are, and finding the right things to align with in order to make themselves employable. Of course, such efforts must still remain authentic, as we can see through the spin, but it would not surprise me if the nascent ideas of personal branding in the 1990s become formalized in to whole courses on personal brand management.
I refer not just to styling, of course, but making sure embarrassing stuff is taken off Facebook (I believe my words were along the lines of, âBy all means, party and show youâre human. But photos of you doing a powerchuck: maybe notâ), of figuring out what your vision is from a very early stage, of engaging with your audiences, and, if I may be so bold, living your brand as part of living your life.
The cynic in me recognizes that last phrase sounds dodgy because it cheapens the whole experience of life into a brand event, which is not precisely what I mean. But it is important to have some idea of a personal direction in mind and doing things that are compatible with that. This is, in some respects, no different to some of the self-help claptrap out there, explained in corporate branding language as opposed to spiritual fulfilment.
However, itâs not altogether a bad way to think. Iâm willing to bet some of us have done exactly this, perhaps unconsciously or informally. We all have some purpose, some raison dâĂȘtre, and whether we like thinking about it in branding terms or some other method is up to us. Brand, at least, provides a framework and some boxes to tick, and if they help people get a personal advantage and get the job of their dreams, then why not?
Note to self: Keeley Hawes jokes work a lot better with heaps of Brits or Anglophiles in the room.
Rumour has it that the new Saabâa small car (finally)âwill resemble the ur-Saab, the 92. In fact, inside Saab, it has the codename 92.
Where have I heard this one before? I know. Stefan Engesethâs Detective Marketing, 2001 edition. And from what I understand, since in 1999 I could not read much Swedish, it featured in the original Swedish edition, too.
While I am no fan of retro design, a modern one that has strong inspiration from Saabâs roots could go down well with the marketâespecially if the new 9-1 model had some advanced, non-fossil-fuel powertrains.
A car tied to Saabâs roots as an airplane manufacturer could reinvigorate passion for the brand in the same way as the Jaguar mascot unveiling under John Egan in the 1980s. And new boss Victor Muller, CEO of Spyker, has wasted no time getting Saab loyalists excited about the brand again. He has not set his sights on brand-new customers: he wants the old Saab buyers back.
While it might have Opel underpinnings, it at least gets Saab into the European premium compact car game, one which GM denied it, probably due to overlap with its mainstream brands. It was an opportunity missed as BMW, Audi and others broke in to the compact and supermini game.
I know at least one Swede who finds Mullerâs promises exciting, and I sincerely hope to be proven wrong when I expressed doubts about bringing a 40,000-sales-per-year company back from the brink. Below is the announcement of Spyker finalizing its purchase (via Detective Marketing).
When he talks about âDNAâ, Muller really means brand: it will rediscover and redefine that brand and its entrepreneurial spirit, using it to fuel the corporate culture, and having that drive product quality, R&D and other functions. If he succeeds in reaching his 100,000-per-year goal, then we can say that brand loyalty was a huge driver.
His first announcement alone has been praised, Saabâs 100-day plan gives distributors and loyalists some certainty, and the folks in this video actually look enthusedâalready this is not like a tired, Rover-style attempt at getting the company back on its feet, even if the annual salesâ figures are far worse than what the English company had prior to its collapse.
As of tonight, the Beyond Branding Blog, where I first cut my teeth blogging, is no more.
The posts are still there, but no further comments can be entered on to the site. The nearly four years of posts remain as an archive of some of our branding thought of that period.
The blog had a huge number of fans in its day, but as each one of us went to our own blogs, there seemed little need to keep it going. Chris Macrae and I were the last two holding the fort in late 2005. Since January 2006, no new posts have been entered on to the site. No new comments have come in a year.
Googleâs announcement that it would end FTP support for blogs in May spurred me into action, and I advised the Medinge Groupâs membership this morning that I would take it off the Blogger service.
I altered the opening message to reflect the latest change.
