“Mountains of Triumph”
By Roy Iglesias
PNOC–EDC, 2001
You drive up north toward Subic and you see, from afar, mountains colored brown and gold. Nothing sentimental there, because that shows the mountains are rid of forest cover and are, to put it plainly, bald.
Your plane hovers over Mindanao, and as you look through the window, you note land blocks of brown, gold and yellow on mountains and you conclude – these two are bald. But, then your eye catches patches of green – a refreshing sight with a refreshing thought: Some parts of the mountain are going through reforestation!
What’s going on inside those forests? When a multitude of trees grow, whose hands nurture them? When they are cut down or burned, what form do these malevolent forces take – kaingineros, illegal loggers … and their murderous ilk?
What does it mean to see evil face to face when you want to save the trees while armed insurgents are ready to shoot you. Despite well-rehearsed possible reaction when death or bloodletting comes, what do you really do when the passenger beside you suddenly slumps, after receiving a hail of bullets from the underbrush?
When day breaks, you wake up to see a multitude of community folks breaking the good news that they now also “own” the idea of taking care of the forest – said with the brightest toothy smiles you have ever seen in your life. Are you emotionally prepared for such a magical moment?
The book “Mountains of Triumph” – to paraphrase a familiar saying – brings you closer to the trees you usually miss because all you have seen are forests. Actually, the book brings the reader where the action is and where dreams begin – right in the midst of community folk working hand in hand with well-meaning organizations to save and nurture their sole salvation: the perpetuation of forests.
One could simply summarize this book as a story book on the social forestry project of both the PNOC Energy Development Corporation and the New Zealand Government – with a forestry manual thrown in – and would rest in the thought that he/she has captured the spirit of the book. Not so. That’s oversimplifying it as a one-dimensional coffee table book that has postcard perfect pictures and elegant prose fit for an award winning brochure. Actually, it is a coffee table book -- and much much more.
What we have here is a gripping account of warm-blooded people, leaving the comforts of plush offices in the concrete junge, and penetrating deep into many forests all over the country to experience first hand what it means to share your dreams and your fears and strategies with the simple folk about how to secure a shared future and how to restore a vanishing forest.
And yet, the accounts are not the usual stuff you find in annual reports, rid of the real stuff and drama life is made of. Listen to this:
“The rifle was aimed at a bend of the empty, twisting road. An inocuous target, it seemed, until moments later when a pickup truck came into view. Then the sniper knew his vigil was finally going to pay off. In the truck, Emmie Ybanez was seated in front, between the driver and her officemate Mon Arong who, like her, was also an extension worker of PNOC EDC’s Environmental Management Department …
“Suddenly, a loud burst of gunfire by the crashing sound of broken glass from the windshield jolted Emmie out of her thoughts.” Read on through the breathless prose when you get hold of this book.
The book also connects the life of executives who shuttle from concrete to real jungles: “Agnes de Jesus is on her way to a conference in another building when she sees the earthworm twisting and twirling on the carpet of her office, moving toward the door. The little creature has ventured beyond its world, crawling out of the pot of tropical plant by the desk, crossing the unfamiliar terrain of the carpeted floor … to search for a fresh patch of earth to till.”
This books open a fresh new possibility in reporting the dream and drama, conflict and concord, the tremulous truce and the lasting peace inside our many forests. The book is shorn of slogan, and has steered clear of anemic prose that usually marked reports on the great work done by foresters and the community folk to protect every tree in the mountain.
When you read the book, you do not only sense the triumph of the human spirit, not only the victory of good storytelling over trite reportage – but you sense the soul of the community. And before you know it, you feel you are part of the same community, feel the sunlight in your soul, and acquire the communal hearthrob of the forest dwellers.
Sunday, January 20, 2002
Sunday, January 06, 2002
The epic of six brand leaders in magical, truth-full storytelling
“Brand New”
By Nancy F. Koehn
Harvard Business School Press, 2001
Read this book for a change. It’s titled “Brand New,” just the right phrase for a brand new year (if we have to make a connection somehow).
But, there’s something more about this book being a refreshing change from a surfeit of books speaking of brand equity, brand loyalty, brand awareness and brand-what-have-you.
It’s an epic, not about “branding” as a concept (since that cannot qualify as a great story), but about brand leaders rising above their times and historical milieu — responding to epic movements but, much more so, creating institutions and movements themselves that have deeply changed — and continue to change — people’s lives, lifestyles and the way we all look at life, work and play — and the way we look, the way we are scented, and the way we dine.
Who says business promises only humdrum existence?
This book’s jacket says: “Until Josiah Wedgwood, Britons ate from wood and pewter plates. Until Henry Heinz, women toiled over pickled foods. Until Michael Dell, few people owned a personal computer, let alone dreamed of buying one ‘built to order’.” And, if I may add, until Estee Lauder, cosmetics were promoted the all-too-traditional way. And until Starbucks, coffee drinking had no romance.
