JackYan.com
Jack and Aston Martin V8 Vantage Monaco street signs
Jack Yan: the Persuader blog
  Click here to go to home pageWhat I stand forMy stuffWhat others have recently saidMeet some of the coolest folks I knowDrop me a line Visit my workplace
> My stuff > The Persuader Blog


30.1.06

Dr Martin Luther King on branding (sort of) 

I realize some recent posts have featured quotations from others, but I hope readers will permit me one more that inspired me, which I heard today on the Matrix, a local radio station broadcasting alternative (usually left-wing) . Regardless of one’s political bent, the words of Dr Jr are poignant (my emphasis):

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense of . I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of . We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, and , are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of , extreme , and are incapable of being conquered …
   A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of and . With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual of investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just …’


   While Dr King was speaking of Vietnam, I took these words as particularly relevant in today’s , where some are used to fool people. Many countries that exploit, for instance, are guilty of the above. Materialism has come before —and sadly, I have noticed this seep through into everyday life in some industrialized countries.
   When are worth less than financial ones—something that I experienced with one of our freelancers when a usually acceptable remedy to a mistake we made was not enough—then I have to wonder about dealing with her compatriots. But I do not talk of isolated cases: too many companies have been placing profits before humanity, of money before —and where will that get them?
   They might argue that it gets them a better or a for , but financial arguments hold little sway with me. Because in the 21st century, it has become very hard for the following to occur or work and, therefore, a share price to be sustainable if its increase is gained by improper means:

   (a) convinces people to buy something;
   (b) do not research the background of a product or service, or the company offering it;
   (c) lack the strength to tell others of an organization’s misdeeds through an effective ;
   (d) first- and increasingly second-world consumers do not seek when purchasing products;
   (e) need not be sympathetic to the causes and beliefs of their .
   I believe that there are enough of us, when well informed, who will look at an organization with indignation when we discover, for example, Wal-mart (and others) refusing to sign a pledge to honour the law in which asks companies to pay maternity leave; and that we will vote with our dollar to spend elsewhere.
   What is perhaps sad, however, is that Dr King gave his speech 40 years ago, and as a human race we are only just beginning to “get it”. And there are plenty of corporations out there which observe the national holiday in the US, pretending to commemorate the life of a great man, all while going against his very beliefs (universal, one would hope) about human dignity and .

Del.icio.us tags: branding | brands | sweat shops | Martin Luther King | profiteering | human rights
Post a Comment  Links to this post

Comments:
RIP Coretta Scott King 1927–2006.  
Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

 

 

Note

Entries from 2006 to the end of 2009 were done on the Blogger service. As of January 1, 2010, this blog has shifted to a Wordpress installation, with the latest posts here.
   With Blogger ceasing to support FTP publishing on May 1, I have decided to turn these older pages in to an archive, so you will no longer be able to enter comments. However, you can comment on entries posted after January 1, 2010.


Quick links

Surf to the online edition of Lucire
  • More ramblings at the Lucire Insider blog
  • The Medinge Group
  • Jack Yan for Mayor
  • My Facebook page
  • Follow me on Twitter
  • My Vkontakte page
  • Book me for public speaking
  • Contact JY&A Consulting on business projects
  • Check out fonts from JY&A Fonts
  • Add feeds




    Add feed to Bloglines

    Individual JY&A and Medinge Group blogs

  • Lucire: Insider
  • Summer Rayne Oakes
  • The Medinge Group press room
  • Detective Marketing
  • Amanda van Kuppevelt
  • Delineate Brandhouse
  • Paolo Vanossi
  • Nigel Dunn
  • Pameladevi Govinda
  • Endless Road
  • Avidiva news
  • Johnnie Moore’s Weblog
  • Steal This Brand Too
  • The Beyond Branding Blog
  • Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts
  • Partum Intelligendo
  • Right Side up
  • Headshift
  • Goiaba Brazilian Music
  • Jack Yan on Tumblr (brief addenda)

  • +

    Previous posts

  • Designers who blog don’t do commodity logos
  • The top 10 under-reported stories of 2005
  • Even the virtual world has borders
  • How to restore a workable democracy
  • A billion dollars of nothingness
  • Top 10 fastest growing brands online
  • UN to back $100 laptop
  • The good, the missed, the misplaced, and one to wa...
  • Staying competitive—and staying alive
  • Instinct rules marketing


  • Donate

    If you wish to help with my hosting costs, please feel free to donate.