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The Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints over the Indianapolis Colts offers some lessons we can all apply about how individuals, teams, and corporations create success from adversity.

As has been widely written in 2005, following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina there was some momentary consideration given to moving the Saints team away from New Orleans into a more lucrative franchise city. Instead, the owners chose to recommit to the city and the players took on a mission of engaging with it, becoming a symbol for its rebuilding.

Drew Brees coincidentally was in a similar state of disrepair, having badly damaged his shoulder in the last game of the 2005 season. San Diego refused to offer him a contract commensurable with his record, and Miami dropped out of the bidding over concerns with his ability to come back from his injury. By the beginning of 2006 the team, the city, and the quarterback began to rebuild together.

There is a lot that goes into making a Super Bowl team, but the team that took the field yesterday, underdogs against the Peyton Manning-led Colts, seemed to have been forged from a different metal. They played at their peak, took chances that defied football history, and in many ways they dominated a game in which many thought they would not be able to compete. This is not a story of breaks, calls that went their way, or the other team falling apart. This is the story of a team that was playing for something beyond themselves. Each player was involved in their city, had made a commitment to New Orleans, and in so doing, were committed to each other.

According to Peter King writing in Sports Illustrated, Brees is "an athlete as adored and appreciated as any in an American city today." They made a commitment and took risks, I suspect, because they had seen the potential to rise from devastation that few others have witnessed. They formed a unit and worked as a team because rebuilding a city requires that kind of effort. The team took the field with a sense of higher purpose, of representing themselves, their families, their team, and the city that they had supported, and that had supported them. And together this drove them to combine their skills, under the leadership of Sean Payton and Drew Brees, to work together in ways that led to a dominating year, and ultimately a Super Bowl victory.

We should see the story of the Saints not as an allegory, but as an example of how crisis can forge greatness. How many companies responded to the financial crisis by cutting jobs, cutting back, and being defensive? There will be companies that will find opportunities and grow. But there is even greater potential to be mined. For those companies that see the crisis as an opportunity to find a greater purpose in their work, they will find rewards in a team that unites in ways that are only possibly in times like these. They will find the opportunity to engage with their customers in a uniquely collaborative way. And they will create a long term, sustainable competitive advantage over their peers. It doesn't pay back overnight. But when it does, the reward is greater than short term gain. It can transform lives as well as bottom lines.

To see the potential, watch the results as New Orleans celebrates their victory.

Telecom in India is the most exciting sector today for brands and consumers alike. Prices are at an all time low and choice is between seven or eight key players. Cell phone penetration has increased so much that call rates which started out at prices as high as Rs 20 per minute, are now as low as 1 paisa per second. Tata Docomo, a new entrant in the telco market, pioneered this pricing strategy that changed the market. All service providers followed suit. The newest kid on the block is service provider MTS. MTS has reduced its rates even lower to offer 1p for two seconds! Service and experience are taking a back seat to price wars. Adding to the mayhem, plans to allow consumers to switch operators and retain their original number are in the pipeline.

In a price-sensitive market like India, these brands will no longer be able to differentiate on price. Consumers will lap up the opportunity and switch operators for the best deal to suit their usage. Unless these brands start paying consumers to use their service (which is not unlikely) the competition will be heating up!

With the price factor irrelevant, the future of these brands will depend on how well they manage their customer experience across the critical touch points of the brand. The brand could build differentiation by focusing its attention on a part of the customer journey most relevant to its customers and create a unique and ownable experience for them in that space. This would give the brands an opportunity to find their own space. The brand that does it best will emerge victorious.
 

It’s a new year and everyone wants to know what the hot new hues are for 2010. Well, it seems that the fashion icons of the entertainment industry are finally tired of neutrals and cleansing the palette with classic black, white, and gray. The red carpets are now blooming in tropical hues! In the visual below I have tracked the most popular hues being paraded at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Global blue continues to gain power as the driving unifying hue. See my article  “Blue is the new Green.” But, get ready for a blending of blue and green. It’s time for an escape to paradise with turquoise added to Yves Klein International Blue and electric blue. Vibrant sunset purples and warm yellow golds along with hot hibiscus reds add to the joy and adventure. Bright cloud whites and pearly soft metallic golds reminiscent of sparkling beaches offer accent and balance. Just like nature, greens are assumed and are moving to the background.

All images in this post courtesy of Jack Bredenfoerder, Landor Associates.

2010 spring and summer forecast

So, where did this all come from?

