BRANDS ARE BUILT IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE RECEIVER, NOT BY THE COMPANY potx

“The challenge here is to simply give up control of the brand in this respect and rely on the power created in all the social envi-ronments available online.” The opportunity to reach mi

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IN THE HANDS OF

THE CONSUMER

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Why is everyone talking cash flow? SCA’s business school teases out the what’s and the why’s.

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A strong brand is priceless Shape asks some of the

marketing industry’s sharpest minds for the recipe for branding success.

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Bag in a box – the little package with the big cess Plus the latest in lingerie fashion as well as Ikea’s trend expert on furniture trends for the fall.

Pape r fash ion 4=@/::

7< '$$ when America’s Scott Paper

Company launched a paper dress as a

promotion to customers who bought

their new line of napkins and toilet

pa-per, ecological awareness didn’t exist

The dress was a tremendous success,

and in four months Scott had 500,000

reorders Soon the choices of paper

clo-thes were astonishing They includ ed

paper dresses, hats, bags, slippers and

bikinis, and American women loved

them Women could even dress in the

same style as their dinner tablecloths

and napkins Because of their

fragi-lity, the dresses could only be worn

once or twice, so they never went

out of style They were sold fl at and

didn’t need to be tried on

Custo-mers made their choices based on

the design and colors

B63 2@3AA3A E3@3 also

perfect for advertising Time

maga zine made 6 million

dres-ses adorned with its logo Campbell's

Soup launched an Andy Warhol-inspired

dress to promote its line of soups Robert

Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign

used a star-spangled dress featuring

the candidate’s face Bob Dylan’s visage

loomed large on one frock The pop

ar-tist James Rosenquist teamed up with

fashion designer Horst to make a paper

suit, a feat he reprised years later with

Hugo Boss

/4B3@A=;3G3/@A in the limelight, paper dresses disappeared from the mar-ket, and today paper clothes are found only among hot fashion designers who use paper to create collections Paper has sculptural qualities and is cheaper

to experiment with than textiles The French fashion house Chanel’s spring

2009 haute couture collection ded headwear made of paper fl owers The Swedish fashion designer San-dra Backlund uses the Japanese art

inclu-of origami to make her spectacular creations The Antwerp designers A.F Vandevorst and Dirk Van Sa-ene among many other designers

fi nd new ideas by working with paper

The exhibition Paper Fashion shows a unique collection of the art of cellulose-based apparel Paper Fashion will be shown

at the Design Museum in London from November 4 to February 28, 2010

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[3*2009] SHAPE SCA*5

Pube rty

Getting a grasp on

CASH FLOW

TEXT: GÖRAN LIND

Last December, SCA’s president and CEO Jan Johansson explained that one of the company’s most important tasks was “to turn the cash fl ow situation around as a re- sult of the economic downturn and

fi nancial uncertainty.” During the

fi rst half of the year SCA's cash fl ow strengthened by an improvement

of the operating cash fl ow through, among other things, reduced work- ing capital Many other companies have set similar priorities over the last year to secure their fi nancial positions But just what is meant

by cash fl ow and what information does it provide?

Cash fl ow can be defi ned as the difference between a company’s incoming and outgoing payments during a given period, showing the change in its liquidity Cash fl ow

is usually broken down into what

is generated from operations, vestments and fi nancing activity

in-Cash fl ow is positively affected by, among other things, running a sur- plus in operating activities or selling

fi xed assets Similarly, cash fl ow is adversely affected by losses from operations and by new investments

The difference compared with profi tability based on the income statement (profi t before tax and

Everyone seems to be talking about cash fl ow The recent mic downturn has led many companies, including SCA, to focus

econo-on it But what is cash fl ow and why is it suddenly so important?

