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John Naughton in Monday's Guardian wrote about the WikiLeaks saga and concluded his piece with a statement about the new reality.

"But politicians now face an agonising dilemma. The old, mole-whacking approach won't work. WikiLeaks does not depend only on web technology. Thousands of copies of those secret cables - and probably of much else besides - are out there, distributed by peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent. Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behaviour; or they shut down the internet. Over to them.

While most of the talk has centered around the massive political ramifications of the leaks, there's also the corporate impact. Wikileaks was supposedly primed and ready to leak some very damaging internal documents from a leading bank, but It remains to be seen if this now happens.

Irrespective, of the future of the founder of WikiLeaks or of the organization itself, the trend towards greater transparency is out there as are the means to make it happen.

Corporations and their brands will have to assume a position, which will have a significant impact on their relationship with consumers in a more open, dynamic and human world.

Here are some thoughts that brands need to consider in the light of WikiLeaks

1. What do they open up and what do they close?

2. By operating a "lock down" mentality- do they risk damaging their brand?

3. How do they become more transparent?

4. What tools would they use to display and demonstrate this transparency?

5. In what ways might greater transparency provide competitive advantage?

6. How do they control employees- what can they say and where can they say it?

7. Response- How do you and should you respond to rumors?

8. How would you respond to a massive leak that reveals multiple issues?

I am assuming some of these questions might be part of a social media audit or an audit by a PR company, but I imagine they might be looking at things through  different lenses, pre-Wikileaks; one might be a single issue crisis management and the other might simply be the the competitive pressure to engage in social media and the new rule sets that surround it.

A WikiLeaks scenario is a game changer that re-writes the old rules. It's a situation where company secrets are dumped on such a massive scale that they rock the core of the corporation, forcing its very existence called into question. This would be tough and an almost impossible scenario for anyone to respond to, but it's a potential reality.

However, if you have some plan in place and also make steps to becoming a more transparent organization, perhaps you could anticipate this potential nightmare scenario, a little better.

The real response from corporations to WikiLeaks, I believe will be a little different. While Naughton suggests in his Guardian piece that politicians don't really have the option to shut down the internet, inside corporations they won't shut the internet down, but access might be limited and usage monitored, lawyers will become more aggressive and there will be more of a "lock down" approach. They will do anything and everything to stop information from escaping.

The brand consultants and the legions of planners who've recently been actively arguing for their brands to be more open, will soon discover that WikiLeaks might not be the force for change they were hoping it could have been. Instead they will find clients holding it up as a reason and an excuse to do the opposite.

While the negative impact on efforts for radical transparency will be obvious, i am also going to assume that even doing interesting and more open experiments with social media has just gotten that much tougher.

Please note that the image above was stolen from Colin Drummond's Posterous.
It was way better than the original screenshot of Wikileaks

Posted by Ed Cotton Innovation is often presented as a radical and demanding discipline that requires men in designer glasses to bring the required creativity.

Everyone knows that change on a large scale is often incredibly complex and that the systems through which change happens, are often highly innovative.

In the world of brands, there are few better examples than P&G when it comes to practical innovation. They know their strengths and weaknesses and work their way through them with very smart thinking.

Last week they presented at a Barclay's conference, where they shared some of their thinking about how the corporation plans to move forward. Innovation is at its heart, but there are a few drivers behind it.

1. Power Brands

P&G's massive investment in brands and branding means it's easy for them to innovate around the brand and to take it into new categories and territories. When you see the road-map, it's all based around extending this power brands into new places, like moving Gain from laundry to dish detergent.





2.Real-Time Systems

Technology is changing the way business is done and giving employees the tools to know if things are working. P&G; knows getting this information faster and acting upon it is one way to secure competitive advantage




3. Thinking about the Sum of the Parts

When you have a portfolio of power brands, you can do things on a large scale, like secure space in retail that allows you to dominate. In the case below, a grocery aisle dedicated to men's grooming.



Not every corporation has the attention to brand detail that P&G has and its a shame, while most respect P&G's place in the market and a recruiting ground for brand and marketing experts, most lack the discipline to put P&G; style brand practices into their own companies.




