Opening session – Global Ethos: Managing Unpredictability Across Circumstances of Life & Business; Session 2 – Conscious Capitalism

Omar Jamil, CEO Latitude blogs for Aurora from New Delhi


Day 3 – Opening session – Global Ethos: Managing Unpredictability Across Circumstances of Life & Business

So here it goes folks – the third and final day of AdAsia 2011. The day kicked off with an inspirational talk by Swami Sukhbodhananda, Founder Chairman, Prasanna Trust.

The talk is what one would expect from a spiritual leader – much talk of how consumerism is destroying the world. Swami Ji has the crowd engaged – and this is one of the few talks over the past three days that has most of the audience and attendees listening. 

Don’t use plastic bags, be conscious of the planet, a species a month destroyed a month.

“He is not the most who gives the best; he is the best who gives the most.”

Reading a multitude will not give you wisdom, rather opening your heart to receiving the information around you. 

Swami Ji says we are more open to solving problems – instead we should be more open to receiving problems. This will open up our creativity; by opening us up to the divine.

Best quote: “This is a spiritual organism – you should understand that.”

No conflict between spiritualism and materialism.

Next best quote: “Treat every religion as a science; science is not something to be believed, it is something to be experimented [with].”

Khalid Rauf, Lowe & Rauf, told me that this session was the best session over the entire three day conference – it seems that most people I’ve spoken to share this view.

Off for a tea break…

Session 2 – Conscious Capitalism

Anna Bernasek, Writer, Journalist & Speaker

Duncan Goose, Founder, Managing Director, Global Ethics Ltd

Moderator: Santosh Desai, MD & CEO, Future Brands Ltd

Santosh makes an introduction, sets the stage for the conversation and then passes to Anna. 

The Integrity Option. Anna presenting Bank of America credit card case study – bank lost US$8 million – big disaster. BoA learnt from the mistakes of the first run and then re-worked the model. The final result: Visa card.

What’s remarkable about this story is that it introduced the concept of the credit card – a relationship based completely on trust. Bank is trusting in the integrity of the customer – and that is the fundamental concept that Anna wants to focus on. This is the the most fundamental relationship in markets today.

“When you have a relationship of trust remarkable things happen.” This concept forms the bedrock of the market economy. “Integrity is an asset and has an economic payoff.”

More integrity = More transactions = More wealth. This, says Anna, is the basic equation. “It’s like lifting the lid of the market economy and seeing the nuts and bolts of what really creates wealth.”

So, Anna asks, how important is integrity to your company? How much time, she asks, in the past 24 hours have you actually thought about your integrity and your company’s integrity. Companies do a number of things with their integrity – some companies exploit this trust (e.g. Bernie Madoff), they understand how it works, but are only concerned about how they can monetise it. Thankfully, she says, there are other companies which truly understand the importance of integrity and work towards building it further. Toyota is one such company that has worked on building relationships and integrity.

The DNA of integrity: Disclosure, Norms, Accountability

Disclosure means brings things out in the open. Things hidden are a red flag to bad behaviour. Norms – every market requires rules. These have to be simple – complicated means a red flag for cheating. Accountability means providing people with the perception that if they do something wrong they’ll have consequences. This doesn’t mean going for people to “nab” them (*ahem*), but rather creating a framework where actions have consequences and people know that if they do something wrong, they get caught.

Duncan starts off by immediately recommending Anna’s book. He then gives a brief background of his career and life: ex-WPP, advertising – read a book that inspired him, bought a bike, put it in a plane to Canada, planning to ride around for a few months – set off on an odyssey across Canada – from East Coast to West Coast – journey carried on through to America, on to Mexico, South America. But rather than stop there, flew to Australia, rode through to Indonesia, on to India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and back to the UK via Europe.

Quite a remarkable two-year journey and experience – included earthquakes, hurricanes, kidnapping, being shot at. Gave Duncan a unique perspective on the world and how it works. On his return to the UK, Duncan decided to start something different – merge advertising background with something more humane – of course ultimately driven by profit (the desire to give everything away). 

Duncan set up Global Ethics. Powerful words, hard to live up to. 

To succeed, need to capture a new generation of consumer – consumers who are as ready to give as to receive. Global Ethics idea: connect things you buy every day to life changing impacts elsewhere in the world – ‘like for like’ – focused on commodity items. Started with bottled water – One Water (official water for Live Aid).

Discovered that when they started using social media, it became very interesting. 237,000+ fans on Facebook – didn’t spend a penny doing it – got those numbers in two weeks. Was so impressive that the Facebook PRs contacted them. Reason for success was that they were simply telling stories – compelling stories that engaged people and attracted them.

(Check out www.onedifference.org).

Is there not a contradiction if building integrity towards generating profit? Anna thinks not. How do you move from being a ‘regular’ company to one that actively practices integrity. Anna: by thinking long-term – how can I create wealth over the long-term, build long-term relationships. Doing the right thing is very much in our benefit. As Duncan says, this is not a marketing campaign, this is a complete strategy, imbedding and implementing from the top down.

This was quite an interesting session – and flowed quite well from the Swami’s morning session.