Editorial: Doing the right thing right

So desirable is brand leadership that a whole literature of 'challengership' has grown up. Indeed, so seductive and inspiring have Adam Morgan's ideas been for eating the big fish that for some, being small is almost more fun. Well, perhaps: all must have prizes. But the real prize goes to the brand leader, a status so coveted that hanging on to it provokes familiar delusional behaviour.

I recall working on a shampoo brand many years ago that was very gradually losing its brand leadership position. Such was the company pressure to deny this palpable fact that the brand management kept redefining the segments, slicing the category into smaller and smaller bits so their brand could still claim some sort of leadership. David Taylor and David Nichols give us the anatomy of a brand leader in their article, 'Being first: getting and maintaining brand leadership': the massive and disproportionate advantages that accrue to this position and what it takes to hang on to it. The added cruelty for challengers is that once leadership is gained it takes a massive screw-up to displace it (as Charles Graham reminded us in Market Leader, Q1 2010). And although we have seen this enough times, it is still shocking to see how badly hard-won leadership can be manhandled.

The leadership story of Starbucks is a supremely modern one in many ways and Howard Schultz tells it movingly in the interview in this issue. Modern, first in time, the company has only relatively recently invented and dominated a category that is now worldwide. But also modern in the sense that it is a product, a service and a brand that has community at its heart.

A further aspect of its modernity is its social conscience, beginning with an unswerving dedication to staff benefits and now closely linked to the Red project and the social commitment that entails. Finally, as he emphasises, Schultz recognises profoundly how consumers are seeking authenticity. We live in fractured and distrustful times and if institutions are failing us, company leaders need not do the same. Control over the products, services and behaviour of companies is in the hands of individuals and it is possible and profitable to do the right thing.

Two other articles in this issue explore these themes. Hugh Davidson provides a masterful analysis of what marketers need to do to truly realise the discipline's potential, and Joseph Pine and James Gilmore delve into the important issue of authenticity.

Judie Lannon Editor

[email protected]