Last month international color authority Pantone® announced that turquoise is the 2010 color of the year. Specifically, the color is Pantone® 15-5519 TCX from their textile color system. In the print and graphic arts world look at Pantone® 3262 C. This is a true green-side turquoise that bridges the blue and green color families. If you are familiar with the turquoise gem it is available in hues from green all the way to a bright cyan. A jewelry maker once told me that the green-side turquoise with gold veining is “the good stuff” and to stay away from the cheaper cyan blue stones that many people associate with turquoise. Here’s how Pantone® sells their color of the year: “Escape to a tropical paradise, even if only a fantasy—Turquoise, the luminous Color of the Year for 2010.”

Luminous escape fantasy! Sound familiar?

The James Cameron blockbuster Avatar is a luminous escape fantasy that takes us to the beautiful and seemingly-lethal planet of Pandora. Avatar’s blue Na'vi people are represented by the continuing Yves Klein International Blue color direction. The trend is expanded with a wide range of tropical luminous hues and particularly glowing turquoise. The binding biological and spiritual bond of the Na'vi to their planet and all its life forms has a strong holistic ecological and social message. The magical glowing night effects are not only beautiful but communicate a strong universal physical and spiritual bond. Two of the mega long-term influences that I have talked about in the past are the green movement and the building of a cooperative global community. These two influences are now blending into one—there are many global challenges and they aren’t all purely green. Avatar does a great job of unifying these two design directions into one Edenesque direction.

Lost sets in Oahu

Lost another ground breaking production just begin its final season and the viewers are all "returning to the island.” Lost is filmed almost entirely on the island of Oahu. I was lucky to tour the sets just a few weeks ago. The colors are amazing! While on the Lost tour there was a lot of conversation about Egypt and its ancient deities and how they may be involved in the final episodes. Specifically, Aton and Ra were discussed. Both are sun gods—Aton is a monotheist deity and Ra is a polytheist deity. Expect warm golden yellows and pearly gold metallics. A good representation of these colors would be in the gown that Nicole Kidman recently wore to the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It was reminiscent of an Egyptian lotus column in a textured soft pearly gold with accents of turquoise and hibiscus red. It gave the impression of a Luxor hippy earth mother and very 60s inspired, but very elegant. The colors and designs of the 60s have been creating a lot of buzz lately as we enter a new decade of change. I think Kidman’s hippy-lux may be the new incarnation.

Getting back to the tropics. it is also important to note that President Barack Obama is a favorite son of Hawaii and it looks like the new Western White House will certainly be on Oahu. We will most likely see at least three more years of winter escapes to Hawaii for our first family. On my recent trip to his favorite shaved ice shop I couldn’t resist buying a Hawaii clad and ukulele playing bobble Barack. How cool is that?

Bobble Barack

Finally, we sometimes see color and design directions emerge and then an unexpected event magnifies the impact even more. The recent earthquake disaster in Haiti could be just such an event. It will certainly support the blue tropics color direction. As we watch Haiti rebuild, there will certainly be interest in the colors of the Haitian culture. In the Caribbean, bright tropical blues are the color of protection. Blue is seen as guarding against evil spirits and many people paint their doors, window frames, shutters, and porch ceilings with bright blue hues.

The color forecast for 2010: Sunny and balmy with clear and vibrantly blue skies!
 

Prompted by the journalistic column-yards about the new Apple iPad we got to thinking about what we thought about what they thought. If we summarized the responses into a single phrase, it would be one of two: a phrase over-laded with technicalisms or a distancing born of the need to avoid the bandwagon.
 
Some market analysts have brushed off the hype: “Let’s be clear; this is an iPod Touch on steroids,” James McQuivey Forrester Analysts, said. “That is not a new category,”  Ashok Kumar, Analyst at Northeast, said. “It’s clearly not a game changer (like) the iPhone. The killer application is missing.”
 
The guys at Apple pour forth enthusiasm about "the experience." Overuse leads to erosion; words like innovation, sustainability, and experience are so stretched and worn they have lost their bite. But Apple’s use of this word underplays the importance of what they are saying. The iPad is different from the iTouch by a degree, but philosophically is a difference in kind.
 
I once saw a documentary where an Apple spokesman said that his vision was to make technology invisible—and that’s an interesting statement from someone in the technology business. What he meant was that he recognized that the task is king, and the technology is a tool. The better the technology is, the better the task is performed. Ever since the Industrial Revolution technology has been the servant of mankind, but individual men have been the servants of technology. We needn’t waste too much time re-explaining that the QWERTY key layout was designed to prevent jams and slow typists, and many other examples, conscious or accidental.
 