What is Nancy F. Koehn, Ph.D. (corporate historian of Harvard Business School), talking about? She is talking about six companies with powerful brands: Starbucks, Estee Lauder, Dell Computers, Wedgwood china, Heinz ketchup, Marshall Field giant stores.
What’s so special about the six — since there are many more entrepreneurs that also built powerful brands — like Ford, IBM, Coke, Sony, BMW, etc.? Actually, I have no answer to this question, except to say, that herein lies the problem with inclusions: there are also exclusions. And, of course, I am just reviewing a book (a very good slow read throughout 469 pages) — and not arguing for the author.
But, the author somehow dishes out an explanation why she chose the six: “All of the brands I discuss were developed during periods when demand-side shifts were altering consumers’ priorities. This kind of thing happens in all historical epochs, of course, but in each of the six cases, social and economic changes were racing forward more rapidly than usual.”
Four of the entrepreneurs made things: Wedgwood’s earthenware, Heinz’s bottled pickles, Lauder’s cosmetics, and Dell’s personal computers. Ms. Koehn says the other two “created encounters” that proved appealing to customers — Fields’ department store environment and Schultz’s café experience.
How these entrepreneurs created a powerful brand goes beyond marketing. It was total involvement for the entrepreneur with the product he/she wholly believed in, investing money and time to perfect it, using a keen eye for any consumer shift, developing an “image” — not only at the marketing front, but more important, from the laboratory, plantation farm, production floor, distribution network, excellent showroom, and a workforce that perfectly reflect the image and vision of the entrepreneur.
The book’s sections are masterfully divided. First, there are two major divisions: “The Past” (for Wedgwood, Heinz and Field that spanned the 18th to early 20th century) and “The Present” (for Lauder, Schultz and Dell). The book says much about the author’s unflagging will to capture the dust, drift and direction of industries these entrepreneurs created.
She has woven together personages and has placed them on “the world’s stage” — providing local color, unfolding historic drama, increasingly interesting plots with every initial resistance and with every emergence of competition, and peppering her storytelling with revealing tales about royalty, the severely rich and the merely famous.
Josiah Wedgwood began the practice of sending gifts to royalty — and then quickly announced that the King or Queen had his china in their dining room. His message to members of the middle class who are palace watchers: “You can have the same china that the Queen has in her stately palace.” That brought prestige to Wedgwood products, drew non-royals to his stores — proving once again that the impulse of “keeping with the Joneses” has antedated us all. By the way, Wedgwood is the grandpa of Charles Darwin — one of the side stories that make this book really an interesting read.
H. J. Heinz, noting women’s shifting roles from the kitchen and into factories and offices, concluded that these women should be free from the cumbersome task of preparing pickles each time. Thus Heinz introduced preserved pickles. It meant more freedom for women — and to Heinz profits that last till now. Today, the Heinz empire has remained one of the world’s leading food processors. In 2000, the author notes, the flagship Heinz brand accounted for about one third of the company’s US$9 billion sales.
Marshall Field introduced a merchandizing strategy that made shopping elegant and enjoyable. As early as the 19th century, Field already decided that “female shoppers wanted an elegant atmosphere, the latest fashions and courteous service — preferably from other women.” That was way way back — before Rustans was born if we talk local.
And what about Estee Lauder, born Josephine Esther Mentzer in 1908? Her story is preceded by the sweet-scented story of cosmetics and perfumery dating back to the time when society frowned upon women painting their faces and sporting head-turning scents that make others crazy. This determined woman, as told by our master storyteller, tried new ways to promote her product — including “a gift for every purchase”.
As a sidelight, read about an interesting tale about Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden deliberately “obscuring their humble beginnings” to project an aristocratic heritage.
How Howard Schultz got inspiration about “specialty coffee” in Milan is an account to inspire entrepreneurs with the truth that you can actually re-invent an old product. Today Starbucks is everywhere. How Michael Dell defied tradition by going into direct marketing to sell his computers is another epic, especially that he took on IBM the giant.
Author Jack Beatty summarizes the book’s accomplishment thus: “Brand New felicitously blends biography, business history and conceptual analysis in a book that gives the vogue word branding a rich and surprising past.” At the beginning of the year, be enriched and be astonished. Begin then with this book.
By Nancy F. Koehn
Harvard Business School Press, 2001
Read this book for a change. It’s titled “Brand New,” just the right phrase for a brand new year (if we have to make a connection somehow).
But, there’s something more about this book being a refreshing change from a surfeit of books speaking of brand equity, brand loyalty, brand awareness and brand-what-have-you.
It’s an epic, not about “branding” as a concept (since that cannot qualify as a great story), but about brand leaders rising above their times and historical milieu — responding to epic movements but, much more so, creating institutions and movements themselves that have deeply changed — and continue to change — people’s lives, lifestyles and the way we all look at life, work and play — and the way we look, the way we are scented, and the way we dine.