I was very proud of the blog, because it was the first one I was involved in. It was also the first I customized to match the look and feel of the rest of the Beyond Branding site, which I designed in 2003. While the design is one from the early 2000s, it has not dated as much as I had expected. Beyond Brandingâs core message of transparency and integrity remains valid, so while the blog is no longer updated, I think the book remains relevant to the 2010s.
I was surprised to learn that Toyota still has not issued a worldwide recall of its troublesome Prius NHW30 model, even though one had gone out in New Zealand.
In laymanâs terms, the brakes allegedly donât work when you want them to. In more complex terms, the software has trouble distinguishing between different types of braking, and drivers may experience a delay in âpedal feelâ.
I was always a bit sceptical about the recalls over the unintended acceleration, given that the last time I heard those words, they were in relation to a falsified report from CBSâs 60 Minutes, a show known to me for making up stories (Killian memoranda, anyone?). Hearing them again, I thought it was just another excuse for the clumsy driving of a few individuals who couldnât figure out where the accelerator was (which was what happened with Audi in the US). But it seems this matter has been around for a long time, and recalls were being done even last year.
But the Prius matter, something that has not come under a global recall, appears more serious than carpets getting in the way, which is the problem behind the unintended acceleration complaints. AFP reports:
The Transport Ministry has received some 80 complaints in February about malfunctions in the brake system of the latest model of the flagship Prius, the Tokyo Shimbun reported without quoting sources.
Five of them were actual crashes in which the drivers claimed the brakes did not work properly, the daily said, adding that the ministry would urge the company to launch an investigation.
It was not possible to immediately confirm the report.
Already Toyota has been berated by top management for going too far from its core principles by its honorary chairman, Shoichiro Toyoda. The company had been trying to sell big cars in China during the financial crisis, and spent a good part of the 2000s developing large pick-up trucks for the US market. Bloomberg reported last June that a meeting was called:
Shoichiro scolded the president [Katsuaki Watanabe] for being so anxious to boost sales and profits that heâd let Toyota emulate now bankrupt General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC. Toyota had become addicted to big, expensive cars and trucks and had forgotten the customersâ need to save money, Shoichiro said, according to the personâs account.
In other words, Toyotaâs culture has been suffering, and we all know what happens when salesâ volume and profit are pursued at the expense of quality or engineering. (Ask Mercedes-Benz.)
Toyota may be an example where too many niches were created, simply to get consumers in the showroomsâand now thatâs coming to bite it on the rear end. Having too many niches has one immediate drawback: consumers no longer understand the structure of the range. Is the small car the iQ, Ist, Vitz, Porte, Belta or Passo? Do I move from that to a Corolla, Auris, Blade, Corolla Rumion, Probox, Raum, RAV4 or wotsis?
The mistakes are understandable in some ways. Toyota had to create more new models as attention spans shortened. While a car might be able to be presented as ânewâ for two years in the Japanese market 10 years ago, consumers expect something else within half a year. To fund this appetite, the company looked for ways to maximize profits in every marketâwith the US one fuelled by bigger and bigger vehicles. It had to take costs out of cars, especially with electronics (by combining as many functions on to one system as possible) and architectureâand it may be these areas where the Prius suffered.
But no company can really afford to pursue too many nichesâMazda overextended itself in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as did Nissan in the early 1990sâwhen times are tough. Toyota should have forecast a downturn, as many business experts did. The question that the company needs to ask itself is: what made it so blind in the 2000s?
Even ignoring the idea of unintended acceleration for now, Toyota ends the lunar year on a low. It will always have its diehard followersâthere are many models not affected by these issuesâbut the company must refocus its brand for the New Year toward its traditional principles. There is every sign the company knows that, with Akio Toyoda, the founderâs grandson, now at the helm, and doing spot checks down on the production floor. (Iâd rather Toyota have someone like that than a âcelebrity CEOâ who gives good press. The era of the celebrity boss is over for now.) It is simply a pity that the company did not get on to its mounting problemsâthere are claims that unintended acceleration reports began surfacing with Toyotaâs Lexus ES model as early as 2004âsooner.