REMARK NEDAN: BILDER FINNS LÄGG PÅ SHAPE UP SIDAN

other items) is that cash fl ow is not affected by depreciation, allocation

of costs or other accounting ments In a sense, cash fl ow can be said to be more objective than the income statement because it does not include items based on estimates On the other hand, it provides no indica- tion of future investment needs Cash

adjust-fl ow simply indicates whether more money is fl owing into than out of the company If so, this may be because operations are going well, but also be- cause investments are put on hold

Cash fl ow is often used to assess the value of an investment, such as a new factory Then the present value*

of future cash fl ow is calculated by discounting this at an interest rate determined by the return required by the investor If the present value, in- cluding any residual value, is greater than the cost of the investment, then

it is profi table

*Present value of a cash fl ow of 100 lars over fi ve years when the rate of return required is 7.2 percent is: 100/(1.072 5 ) = 70.63 dollars.

Trying to carry a couple of grocery bags in each hand plus a box under one arm is enough to make most people despair But adding a plastic handle to that cumbersome box can make the job possible

Jan Nilsson is the man who came up with the idea of portable handles for cardboard boxes, one of those clever little inventions that make everyday life easier

The handle has two sharp plastic points attached to a strap with hinges The points pierce the box and then splay outward

Pre-attached handles can make stacking boxes diffi cult, but a handle that is provided separately solves this problem The handle can also be made available at checkout counters in stores

Danish girls are starting to enter puberty at increasingly

younger ages Fifteen years ago, girls were 11 years old on

average when they developed breasts Now they’re barely

10 This is shown in a Danish study carried out by

Rigshos-pitalet, the Copenhagen University hospital A growing

number of girls are being treated for precocious puberty,

a condition in which they develop breasts before the age

of 8 At Rigshospitalet the number of such children

in-creased 10-fold between 1996 and 2006.

Lise Askglaede, the principal author of the study,

says one explanation may be cals that interfere with hormones, such as those found in makeup

chemi-She suspects that preserva tives,

fl ame retardants and softening

agents may also be volved Chemicals are everywhere – in cos- metics, creams, ba-

in-by bottles, textiles and electronic goods

PLASTIC PIECE THAT GIVES YOU A HANDLE

SCA FINANCE SCHOOL

starting increasingly earlier

The value of their brands has become many successful companies’ most important asset

But building a strong brand is an art

]QO1]ZOVOa]\S Toyota,

IBM, Gillette, Intel, BMW,

H&M and Moët &

Chan-don have them as well

In a global economy,

su-per strong brands have become the surest

way to spur sales and share prices The

value of the world’s brands today is

esti-mated at USD 150 billion

Most companies with international

operations nowadays want to be

includ-ed among the heavyweights in that elite

category of global brands

“The driving force for companies to

protect and strengthen their brands is

basi-cally economic rationality,” says Dorothy

Mackenzie, chairman of the brand agency

Dragon Rouge in London “The brand

increases and facilitates sales and creates

loyal customers In a market with growing

competition, where the price of

produc-tion is steadily decreasing and there are

in-creasingly fewer unique technological

dif-ferences between products, strong brands

have become a key to success.”

As a marketing veteran, she has

ob-served a major change in the fi eld

“When I started in the advertising dustry 25 years ago, brands were very much about pure marketing and one-way communication,” she says “The com-pany told consumers what it thought were the most important qualities of its product – a laundry detergent that smelled good

in-or coffee with a slightly mellower fl avin-or

Today, the power has shifted to ers, and companies have been forced into dialogue and greater openness.”

consum-2C@7<5;=AB=4B63 20th century, brands were essentially about a good-looking logo and fl ashy ads that praised the unique qualities of the product or service Now the competition has inten-sifi ed, and there are more ingredients in the recipe for success

Advertising, public relations and sign are important for most brands, but

de-so are corporate de-social and tal responsibility, quality and customer service

environmen-There are differing views about what the proportions should be and what the mixture should look like – especially

when a growing number of different kinds of consultants and advisers such

as advertising agencies, PR people, management consultants and corporate social responsibility experts want to be included and compete for corporate in-vestments in branding

But the experts are all agreed on one point – the time is past when you could sell anything with killer advertising Behind every strong brand today are well-functioning operations As Ama-zon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos notes, “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person You earn reputation by try-ing to do hard things well.”