Who says business promises only humdrum existence?
This book’s jacket says: “Until Josiah Wedgwood, Britons ate from wood and pewter plates. Until Henry Heinz, women toiled over pickled foods. Until Michael Dell, few people owned a personal computer, let alone dreamed of buying one ‘built to order’.” And, if I may add, until Estee Lauder, cosmetics were promoted the all-too-traditional way. And until Starbucks, coffee drinking had no romance.
What is Nancy F. Koehn, Ph.D. (corporate historian of Harvard Business School), talking about? She is talking about six companies with powerful brands: Starbucks, Estee Lauder, Dell Computers, Wedgwood china, Heinz ketchup, Marshall Field giant stores.
What’s so special about the six — since there are many more entrepreneurs that also built powerful brands — like Ford, IBM, Coke, Sony, BMW, etc.? Actually, I have no answer to this question, except to say, that herein lies the problem with inclusions: there are also exclusions. And, of course, I am just reviewing a book (a very good slow read throughout 469 pages) — and not arguing for the author.
But, the author somehow dishes out an explanation why she chose the six: “All of the brands I discuss were developed during periods when demand-side shifts were altering consumers’ priorities. This kind of thing happens in all historical epochs, of course, but in each of the six cases, social and economic changes were racing forward more rapidly than usual.”
Four of the entrepreneurs made things: Wedgwood’s earthenware, Heinz’s bottled pickles, Lauder’s cosmetics, and Dell’s personal computers. Ms. Koehn says the other two “created encounters” that proved appealing to customers — Fields’ department store environment and Schultz’s café experience.
How these entrepreneurs created a powerful brand goes beyond marketing. It was total involvement for the entrepreneur with the product he/she wholly believed in, investing money and time to perfect it, using a keen eye for any consumer shift, developing an “image” — not only at the marketing front, but more important, from the laboratory, plantation farm, production floor, distribution network, excellent showroom, and a workforce that perfectly reflect the image and vision of the entrepreneur.
The book’s sections are masterfully divided. First, there are two major divisions: “The Past” (for Wedgwood, Heinz and Field that spanned the 18th to early 20th century) and “The Present” (for Lauder, Schultz and Dell). The book says much about the author’s unflagging will to capture the dust, drift and direction of industries these entrepreneurs created.
She has woven together personages and has placed them on “the world’s stage” — providing local color, unfolding historic drama, increasingly interesting plots with every initial resistance and with every emergence of competition, and peppering her storytelling with revealing tales about royalty, the severely rich and the merely famous.
Josiah Wedgwood began the practice of sending gifts to royalty — and then quickly announced that the King or Queen had his china in their dining room. His message to members of the middle class who are palace watchers: “You can have the same china that the Queen has in her stately palace.” That brought prestige to Wedgwood products, drew non-royals to his stores — proving once again that the impulse of “keeping with the Joneses” has antedated us all. By the way, Wedgwood is the grandpa of Charles Darwin — one of the side stories that make this book really an interesting read.
H. J. Heinz, noting women’s shifting roles from the kitchen and into factories and offices, concluded that these women should be free from the cumbersome task of preparing pickles each time. Thus Heinz introduced preserved pickles. It meant more freedom for women — and to Heinz profits that last till now. Today, the Heinz empire has remained one of the world’s leading food processors. In 2000, the author notes, the flagship Heinz brand accounted for about one third of the company’s US$9 billion sales.
Marshall Field introduced a merchandizing strategy that made shopping elegant and enjoyable. As early as the 19th century, Field already decided that “female shoppers wanted an elegant atmosphere, the latest fashions and courteous service — preferably from other women.” That was way way back — before Rustans was born if we talk local.
And what about Estee Lauder, born Josephine Esther Mentzer in 1908? Her story is preceded by the sweet-scented story of cosmetics and perfumery dating back to the time when society frowned upon women painting their faces and sporting head-turning scents that make others crazy. This determined woman, as told by our master storyteller, tried new ways to promote her product — including “a gift for every purchase”.
As a sidelight, read about an interesting tale about Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden deliberately “obscuring their humble beginnings” to project an aristocratic heritage.
How Howard Schultz got inspiration about “specialty coffee” in Milan is an account to inspire entrepreneurs with the truth that you can actually re-invent an old product. Today Starbucks is everywhere. How Michael Dell defied tradition by going into direct marketing to sell his computers is another epic, especially that he took on IBM the giant.
Author Jack Beatty summarizes the book’s accomplishment thus: “Brand New felicitously blends biography, business history and conceptual analysis in a book that gives the vogue word branding a rich and surprising past.” At the beginning of the year, be enriched and be astonished. Begin then with this book.
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