Few buy a Toyota because the cars make oneâs heart beat faster. They are a default choice for many people who want the simplest conveyance from A to B. Akioâs job has been reminding his own team of that, and reinstituting the âToyota Wayâ and kaizen, terms that many of us who went to business school during a certain era recall.
I will have more from my Swedish and French tour soon, but I will say that I had a marvellous time in Malmö and Lund on my first day in Sweden (especially getting a feel for Lundâs environmental programmes), Kristianstad and Hassleholm on my second, and on my return to Stockholm. A big-up to Stefan Engeseth and all the marketing and theatre groups who made me feel like a visiting dignitary. Paris, from where I write, has been wonderful to me once again, and it was wonderful joining my colleagues at the Medinge Group for Brands with a Conscience 2010.
I also owe Facebook visitors an explanation on why I do not have a profile picture. The simple answer is that Facebook does not work, and I guess no one at Facebook has tested the software. Again.
I select a photo from my album, right? The link I use is the one below:
Then, presumably, I choose the photograph I want:
I then ask Facebook to make this my profile picture with the link down the bottom right:
To which Facebook confirms my choice:
Only thing is, this doesnât work. Hereâs Facebookâs response to that confirmation:
Not particularly useful. Sure enough, it removed my prior photograph and this is what I see:
We have become so used to using Facebook as our badges or masks, showing the world who we are. The inability to do something that everyone else can makes one feel very incomplete. In some cases, we feel Facebook is an extension of our personal brands.
Speaking of disability, Pete tells me that if one uses Opera, one cannot post or comment on Vox. Why am I not surprised?
Preparing for one of my Swedish speeches, I came across this, which I delivered in India in December 2008:
If you ever get to read Michael Lewisâs writings about the US financial industry, youâll learn that a lot of people within there do not know what they are doing or why they are doing it. There is just a series of coded behaviours and no one remembers the reasons behind it âŠ
If you can separate what is being done because of learned behavioursâor should I say misbehavioursâand what is being done because the principles are correct, you have already come a long way in dealing with international business.
The only way to break the cycle is to communicate with people, and get them as passionate about your brand as you are about it. Because you might just discover that despite more entrenched companies operating in your industry, they may well be helmed by management who do not care or do not remember just what their brands stand for.
This is exactly where âhaving council experienceâ has got Wellington. It is a crash course in learning misbehaviours. And the more you learn, the less relevant you become to Wellingtonians as a representative of the city.
This is why I am heading over (on my own money, I should add): to get even more world-class examples and create even more networks should I be elected mayor.
International think-tank announces seventh annual Brands with a Conscience awards
The Medinge Group (www.medinge.org), an international think-tank on branding and business, today releases its seventh annual Brands with a Conscience list. In the Groupâs opinion, these diverse organizations show that it is possible for brands to succeed as they contribute to the betterment of society by sustainable, socially responsible and humanistic behaviour.
In announcing the winners, Stanley Moss, CEO of the Medinge Group said, âThis yearâs awards indicate that principles of compassionate branding are being applied globally, by businesses large and small, across categories from finance to retail to energy, in established and emerging economies, in new markets. Today, brands with conscience can work to build bridges of understanding between nations and societies.â
Ian Ryder, a founding director of the Medinge Group commented, âWinning a BWAC award is more than public recognitionâit is a clear statement of your organizationâs values, one of the most powerful competitive differentiators in existence!â
The international collective of brand practitioners meets annually in August at a secluded location outside Stockholm, Sweden, and collaborate on the list, judging nominees on principles of humanity and ethics, rather than financial worth. The Brands with a Conscience list is shaped around criteria including evidence of the human implications of the brand and considering whether the brand takes risks in line with its beliefs. Evaluations are made based on reputation, self-representation, history, direct experience, contacts with individuals within the organizations, media and analysts and an assessment of the expressed values of sustainability.
Three years ago the group added a unique category commendation, the Colin Morley Award, recognizing exceptional achievement by an individual or NGO. Mr Morley, a member of the Medinge Group, died in the London Underground bombings on July 7, 2005. The award commemorates his visionary work in humanistic branding.