Dorothy Mackenzie says the essence

of all strong brands is a good product or service “The organization also needs to have an understanding of what’s unique about what it offers and its own vision of how it wants to be seen,” she says

At the same time, she says the qualities that make a brand unique have changed

“One example is Dove,” she says, ferring to the soap and shower gel made

re-by the multinational Unilever “For a

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long time, the brand stood for soap

with added moisturizers But today the

company stands for an alternative and

more realistic ideal of human beauty.”

A strong connection between brand

and operations is also important

“Brands are built in the consciousness

of the receiver, not by the company or

organization,” says Henrik Evrell of the

international brand agency Rewir

“It’s crucial that the strategy that’s

chosen to develop the brand works well

with the strategy set for the business.”

23>3<27<5 =<the customer and

type of service or product, there are a

number of widely divergent paths and

strategies Broad-based consumer

prod-ucts companies have shifted increasingly

from refl ecting the lifestyle and attitude

of their target groups to shaping

opin-ions themselves

“For a typical B2B company that

pro-vides advanced technological solutions,

brand building means something

com-pletely different,” Mackenzie says

“There, the best communication

channel may be the company’s highly

specialized engineers The brand is

about the impressions and values that

this group communicates to the

com-pany’s customers.”

A typical pitfall, according to Jacob

Fant at Rewir, is copying strategies that

work for others without thinking them

through

“Instead, it’s a matter of fi nding what

distinguishes them and makes them

in-teresting and thus makes people want to

choose them,” he says “The challenge

in all branding work is to whittle out

what is the unique DNA of the

organi-zation, those particular qualities that

differentiate the company from other

players in the market arena.”

Among the trends that have had the

strongest impact on those who craft

brands around the world is the growing

power of consumers – both in individual

purchasing decisions and through their

basic power over increasingly valuable

assets in the form of brands

“A brand doesn’t have a personality,”

says American marketing guru Al Ries

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Digital and social media have further

tipped the balance of power, increasing

consumers’ power over the brand

“One consequence of this is that it’s

become increasingly diffi cult to

main-tain control over how, when and where

the target group chooses to think about

or discuss your brand,” Fant says “The

challenge here is to simply give up control

of the brand in this respect and rely on

the power created in all the social

envi-ronments available online.”

The opportunity to reach millions via

the Internet at almost no cost has created

many new missionaries promoting

dig-ital brand building, converts who never

tire of telling uplifting stories, like the

one about two YouTube users and their

stunt creating a homemade geyser by

putting Mentos candy in Diet Coke

B63A=2/1/A1/23 attracted a

mil-lion viewers on YouTube and became a

marketing triumph for both companies

Part of the story is that Coca-Cola –

the strongest brand in the world – was

initially mostly worried about the

unex-pected and uncontrolled digital success

Most consumer goods companies are

now fl ocking to YouTube, MySpace,

Face book and most recently Twitter

In some cases, this eagerness has had

unexpected and unintended

conse-quences When the auto manufacturer

General Motors invited the public

sever-al years ago to make their own

commer-cials on YouTube, the result was the

re-sult was sharp criticism of the company’s

gas-guzzling behemoths

Increasingly, a more common fate –

even for expensive digital campaigns – is

a quiet life in obscurity

“The general public wants

entertain-ment, and that requires more and more

to stand out above all the digital noise,”

Mackenzie says “So I think many panies today are about to reassess some

com-of their digital strategies.”

She believes instead in new forms of collaboration and sponsorship, working together with established media and new digital players

But she sees the strongest trend in branding outside the traditional market-ing arena – companies’ investments in sustainability for the environment and in the social arena

“If brands have a personality, then more and more people are requiring that person to be both pleasant and responsi-ble,” she says, stressing the importance

of long-term work, openness and ing those fi ne words with action

back-She is supported in this by Jacob Fant, who warns brand builders against being overly sensitive to trends

“Right now, for instance, there’s an abundance of messages about the cli-

/11=@27<5 B= 4/<B diffi cult economic times for many companies present a golden opportunity to polish their brand

“Brand building is more ing in an economic downturn because media budgets are being tightened,” he says “Marketers are forced to aban-don their tried and true strategies and look for more effective ways to speak

interest-to the market Companies also tend interest-to pare down their operations when times are tough, which provides opportuni-ties for more distinct and, in the long term, stronger brands.”