Posted by Ed Cotton Graydon Carter's letter to Vanity Fair readers this month examines the notion of fallen brands.

"It is a fairly time-and-tabloid-tested theory that those at the pinnacle of their fields generally follow one of two distinct behavioral paths. Those in the first group think they operate in a success bubble and are therefore immune to the conventional rules of business or polite society, or both. Those in the other segment live in abject fear that it’s all going to come crashing down at some point unless they work like mad and keep to the straight and narrow, business-wise and otherwise. Companies or individuals in both groups should be ever mindful that it’s a lot more painful falling from the top of the ladder than from a middle rung. For those at the top, those with the global names, or “brands,” as they are now called, the past few months have been a rough patch."

He goes on to highlight the recent trials and tribulations of Tiger Woods, President Obama, Toyota and Goldman Sachs.

It's an interesting reminder that commentators were quick to make Obama brand of the year for 2008 for his amazing rise to the top and victory in the election. However brands are not supposed to be about short-term success, they are about durability, longevity and surviving the tests of time.

It's clear that some very smart stewards have orchestrated the success of Tiger, Toyota, Obama and Goldman, but now the hard work begins. These brands need to be re-positioned, re-launched and win over an increasingly skeptical public. This isn't something that will take a month or even the rest of the year, but much longer.

That doesn't mean short-term, immediate actions don't matter, the small steps taken along the way can add up to something over-time, but this needs to be thought through and planned out. It's going to take herculean efforts to bring these brands back from the dead and involve everyone from the marketing experts to frontline employees.

While short-term success is the new yardstick:

- How many visitors to your site did you get today?
- How many views of your YouTube video?
- Daily sales- etc...

While we are currently obsessed with all that's real-time, it's not about this, brands need stewardship, careful management and attention, after all, brands are for life.



Posted by Ed Cotton Social media is what many brands want a part of, but very few have made it.

On the surface, it seems simple, but dig a little deeper and you come across a myriad of complex political and structural issues that are standing in the way of success.

It seems there's probably a role for consulting companies to step into the vacuum and help companies navigate their way through this complexity. It appears Charline Li, formerly a superstar analyst at Forrester felt this way, because she now has her own consulting group- Altimeter.

Glancing through Alitimeter's Slideshare credentials deck, it appears they have a vibrant business model. There are very few consultants or agencies digital and otherwise who can help clients answer every single one of these questions the credentials deck suggests they answer.

Strategy

How do emerging technologies impact my strategy?
How can I align technology with my business goals?

Leadership

How do I lead my company in this new landscape?
How do I transform this organization with these technologies?

Tactics

What channels should I use to reach my audience?
How do I integrate technologies into existing systems?
When should I use which technologies?

Technology

How do I decide which technologies/service providers to use?
What's the future of emerging technologies?

How long before Altimeter gets an on offer from IPG, Publicis, WPP and the rest?



Posted by Ed Cotton Interesting to see The Atlantic write such a flattering article about The Economist and the current state of the newsweekly business. The discussion revolves around the recent changes and re-designs at Time and Newsweek, who are both hoping to drag their publications to new found success in an otherwise dying print market.
The Economist is the one shining ray of light that everyone now wants to emulate, but The Atlantic does not believe this is possible because The Economist possess one thing these other titles lack.

"The secret to The Economist’s success is not its brilliance, or its hauteur, or its typeface. The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read. You may like the new Time and Newsweek. But you must—or at least, brilliant marketing has convinced you that you must—subscribe to The Economist. "

In the end, it's all about the brand.


Posted by Ed Cotton Playing around on the All Facebook site you can quickly discover the most popular celebrities, brands and products based on the size of their fan bases. One thing that's especially striking is the number of duplicate sites that exist for certain brands. Converse could have the most fans on Facebook, if it could find a way to consolidate its fans sites.

Clearly there's a mix of brand and fan created sites here, but moving forward it's clear brands have a massive opportunity to connect with their loyal users. How they chose to do that is the billion dollar question.




Posted by Ed Cotton