For 2010, the group has singled out the following organizations as Brands with a Conscience:
Alibaba Group/China
Co-op Bank/UK
Marks & Spencer/UK
Merci/France
Pictet et Cie./Switzerland
SAP/Germany
Selco Solar Pvt. Ltd./India
The Colin Morley Award is given to:
Muna Abu Sulayman/Saudi Arabia
Detailed descriptions and web links follow:
Alibaba Group www.alibaba.com
A young Asian brand built on the idea that it must exist as an experience to elevate their own or other peopleâs level of happiness. Jack Ma founded Alibaba in his cramped apartment with 17 colleagues. A decade later, Alibaba Group is the largest ecommerce company in China, with 15,000 employees and more than 100 million users. It also has a B2B unit with a community of more than 42 million registered users from more than 240 countries and regions. This year Alibaba will unveil partnership plans for Grameen China, a project to significantly increase access to micro-credit for poverty alleviation in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia. (Medinge named Grameen Telecom a Brand with a Conscience in 2005, and its parent Grameen Bank was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2008.) Employing the Grameen Bank microcredit model, the group hopes to impact more than 72,000 lives in its first five years.
Ava Hakim, IBM exec and member of the Medinge Group, remarked that Alibaba is a business âbuilt on trust, one which respects intellectual property rights and will remove sites which infringe upon the rights of others.â She also was impressed by the six core values named, which they have successfully applied to their business.
Co-op Bank www.co-operativebank.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/1193206375355,CFSweb/Page/Bank
The Co-op, founded in 1872, from its origins has focused on serving local communities. Today the Co-op is the only UK clearing bank to publish an ethical statement. Medinge director Patrick Harris lauded the brand, noting that âsince 1992 Co-op has been building its ethical stance by asking its membership to vote on issues such as animal welfare, human rights and ecological impact.â It claims to have turned away over ÂŁ900 million in loans to businesses not in keeping with the Co-op Ethical Policy. The commitment to improve their food businessâ ethical and environmental performance is in line with expectations arrived at in consultation with 100,000 members. Co-Op was double-nominated this year, for both its banking and food businesses.
Marks & Spencer plana.marksandspencer.com
In her nomination, Medinge director Erika Uffindell emphasized the focused approach to climate change, waste and sustainability that Marks & Spencer have adopted. With their Plan A campaign, the company established 100 commitments to achieve in five years, clear targets for their business, actionable by people across the group. Uffindell finds the brand very accessible and involving: they have engaged 17,231 customers in making pledges to support climate change and a commitment to sustainability.
Merci www.merci-merci.com
Merci is a 1500 mÂČ shop for fashion and home furniture based in Paris, France. All sales profits are destined for women and children in Madagascar. The store sells new or artist-reworked donated goods and has had a huge impact. Some goods are sent directly to Madagascar. Merciâs website is especially minimal and modest, yet effectively states the storeâs mission. In his nomination, Medingeâs Philippe Mihailovich expressed the hope that Merciâs actions influence others to follow.
Pictet et Cie. www.pictet.com
This Swiss-based private bank started in 1805. Medinge director Nicholas Ind cited two significant aspects of the brand.
First, its focus on sustainable development and the redirection of funds in this direction by encouraging the maximum investment in sustainable areas for a given risk: the bankâs management of a water fund, launched in 2000, which has become the worldâs largest of its kind, with over âŹ4 billion in assets; and a Clean Energy fund. The second aspect is the Prix Pictetâthe worldâs first international prize dedicated to photography and sustainabilityâmandated to encourage the use and power of photography to communicate vital messages to a global audience. This yearâs theme is Earth.
SAP www.sap.com/about/SAP-sustainability
Today, many B2Bs are silently doing a fantastic job to adapt to our global challenges. Medingeâs chairman Thomas Gad nominated Germanyâs SAP, a software company whom he admires because âthey actually help other companies to create usable metrics in their CSR and sustainability.â Over the past 10 years, SAP has been recognized by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for upholding ethical, environmental, social, and governance values in products and services.