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B635:=0/:consultancy Interbrand’s

annual list of the 100 best and most

valuable brands in the world provides a

good overview of changing fortunes in

the struggle between competing global

superbrands

Since 1996, fi ve of the top 10 brands

have fallen

The big losers can be found, not

sur-prisingly, in two industries where the

winds of change have blown strongest –

technology and fashion

B63B@/<A7B7=<4@=; fi lm to digital

memory ousted the company whose name

was synonymous with memorable times –

think “Kodak moment” – from the list of

the 100 best brands in the world

Even the once durable jeans maker

Levi Strauss has been hit by the rapid

swings in fashion, disappearing off the

con-The fast food giant McDonald’s went through a diffi cult patch in the 1990s when the brand was linked to obesity, trans fats and generally un-healthy lifestyles But with investments

in healthier food, french fries made without trans fats and communica-tion that focuses on health, this heavy-weight has polished its golden brand

Times have been harder for Marlboro, whose products are anything but healthy

So far, the tobacco giant has been saved

by new consumers in developing markets that have – as yet – fewer restrictions on smoking and tobacco advertising

But in their analysis, the brand perts at Interbrand offer a gloomy fore-cast for both the product and the future

ex-of the brand

“Sooner or later, the brand will most likely undergo a decline because a more connected world means that even the growth markets can change their view

of the dangers of smoking tobacco

fast-er than expected,” they say

Among the newcomers since the 1990s is Finland’s Nokia, which surfed

in on the IT wave and has maintained its hold at the top Together with the Japa-nese giant Toyota, the world’s largest au-tomaker, these outsiders have broken the otherwise solid US dominance

B634/AB3AB1:7;03@in all ries is the search engine Google, which made its debut on the list in 2005 Its competitor Yahoo, on the other hand, has steadily lost ground and is now ranked 56th

catego-One longtime player that made a tacular comeback is IBM During the 1990s, the computer manufacturer “Big Blue” was almost counted out, but it has since bounced back as a service provider

spec-Even the old maxim “Nobody ever got fi red for buying IBM” took on new luster when the company grabbed sec-ond place from its archrival, the soft-ware provider Microsoft

There’s a battling brewing among top-ranked global brands

Today’s winners can be down for the count tomorrow

µB63 ;=AB important reason a

com-pany is valued at fi ve to 10 times the book

value of its equity is the economic

advan-tages a strong brand provides,” says Jan

Treffner, brand expert at the accounting

and consultancy fi rm

Pricewaterhouse-Coopers and co-author of the book

Var-umärket som värdeskapare (Brand as a

Creator of Value)

Half of Coca-Cola’s market value today

is tied to the brand The value of the

Swed-ish apparel giant H&M’s brand is set at

USD 11 billion and Ikea’s at USD 7 billion

Behind these fi gures – taken from the

branding consultant Interbrand’s

an-nual valuations – is some fairly

uncom-plicated math

“The diffi cult thing is to calculate how

much the brand contributes to economic

performance,” Treffner says “The

obvi-ous advantage of a brand is that it helps

the company to sell at a higher price or

contributes to greater sales volume – that

is, the brand generates either a price

pre-mium or a volume prepre-mium.”

Examples of price premiums are car

makes in the attractive premium segment

Hard numbers for soft values

and luxury products like perfume and cosmetics Companies can charge prices with margins far above the actual cost for a few extra horsepower and alumi-num trim or a designer bottle

“If a bottle of acetone costs about USD 1.50 in a retail store, the same con-tent – plus a little perfume – can cost 25 times as much at the perfume counter,”

Treffner says

/;=<5 B63 1=;>/<73A whose brands make them volume winners are big sellers like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola

Today, there are a number of different models for valuing brands in dollars and cents Interbrand’s model is based on the earnings forecasts of its analysts minus the return on tangible assets

