People are changing. Business environments are changing. Brand management is no longer the holy grail. Building business organisations (and profits) are no longer simply about building brand equity and loyalty – its about building customer equity. The Harvard Business Review has already urged business managers to view their brands in a new light: they are not your raisons d’être that you must defend at all costs. They are simply tools for creating long term relationships with people.[1]
This is an important point that even business giants get wrong. General Motors for example ignored people’s need for smaller cars, instead sticking to its established, gas-guzzling brands. Today the company has finally had to bow to the reality that its brands, however powerful, had to adapt to the needs of customers. The balance of power has shifted. Mark aims to put people back at the centre of business
Mark reports on people – on our interactions with our environment, our ideas, why, how and with whom we are prepared to do business – in short, where we are at. Mark doesn’t view people as “the market” or as an LSM. We will report the research of course and we will run the numbers. But we won’t lose sight of the people behind those numbers, or that people make brands work, and not the other way around.
We want to look at people’s interests and how business leverage these for engagement, for innovation, for creating value for everyone involved. People also run brands, so Mark will look at how to do this effectively, and responsibly. Finally Mark will celebrate local creativity to a global audience.
Mark is managed by editor Herman Manson. Manson has a long history with digital media and publishing, having founded the award winning website media.toolbox in 1998, and until recently being the publisher of BRAND magazine, an another award winning title he helped found.
Contact us at hellomarklives at gmail dot com
[1] Harvard Business Review – Customer Centered Brand Management
