Goodbrand

Based on the responses of over 5,000 UK adults, the GoodBrand Social Equity Indexprovides key insightsinto consumer perception of the social equity of 340 of the Top UK brands & companies. Is the brand you’re interested in seen as a “force for good”?

Click here for the report.

Michael Porter and Mark Kramer’s article in the January 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review made ambitious claims for the concept of creating shared value, to the point of suggesting that it provides an approach through which we can redefine both capitalism and the role of corporations in society. The central premise behind creating shared value (CSV) is that the competitiveness of a company and the health of the communities around it are not in opposition but in fact are mutually dependent.

So, no longer is there a trade-off between “doing good” and “making profits”  - instead, the two are mutually inter-dependent. Moreover, Porter and Kramer argue that there are significant opportunities for the creation of competitive advantage from integrating a social value proposition into corporate strategy......

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Yesterday, Lloyds Bank announced that Co-Operative Bank is the preferred bidder for the 630-odd branches that the EU requires Lloyds to sell, following the state aid it received in 2008. The acquisition would triple the Co-op's current size from 300 to 900 branches and is expected to boost competition between high street banks.

Co-Operative has been a star performer in the retail banking world for the last few years, with its distinctive “no shareholder” positioning appealing to more and more of the public, despite Co-Op’s relatively limited high street banking presence. 2010 saw a 79% increase in the number of current accounts switched to them, for example (source: Co-Operative Group Annual Report 2010).  And Co-operative’s customers are essentially not principally switching for a “hot deal” – they are moving for much bigger and permanent reasons. In short, they want to place their business with a bank that shares their values – something that they no longer feel holds true for the big 5....

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Latest article from GoodBrand

Times are tough and we all need to make the money in our pockets go further and work harder. As one of our nation’s favorite supermarkets says, “every little helps”  - and it certainly does. However a recent BBC Panorama program entitled ‘The Truth About Supermarket Price Wars’ raised the question of whether these ‘not to be missed’ deals are all they really seem

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Latest article from GoodBrand

Yesterday’s announcement that Virgin is buying the “good” parts of Northern Rock, and entering the world of branch banking for the first time, has been welcomed as potentially ushering in a new era of heightened competition and improved service in the world of personal banking. After all, Virgin’s track record in re-writing the rules of competition in favour of the consumer – across many of the industries it has entered, from airlines to mobile phones - is pretty strong.

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