Other valuations look at the licenses and royalties paid for the benefi t of using

a given brand

“But the issue here is to compare ples with apples and understand both the industry and the segment in order to make valuations that are as accurate as possible,” Treffner says

ap-Soon it will be easier to value brands The German standardization organiza-tion DIN has taken the initiative in devel-oping a common ISO standard for valuing brands Some 15 countries have worked for two years to produce a draft standard

To contribute to the process, DIN’s Swedish counterpart, SIS, appointed a committee with leading representatives and experts in brand valuation, with Jan Treffner as chairman

“It’s benefi cial to have a common standard that can be compared, especially when awareness about the importance of brands and how they are valued is still low for a lot of company executives,” he says

3D3< B6=C56 the importance of strong brands has been drummed into people’s minds over the decades, Treff-ner thinks the area is still subject to a great deal of misunderstanding

“The most common ing is confusing a company’s distinctive features with its brand,” he says “These features, like names, logos and design, can be protected But not a brand, which includes so much more.”

misunderstand-He advises corporate executives who want to increase the value of their com-pany’s brand to get a good sense of how it

is perceived by its target group and how it differs from the competition

“Only then can you know which knobs you need to adjust to develop the brand you want to have,” Treffner says

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For a free sample call 1-800-781-3298 toll free or visit www.TENA.us

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bladder protection

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full range ofliners, pads and underwear

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EVObW[^]`bO\QSR]P`O\RaVOdS

T]`A1/-“We work in markets with increasingly

tougher competition, both from global

and strong local competitors with their

own brands Moreover, a lot of

retail-ers have their own brands It’s critical

that we continue full-out to build and

maintain strong brands In the end,

al-most all brand work is about increasing

competitiveness and profi tability in a

company.”

EVOb¸abVSab`ObSUg-“Today we have a global brand platform

that includes a number of our products,

and we’re working toward a portfolio

with fewer but stronger brands At the

same time, it’s important to realize that

different categories and markets often

require strategies adapted to them.”

EVObO`SA1/¸aUZ]POZP`O\Rab]ROg-“TENA and Tork Then we have a

number of strong regional brands like

Libero, Libresse, Saba, Nosotras, Nana

and Tempo, which are now supported

by our global brand platforms The aim

is to give regional brands the

opportu-nity to grow and become global.”

;O\g^S]^ZSO`SaOgW\UbVObQ][^O

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/\gQ][[S\b-“Anyone who wants to be seen cannot

be cowardly or too cautious At the same time, I think that all successful brand-ing work is based on an understanding

of what we essentially offer That’s the difference between selling diapers and toilet paper and selling trendy clothes

We have to have both an understanding

of and respect for our target groups.”

6]eWabVS¿\O\QWOZQ`WaWaOTTSQbW\U

A1/¸aP`O\Ra-“Our products are relatively unaffected

by market fl uctuations since we duce everyday products But the con-sumers might get a little bit more price conscious.Those who dare to invest in bad times have really great opportuni-ties to build a strong and, in the future, very successful position by investing in their brands Which is something we’re also doing.”

pro-EVOb¸abVS[]abW[^]`bO\bbVW\Ub]

bVW\YOP]cbW\bVSe]`YeWbVP`O\RW\U-“To have a focus on the whole and stand the interplay between many differ-ent ingredients Many people still think

under-of the logo and traditional TV advertising when they talk about brands That’s im-portant But brands are essentially about how the entire organization works and interacts with our brand objectives How our plants work, how we handle the envi-ronmental and social issues, how our sales staff treat our key customers, innovative-ness in the company and of course the quality of our products.”

ENDELIG! LIBRESSE TAMPONGER

Nå er Libresse tamponger her – med heldekkende silkemyk overfl ate for enklere innføring

De fi nnes i størrelsene Mini, Normal og Super, og gir deg sikker beskyttelse At tampongene ligger i esker med stilig design er bare en bonus, ikke sant?Feel secure Wear Libresse.