Do you want to know the future of technology? Do you? Watch Star Trek. The brief for the writers, prop designers, and so on involved no LEDs, no lithium batteries, no multi-touch technology—the only requirement in "Imagineering" is to meet the needs of the user. So in the first series when they spoke remotely and on the move they did so with "mobiles," but the word hadn’t been invented then so they called them "communicators." When Spock needed more firepower he used the Triquarter, a screen based input-output system. When they needed to see more data and finer control, Uhura and Sulu sat at desks.

Image courtesy of alistairmcmillan (flickr); permission being requested.

You might be saying at this point that this is a rather mundane and superficial example, but consider the design principles that underpin it. As human beings we have three main body postures: sit, stand, walk. We have three main input channels; sight, sound, touch. We have two output devices: speech and fingers. We have three work modes: walk and talk, simple input/output, focused input/output. The ergonomic approach is to understand the needs of the task and assign the human postures, channels, and modes to best achieve it. On our technological journey we started with a really big device that required crude inputs, so we had to sit in front of it. Mobile phones—after we got past the "brick" phase—were walk-talk devices whose functionality has (excepting iPhone) grown beyond the capabilities of the format.
 
The point about Star Trek is only that they started, probably subconsciously, with the philosophy that technology would be the servant of man, fitting almost invisibly into his life, and present only to optimize the task.
 
Now back in real life the technologies and capabilities of desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, and general mobiles overlap so much that the design should no longer be a function of its technological ancestry, but of optimizing its fit to people and their tasks.
 
iPad, good or bad, is good in one very, very, very, very, important respect. If you want to read a book, you would probably do that on your lap. Desktops and laptops have failed to make paper redundant because they don’t do that. If you want to scan a newspaper without the paper you need a big enough screen, if you want to be in a role-playing game, how better than to point and go? The iPad seems optimized for so many of its tasks. It is the first piece of kit to start with the person’s mode, capabilities, and task and work backwards. It is missing only one optimizing feature, keystroke feedback—clicking to you and I, but I guess Apple are working on that.
 
I have no idea if it will be a commercial success, but in my mind it is the beginning of a new way and I have no need to try to distance myself from that. Live long and prosper.

 

Image courtesy of Nick Douglas (flickr); permission being requested.

Behold, the power of font to influence perception and change behavior! An article by Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz in the February edition of The Psychologist shows that fonts can significantly influence people's assessment about how easy or difficult things are to do.

Take a look at this example:

When Song and Schwarz presented these exercise instructions in Arial, readers guessed that the exercise would take 8.2 minutes to complete. When presented the identical instructions in Brush Script MT (which wasn't quite as hard to read as in this technologically-constrained example), they guessed it would take 15.1 minutes. Plus they were more willing to incorporate the Arial-presented exercise into their daily routine. Implication: If we want people to adopt a new behavior, the instructions don't just need to be semantically clear, they also need to be visually easy to read, otherwise the behavior will seem too demanding.

It's all to do with what the authors call "processing fluency." We don't have unlimited brain processing power (just like my home computer, we don't have enough RAM). If something is written well and it's easy to read, people are able to process the information more easily and will feel more at ease with the thing that's being described. If it's too complex, even if it's just the font that's difficult to read, it starts taxing our circuits.

Other experiments show that a font also influences whether people make decisions or not. Researchers tested people on their ability to choose between two cordless phones. Seventeen percent of people tested postponed their choice when the font was easy to read, 41 percent postponed their choice when the font was difficult to read. For more than twice as many people, the difficult-to-read font was enough to stop them taking a decision.

Another interesting finding from this experiment was that, if the participants were told that the information about the phones might be difficult to read because of the print font, the difference between the two groups was completely eliminated. People are apparently quite sensitive to their feelings of ease or difficulty but not so good at figuring out what's driving these feelings. Fonts have subliminal power!

Does this mean that the only good font is a simple font? Not necessarily. Song and Schwarz talk about another of their experiments where they tested people's reaction to a Japanese recipe, once again using an easy-to-read font (Arial) versus a difficult one (Mistral). In this case, the participants assumed that the difficult-to-read recipe would require more time and skill to prepare than the easy-to-read recipe. That might deter someone from trying out the recipe at home but it also might make them pay more for it at a restaurant.

These experiments are a useful reminder that fonts have functional as well as aesthetic value—something to bear in mind if tempted by fonts exotic but impenetrable.

(Thanks to the pointer from Mind Hacks.)

