Brand New Justice: How Branding Places and Products Can Help the Developing World, Revised Edition [Paperback]

Simon Anholt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2005

Recently vilified as the prime dynamic driving home the breach between poor and rich nations, here the branding process is rehabilitated as a potential saviour of the economically underprivileged.

Brand New Justice, now in a revised paperback edition, systematically analyses the success stories of the Top Thirteen nations, demonstrating that their wealth is based on the 'last mile' of the commercial process: buying raw materials and manufacturing cheaply in third world countries, these countries realise their lucrative profits by adding value through finishing, packaging and marketing and then selling the branded product on to the end-user at a hugely inflated price. The use of sophisticated global media techniques alongside a range of creative marketing activities are the lynchpins of this process.

Applying his observations on economic history and the development and impact of global marketing, Anholt presents a cogent plan for developing nations to benefit from globalization. So long the helpless victim of capitalist trading systems, he shows that they can cross the divide and graduate from supplier nation to producer nation. Branding native produce on a global scale, making a commercial virtue out of perceived authenticity and otherness and fully capitalising on the 'last mile' benefits are key to this graduation and fundamental to forging a new global economic balance.

Anholt argues with a forceful logic, but also backs his hypothesis with enticing glimpses of this process actually beginning to take place. Examining activities in India, Thailand, Russia and Africa among others, he shows the risks, challenges and pressures inherent in 'turning the tide', but above all he demonstrates the very real possibility of enlightened capitalism working as a force for good in global terms.

* Controversial and thought-provoking analysis of issues that are central to 21st century economic thought; radical new thinking on wealth-creation in the developing world.
* Unites world-class branding and marketing knowledge with an emerging-market development agenda.
* Concrete answers to the problems of anti-capitalism, medium level poverty and the brand backlash; a way for the marketing and advertising industries to regain respect and a more positive reputation

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Anholt's thesis - that the instruments of market growth have simply been in the wrong hands - is compelling and thought-provoking. For countries like Croatia, which strive to market their products abroad, Brand New Justice contains a wealth of valuable advice and some extremely sound economic and social theory."

Stjepan Mesic, President of the Republic of Croatia

"For countries like Mongolia, which need to break into international markets, this concept provides some much needed hope and inspiration."

Nambar Enkhbayar, Prime Minister of Mongolia

"Simon Anholt, author of Brand New Justice...probably knows more about ethical brand initiatives than anyone."
Jack Yan, Reporter, Desktop Magazine, Australia --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description

"...contains a wealth of valuable advice and some extremely sound economic and social theory." Stjepan Mesic, President of the Republic of Croatia

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann; Revised edition (January 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750666005
• ISBN-13: 978-0750666008
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,271,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Social justice through branding, March 16, 2003

By 

Jack Yan (Wellington, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brand New Justice: The Upside of Global Branding (Hardcover)

Branding has taken its share of knocks over the last three years, but a few of us have retained faith in the profession as a tool that can aid humankind, rather than create bigger gaps between rich and poor nations. Brand New Justice is the best book of such techniques, designed to fast-track countries and ensure a fairer distribution of wealth, using free-market principles that support individual freedoms.

For those cynical after No Logo, believing that marketing is about 'adding worthless gloss to worthless products', Brand New Justice provokes thought. Anholt believes his work to be realpolitik, but there are still ideals behind it, with which almost all right-thinking people would agree. It is this combination - idealism mixed with reality, all delivered with lucid, intelligible English - that makes it one of the most powerful branding books written.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting content, great writing, April 2, 2003

By 

Ind Nicholas (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brand New Justice: The Upside of Global Branding (Hardcover)

Even when business books contain good ideas they're often a turgid read. Simon Anholt's book is stuffed full of interesting and challenging ideas and it's also one of the best written business books I've read. What makes the book so interesting is that it challenges a developed world perspective on branding and suggests that branding can be the powerhouse to change the fortunes of the developing world. Rather than the familiar cry about the manipulation of brands and the damage they can do, this book demonstrates that brands can be a force for good. That should be an important message for businesses everywhere.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BRAND NEW JUSTICE by Simon Anholt, March 7, 2008

By 

thepaxdomini "The Book Review" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brand New Justice: How Branding Places and Products Can Help the Developing World, Revised Edition (Paperback)

Brand New Justice is an exposition of marketing guru Simon Anholt's strategies for emerging market nations to develop their economy through branding. In this way, he suggests that emerging markets can begin to close the economic gap with the nations that have powerful brands, which continue to make most of the profit while poorer nations that supply the raw materials and handle the manufacturing make little profit and are often on shaky economic ground. Additionally, not only can products be branded by these countries, but the countries themselves can be branded.

Anholt begins with a list of five conventional objections to why poor countries cannot develop their brands: they cannot produce high-quality goods, they cannot afford to promote them internationally, they do not have the expertise to build international brands, people in rich countries would not want to purchase these products anyway, and corrupt individuals would suck up any profit (p. 10). The fourth argument, that, for example, Americans would not be interested in buying designer anything from a poor, prestige-less country, seemed most important, but Anholt goes on to address and, to a great extent, refute all these statements throughout the rest of the book.

In his quest to teach emerging markets branding, Anholt seems to show little regard for the consumer. The tone of Brand New Justice suggests that the consumer will buy whatever product is marketed best. That is, the consumer is, at least to some extent, a slave to marketing, or else they are fish to be lured by the most tantalizing jig. Anholt says, "Either marketing works, and it is a powerful tool for change, in which case it must admit responsibility for the absolutely central role it has played in creating the ever-widening inequality between rich and poor during the last century; or it is nothing..." (p. 17). Brand New Justice makes it clear that Anholt believes the former. So while Anholt goes on at length about the moral possibilities of marketing, he has little to say about the moral implications of consumerism.

Anholt speaks generally about how brands from emerging markets can achieve international credibility. Perhaps specifics are impractical; certainly there is no hard-and-fast formula to follow for brand success, and each brand's scenario has myriad variables.

The task that Anholt proposes, to use branding to help emerging markets achieve economic stability, is a noble, difficult and complex one. Brand New Justice is merely the beginning of a discussion on the topic, not a treatise on how to implement this strategy. If taken as such, as an impetus for creative planning and strategizing rather than a full treatment of the problem, then this is quite a good book that could benefit anyone in marketing, advertising, or international diplomacy.

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