Selco Solar Pvt. Ltd. www.selco-india.com/index.html
Medinge CEO Stanley Moss described Selco as an interesting small business, 14 years old, who supply solar power solutions, mostly in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. They rely on microfinance loans, employ 140 people, and have done around 100,000 installations of small to large size. They are partially funded by Grameen. Moss was impressed by their cradle-to-grave attitude about product, longevity in the marketplace after a tough start-up, good work on the individual level, private ownership, and the understanding of need for innovation.
The 2010 Colin Morley Award to Muna Abu Sulayman helwa.maktoob.com/%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A1_%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%AA_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B6%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D9%85%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%843966-%D9%85%D9%86%D9%89_%D8%A3%D8%A8%D9%88_%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86.htm
Simon Nicholls, a member of Medinge, nominated Muna Abu Sulayman, who receives 2010âs Colin Morley Award, for excellence by an individual or NGO, acknowledging their contribution to the betterment of society through sustainable, socially responsible and humanistic behaviour. In giving this award, the Medinge Group recognizes Munaâs outstanding work in educational development, poverty alleviation and strategic philanthropy; as Executive Director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, developing and implementing operations for humanitarian assistance across the globe; her role as the first woman in Saudi Arabia to be appointed by the United Nations Development Programme as a Goodwill Ambassador; and for exceptional reporting as co-host on popular MBC-TV social programme Kalam Nawaem, in particular her advocacy of rights for women. As a public and media personality, she speaks about issues relating to Arab society, media, building bridges of understanding between east and west. Since 1997, Ms Abu Sulayman has served as lecturer on American literature at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. She frequently appears as a panelist at the Davos World Economic Forum, Jewish Economic Forum, C-100 of the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institute Conferences and other venues.
Patrick Harris, a Medinge director, added, âIn the list of 2010 Brands with a Conscience winners, we can see a clear focus on commerce and finance. This is no accident. Instead, this is a sign of the worldâs markets responding to the need for responsible and inter-generational business activities.â
Regarding his nomination of Co-op Bank, Harris said, âThe UKâs Co-operative Bank is a prime example of a highly principled business within a traditional competitive landscape. The Co-op are being recognized by Medinge for their values-led business focus and for the impact that they bring to a beleaguered sector.â
Jack Yan, a director of Medinge said, âAgain, the Medinge Groupâs international influence has resulted in a global list of winners, all of which practise our ideals of humanistic branding. Iâm thrilled weâve recognized our first Chinese and Saudi Arabian winners this year.
âIn particular, Selco Solar of India shows a commitment to green energy that is very poignant in the 2010s. Just because fuel prices have dropped from their 2008 highs does not mean that the energy crisis is over, a fact the Medinge Group recognizes.â
Medinge Group member Ava Maria Hakim commented, âThe message to the worldâand Alibabaâs 100 million usersâis that Chinaâs Alibaba Group has set a global brand and business benchmark that goes beyond corporate social responsibility to building an integrity-based business driven by long-term vision. Alibaba Group is a Brand with a Conscience of the future.
Erika Uffindell, a director of Medinge, commented, âMarks & Spencer is a great example of an organization living by its beliefs. M&S has been recognized by Medinge for creating the innovative Plan Aâan initiative that involves customers and partners in their ambition to help combat climate change and reduce waste. Plan A focuses on five key areas: climate change, waste, sustainable raw materials, health and being a flair partner. Marks & Spencerâs ability to involve their stakeholders in such a simple and accessible way has been reflected in their significant achievements to date.â
Nicholas Ind, a founding director of Medinge stated, âThis year, the Medinge Groupâs Brands with a Conscience awards shows impressive diversity and reflects the commitment that brand owners are demonstrating around the globe to building organizations that meet the needs of all parts of society. The 2010 winners come from the UK, China, India, Switzerland, Germany, France and Saudi Arabia.â
Special thanks to Medingeâs 2010 BWAC nominating committee
Paulina Borsook
Thomas Gad
Ava Hakim
Patrick Harris
Pierre dâHuy
Nicholas Ind
Philippe Mihailovich
Sergei Mitrofanov
Stanley Moss, chairman
Simon Nicholls
Anette Rosencreutz
Erika Uffindell
Jack Yan
Rick Klauâs action today in restoring Vincentâs Social Media Consortium blog got me putting things into perspective.