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sound production and

natural materials But

in the furniture industry,

there’s not much

happen-ing in these areas,

accord-ing to Mia Lundström, who

works with Ikea’s

assortment strategy and forecasts

furni-ture trends globally

“Last year at the Milan furniture

fair, the most important furniture fair

in the world, I was disappointed to see

almost no concern for the environment

in the thousands of items that were on

display,” she says

“We thought we would see more

in-teresting hints and more new materials

But when we spoke with furniture

mak-ers, it seemed like the entire furniture

industry was waiting for Ikea to pave

the way And in our self-image we’re

ba-sically Smålanders, from the middle of

Sweden It made me dizzy to think the

global furniture industry is waiting for

us to take the lead.”

Consumers have been setting high

demands in food and fashion for years

But when it comes to furniture and

ap-pliances, they are more unsure and want

guidance The thirst for knowledge is enor-mous Questions like

“How should we save ter and energy?” and “How can we reduce the amount of garbage?” are

wa-often asked The sion “minimizing waste”

expres-is governing many trends, in each phase of the chain Customers, who are becoming more and more aware, will shape the trends of the future, Lund-ström believes

“At Ikea we’re already doing a lot, but we’re not very good at telling people about it,” she says “We’re working, for instance, with replantable forests We too have to become more aware and develop everything from new energy sources to furniture made from recycled materials

We’re now thinking about how ers could recycle old sofas.”

custom-Ikea has been criticized for locating its stores outside city centers and having cus-tomers take their purchases home in their own cars Home delivery is more environ-mentally friendly because deliveries can

be coordinated

“Our customers account for our largest emissions,”

Lundström says “We’re

working hard to fi nd solutions and often build new stores alongside malls where customers can take public transporta-tion”

The next step will be to make ages lighter, not just through the choice

pack-of materials but with new technology, which means that smaller quantities of material will be needed in many prod-ucts Some furniture can make do with being lightweight, but other items have

to be made of solid wood or other strong materials to be suffi ciently stable

A=:72 E==2is good for the ronment and is now, after many years, becoming increasingly important in the furniture industry

envi-“Solid light woods are back, not just because of concern for the environ-ment but because many young designers around the world see wood as trendy preferably untreated.”

Among the innovations this year are new wood stains and methods of joining wood Another trend is to combine differ-ent types of wood, a common practice in Denmark in the 1950s Light woods like ash, birch and beech as well as light oak are in Dark woods are on the way out Plastic, somewhat unexpectedly, is trendy again

“It’s an exciting material, but it can be anything from horrible to re-ally good for the environment Most plastics are made of oil, but people are working more and more with recycled plastic, like PET bottles, which take on

a second life as furniture.”

Asked to sum up this year’s trend, Lundström says it’s a reinforcement of last year’s “decide for yourself.” “At Ikea, we’ve listened to a lot of trend consult-ants before, without realizing how great

an impact we have ourselves,” she says Now we have to seriously ask ourselves whether Ikea is just going to follow trends

or whether Ikea will create its own trends

My answer is both yes and no.”

&A1/A6/>3I! 'K

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7<2/GA=4=:2women wore no ties under their skirts But by the start of the 19th century, a type of underpants,

pan-initially with an open crotch, was introduced for well-to-

do women Nonetheless, the importance of under-wear as a fashion item didn’t catch on until the 1960s, after new materials like nylon had emerged

In the sunny ‘70s, derwear fashion really took off when underwear became sexy rather than comfortable and long-wearing

un-The pop star Madonna was one of the people who helped turn underwear into apparel that could be worn like regular clothing

“All these new attitudes to ments led to the breakthrough of thong underwear in the 1990s,” says Solgun Drevik, product developer at SCA “From having been seen as a kind of erotic acces-sory, the thong was transformed into a garment that was perfectly normal for all women to wear every day.”

undergar-B63 B6=<5made its breakthrough as swimming attire fash-ion on the beaches of South America It was especially popular in Brazil, the land of buttocks, where bikini bottoms are called

“dental fl oss.” (In Europe, there is a ference for revealing a woman’s chest, and

pre-Fash ion C<23@63@A97@B