ABC is an integrated creative and marketing agency specializing in brand building and management.
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The Brand Stand: Learning from Rosa Parks
The world’s greatest brands don’t become what they are by design. Rosa Parks didn’t wake up 60 years ago knowing she would become a symbol of the civil rights movement. She simply took a seat on a Montgomery bus and refused to stand up. “My only concern was to get home after a hard day’s work,” she later said. Her arrest on December 1, 1955 was a routine occurrence in a segregated South. It’s what happened four days later, the day of her trial, that was mattered the most.
History rewards iconoclasts for taking a real and definitive stand. The irony is that most brands are afraid to take risks in their collective race to the marketing middle.
More than 40,000 African-Americans boycotted the public transport system and began walking to work. Within a year, segregation laws on public buses were lifted. “At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this,” Parks said. “It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.” History rewards iconoclasts for taking a real and definitive stand. The irony is that most brands are afraid to take risks in their collective race to the marketing middle. In point of fact, consumers want companies to take less neutral positions. Almost three-quarters of millennials believe businesses should have a perspective on important economic, health and environmental issues and should influence people to get involved, according to findings by MSL Group.
In 2014, CVS put $2 billion of sales on the line by removing cigarettes from all its stores. A year later, its hard position might be contributing to a decline in smoking in some parts of the US. In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates committed 95 percent of their wealth to charity. In 50 years, perhaps no one will remember Microsoft, a pioneering brand in its own right. But people will undoubtedly know the Gates family as icons of philanthropy. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced they would give 99 percent of their Facebook fortune to their new foundation. Would they have done the same had it not been for Bill and Melinda Gates? Rosa Parks took a seat on a Montgomery bus and refused to stand up. What are you willing to sacrifice that matters to people and the planet?