We know sites like Blogger and Vox are free, but what happens when they fail? Vox, the Six Apart blogging service, had been where I had put my personal postsâas well as a bunch of private ones inaccessible to the general publicâfor three years. I built up good friendships there, before social networking became everyday.
Yet when that service failed, I went from Vox evangelist to someone who became acutely aware of the siteâs failings. Those who dissed Vox months before I did, and whose complaints I thought little of, suddenly seemed to be visionaries.
I donât think things were handled brilliantly. While I was still there and keeping up my rate of complaints about their service being dodgy, I got replies. The minute I left, that was it.
âPhew, we donât have to talk to that nut again.â
All the claims about wanting to get to the bottom of the problem suddenly seemed insincere. And itâs worth noting that the bug I experiencedâwhere a compose screen would take between 15 minutes and 48 hours to loadâis still present.
They had lost quite a few users, as I had noted, and itâs obviously something deep within their code.
The damage had been done.
Meanwhile, Google hasnât exactly helped, either. While Vox had me pursuing its problems for six weeks, Google was damaging its brand for six months.
When Vincentâs blog was first blocked in July, the company promised two-day reviews. These promises were all broken. Iâm sure Vincent and I, and many other bloggers who contributed to the Social Media Consortium, would have loved to have known why. As it turned out, the blogâs reviewers agreed with the computerâs decision to render the blog inaccessible, and then to delete it altogether.
By the time I got to the Google support forums to argue the case in November, there were more broken promisesâas well as downright obstruction by someone who probably gets his kicks from it.
It got me wondering: people who do things in Googleâs name arenât very intelligent, if they canât grasp some of the basics of their role.
They were also not particularly courteous or understanding. As the frustration grew, things in my world got un-Googled. My Firefox default search engines became Cuil or Bing. I shifted my blogs away, including this one, or simply stopped blogging at Blogger. (The Medinge Groupâs press room went to Wordpress late last year.) While once upon a time I would recommend Vox, Blogger and Wordpress to people depending on their blogging needs, I would only now say, âWordpressâ.
I never was sold on Gmailâand I notice friends are beginning to have problems with that service, including being locked out. People using Gmail to commit fraud and use Lucireâs name were allowed to continue to do so, even after we reported them. Even before this incident, but within the same calendar year, I discovered that Adsense was a load of rubbish.
All this began making me think: Google has jumped the shark.
If someone like Googleâs Rick Klauâwho, if you read his blog, is an incredibly intelligent guy, not to mention an incredibly courteous oneâhad known of our case earlier, Iâm sure we wouldnât have allowed the Google brand to become so tarnished in our minds.
Rick fixed things in 24 hours and saved the day as far as the Social Media Consortium was concerned. Heâs also given himself a lot of good karmaâIâve seen other blogs heâs gone and restored in the last few days. But itâs a couple of days of Google goodness versus six months of its own brand-wrecking, through either bad service done in its name, bad products, or not having much of a human touch.
Given that I was one of the first people to use Google in the late 1990s, and abandon AltaVista, Infoseek and the others in its favour, itâs a disappointing end to the 2000s.
The trust I once might have had for Google has evaporated into the ether. It would be stupid to say that I would never use the companyâs services againâyou can hardly avoid itâbut Iâll be thinking twice about anything new that it introduces.
The internet leadership vacuum is becoming a reality, because I donât see Facebook or Twitter dominating (especially not the former, with its questionable practices). And that means a new company can fill the void in the 2010s. It could even be a New Zealand oneâor, better still, a Wellington one.
Thereâs enough world-class thinking here which can be used as a base. And, if elected this year as Wellingtonâs mayor, Iâd like to build on that and see if we can create an online world-beater.
I know of a couple of Kiwi ventures already that have world-beating capabilities, currently seeking capital. The ânext Googleâ might be among them, if we can make sure that they can grow the way they should.