From Brand Mix

Not just since the Copenhagen Climate Conference, but for recent years "green" has been a big buzzword—as have sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and corporate citizenship. But what does it all mean to brands and brand management?

As brand consultants we are obsessed with "relevant differentiation"—meaning, that a brand should be as relevant to its target audiences and as differentiated from its competitors as possible. And we are right, because relevant differentiation is the key driver for every brand’s success.

So when thinking about green it’s fair to argue that a brand becoming more green is of striking relevance for its different audiences. For too long companies and consumers have not really cared about the long-term implications of their consumption decisions. Thus, acting more sustainably is growing in relevance for all parties, and more and more it also influences people’s buying decisions.

However the second question is much more difficult to answer: Can "green" help companies and brands to differentiate themselves in the market?

Looking back, the concept of brand was initially driven by quality. Brands stood out because they gave and kept a quality promise, differentiating them from non-branded products. This concept drove branding from the beginning of the last century up to the late 1980s. Then we saw a paradigm shift. At this time the concept of quality—or in other words, rational attributes—was replaced by the concept of emotionalizing brands. One of the key drivers was that the average quality of products in a category became so similar that it no longer offered a driver for differentiation. Quality became a hygiene factor—and then, so did emotionalized brands at the beginning of this decade.

So does green offer a new way of differentiation?

Unfortunately, the answer is: no!  

Although it was a clear way to differentiate for early niche products in food and beverages, clothing, electronics, and cars, it more or less turned into a hygiene factor the moment all the big brands picked up on it. But why is that?

The key driver for this is a coincidental paradigm shift in many developed as well as emerging markets and societies: green is no longer perceived to be a "nice to have," but rather a "must-have."

So sorry, dear marketers, being green will not make you stand out, but it will help you to not lose out. You will need to find another way to fight for your stakeholders’ attention.

 

We all identify countries or places by pictures and impressions. All of them leave a certain profile in our minds, and one in which colors play a role.

Think of the warm exotic colors of spices and textiles in the soukhs of Marrakesh; the turquoise of the Mediterranean mixed with shades of terracotta in Italy; or the typical red-blue-white of the tube signing system, the red phone booths, and red double-decker buses which put their stamp on the city of London.

I have often wondered: what really are a place's defining colors and what represents them best?

Of course, country flags and regional coats of arms do exist and help to establish a certain kind of color profile for a place. 

Often, the colors of the typical surrounding landscape inspire a nation's flag. The Ukrainian flag of blue and yellow, for example, resembles the vast fields of golden wheat under a bright blue sky that are characteristic of the country.

Vice-versa, once-defined a flag itself can also make an enormous impression on a place. Typically, state-owned (or formerly state-owned) institutions and facilities utilize the national colors. The Union Jack, for example, has surely been the inspiration for the London tube, the red double-decker buses, and the National Rail.

The Greek flag's blue-white pattern was reportedly inspired by the famed sky and sea of Greece with its clouds and waves, but also by some of the traditional clothing. On the other hand, maybe the blue-white color profile in Greece's scenery—such as the blue rooftops of white houses on Santorini—is an expression of the flag?

Even commercial brands associate with a country's color palette. Airlines are a typical example because they were previously state-owned (British Airways, Alitalia, Air France). In France dairy producer Danone, many TV channels, and supermarkets like Carrefour show nationalistic traits. With Tesco in the UK, it is the same.

Maybe as a German I find this noteworthy as our national flag's color palette has, since WWII, never again moved beyond the official governmental domain.

What I find even more interesting is that many countries have found popular color schemes beyond these nationally-primed colors:

In the past 10 years UK brands have developed a feeble for quirky bright colors like Granny Smith green, lilac, pink, or orange (Marks & Spencer, Paul Smith, Heathrow Express, Orange, BT, Tate Modern, easyJet, Oxfam, the Nectar loyalty card) and did you ever notice that almost all of male British office clerks prefer to wear mauve ties?

In France there seems to be preference for turquoise or green, ample use of white, and very coolish color profiles (RATP—the Parisian metro system, Gaz de France, green plastic bag bins in Paris, green/gray roadwork barriers, the TGV, Volvic, Evian).

So what are your country's unofficial colors? And which brands represent them best?

Image courtesy of Apple Computer

I have recently rambled through a raft of interviews, and even did a guest stint on a CNN International segment just now, discussing the name of the inventive new product launched by Apple yesterday (quick—what’s it called?). You know the answer, of course. By now, everyone with access to media in any conceivable format has seen some version of the story. And apparently hundreds of thousands of people around the globe are now talking about it in one vast, global babble-fest. I’ll go further out on a limb and guess that all of these virtual and actual water-cooler discussions are roughly breaking into two camps: Camp 1) the more sober-minded tech-tweeters who are abuzz with the wonders of the gadget itself (and it certainly has many to offer); and Camp 2) the world-wide network of product naming aficionados who are in mock-shock over Apple’s careless choice of the name “iPad,” thereby turning this simple four-letter name into, well, a four-letter word.

This is all fun to watch, of course, especially if you’re a marketer at Apple. Not only have they spawned the most buzzed about pre-launch event in consumer electronics history since, gosh, the iPhone, I suppose, but now they get to watch the name—and description—of their new product bandied about on global network television and every other conceivable news source. Negative press, you say? Ask anyone who’s stressing over the name if they would still buy one. Then get in line.  

But from a hard core branding perspective, the question remains: Is iPad a good name for this product? From my perspective, it’s pretty nigh perfect. Yes—would have been more PC (bad term in this context?) if half the population didn’t immediately flutter over its verbal connection to a whole category of female products. But after the jokes and puns are lobbed (and there have been some good ones), is anyone confused about who brought us this modern marvel, what it does, how it will likely be used, and whether it’s probably just affordable enough? You don’t need a product demo to get the idea that, once again, the world’s most innovative mobile consumer electronics company (as Mr. Jobs now describes his company) has come up with another category killer. As most of us hoped and expected they would.

So have your fun and express your outrage. And by all means stand your ground and refuse to purchase one—I want to be sure mine will be available this spring as I pad my way to the nearest Apple store.

Image courtesy of bkwhopperbar.com

I have to say it. The King kind of creeps me out, and I don’t know why the women in this picture are looking at him like he’s George Clooney. And I take it he scares my 10-year-old neighbor who used a BK King mask as part of his spooky Halloween props last year. But guess what? I’m not their main target market, and neither is my 10-year-old neighbor.

Burger King has long struggled with how to beat the golden arches at their own game, and it would have been easy for them to keep trying to chip away at the share of stomach by matching them product for product. How boring would it have been to see a BK version of McCafe, which is more suited for the mommy and me set or yuppies on the run needing their latte fix? So cheers and a big fist pump to BK for further digging in their heels and focusing on how to create a relevant dining experience for the 18-to-20-something year old “dudes” they’ve been successful at turning into loyalists—instead of forever chasing after the market McDonald’s owns with an iron fist.

The decision to expand their Whopper Bar concept and add beer to the menu is a potential home run that might help them finally break away from the pack. It may look like a risky move to some because we are programmed to think fast food has to equal family-friendly. But as their pilot store opens in Miami my money is on them.  They’ll attract people either on their way out to bars looking to pregame with a budget friendly burger and beer, or heading home for the night and needing a little something (c’mon, we’ve all been there!). You can choose between classic Whopper, or for the more discerning palate, a range of specialty burgers with have it your way “primo accoutrements.” The current Whopper Bar in Orlando has been serving as an innovation lab for more premium burgers; so even if your tastes mature you won't necessarily outgrow the menu. Times being what they are Whopper Bar may, on occasion, replace the pricey night out in South Beach, Vegas, or Manhattan if BK can pull off something cool enough. It certainly puts them in the consideration set with Chili's and other fast casual spots that are slashing menu prices to get people back in their restaurants.

Talk about a trifecta. Focus on the burger, which has always been the strong selling point for BK. Focus on a unique, meaningful experience for the people you already win with, at a recession-friendly price. Then tie it all to the brand promise that you can “have it your way.” I might develop a small crush on the King myself!
 

For the last three years Abu Dhabi has hosted the World Future Energy Summit (WFES), a conference about the role of energy in climate change and the policies, politics, technologies, and finances of managing that change. The summit has 20,000 visitors, 554 stands, and is densely packed with dignitaries such as Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, H.R.H Crown Prince of Spain Felipe De Borbon, Ed Miliband, Lord Richard Rogers of Riverside, and H.E. Mohamed Nasheed the President of the Maldives—the only holder of a national presidency whose office might cease to exist within his own lifetime. Abu Dhabi is home to Masdar City, one of the great environmental and architectural experiments; aiming to be a zero carbon, zero waste, 100 percent nice place to live and work.

I presented at the summit, and with Aneesh Sharma from our Dubai office, attended the rest of it; in so far as one can attend a twelve hall, multiple-and-simultaneous presentation, four-day event. Much of the content was characterized by complex diagrams, technical jargon, bad PowerPoint graphics and unforgivable neckties, but within it I found what interested and inspired me. As a brand consultant, my interests are not those of most of the attendees, but I have summarized below a diverse collection of the things that made me think.

Copenhagen
Everyone I met or listened to saw it as a missed opportunity, a global disgrace, a de-stabilization of markets, prevarication and obfuscation at its worse; I only heard one positive remark in the whole summit.

Cities and culture
Lord Rogers was the keynote speaker on the last day and he made a remark that chimed, “We form cities and cities form us.” A lovely circular thought just as applicable to company cultures, corporate environments, and engagement.

Two ends of the telescope
It is probably fair to say that the predominant mindset in the energy community is that of a problem needing fixing. Though breakthrough technologies, ten-fold increase in funding, massive global interest, and a planet to save, make it an exciting challenge. A speaker from McKinsey saw the climate crisis as a massive opportunity to reengineer our business and financial systems and drive growth. Others saw the reengineering of business as a massive opportunity to improve the way we all live our lives. The answer hinges upon the philosophical question of what we are here for.

I heard that we have created cities to address one need, but they beget another. For example, they become heat islands caused by the powering of technology, bitumen heat absorption, restricted wind flow, glass skyscrapers reflecting heat on to neighboring glass skyscrapers, and so on, which in turn requires more cooling, which creates more heat. Cities can be 10 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. All the solutions offered by Rogers, Foster, Arup, Masdar and others made use of wind flow, the coolness of the earth, carefully considered shade, water cooling and so on. And as Susan Roaf from Heriot-Watt University pointed out, the solution is to return to how we used to live—before we had electricity and air conditioning, before cities were built for the benefit of the car, before we thought we were in charge.

Protection from sameness
Thomas Sevcik of arthesia demonstrated that there was a time when the marketing departments of all cities claimed that they led the world in transportation infrastructure, culture, and the knowledge economy. We can now say that all cities also lead in sustainability and have created green-colored, "green" logos to demonstrate this claim. City marketing needs to be protected from homogeneity.

Ecosystems
It was observed that many conversations revolve around very specific topics with insufficient recognition of the need to see things as part of a system. Many speakers observed that it is nonsense to dwell on the problems of a fundamental resource like energy, without factoring in the same challenges for water and land. The same observation was made about considering cars without factoring in buildings and people. I added my own thoughts that morality, or "doing the right thing" is also an ecosystem where everything affects everything else and there are no simple answers.

Image courtesy of Alexandra Clifton-Astley, Landor Associates.

Culprits or saviors?
Whilst most of the architects at the summit presented optimistic visions of eco-cities, Reiner de Graaf of OMA argued that in their race for kudos, notoriety, and height, architects have played their part in creating the problem that the world now faces.

An interesting scheme is to use the world’s windiest, shallowest, uninhabited area; the North Sea, as a five-nation cooperative wind farm and thereby actually give the EU a purpose; that purpose being to make Europe sustainable.

Carbon credits don’t work
Governments have invested much credibility in the creation of carbon credits as a means of driving the renewable energy and carbon capture and storage markets. Some attendees argued that carbon credits were so volatile, so short term, and so open to influence by lobbying bodies that they are useless as financial instruments.

Financiers need TLC
I heard some project financers argue that sweeping, heartfelt commitments, the favorite deliverable of politicians, were an impediment to progress. Without a specific delivery date, the financial community is duty bound to sit on its hands, investing in nothing, until TLC returns (transparency, longevity, and certainty).

The language of clarity
One of the most entertaining speakers came from California; despite a torrent of aphorisms, euphemisms, and other-isms, his message was quite clear. He said this about fuel prices and energy efficiency: “Volatility means that you’ll be getting lumpy cash flow down the pike, you’re then looking down the barrel at a problem that’s hard to get your arms round.”

Space efficiency
As always these days, there was an excessive use of space. I mean: "the clean energy space," "the project equity space," "the government initiative space," "the CCS space."

In my presentation I argued the following:

• Consumers don’t have silos between good causes and so these causes compete—fair trade with organic; food miles with animal welfare/
• Trust marks, deployed as endorsements such as those above and used to boost the credibility of many products—will disappear.
• Marketers try to find simple solutions but consumer attitudes towards green and related issues are complex and differ by category.
• Companies have embraced the need to become more sustainable or responsible but are very unclear how, or even whether, they can get any benefit in the "brand space."
• Green and other responsible niches are doomed.