The 3M Company

This chapter has a purpose to acknowledge 3M's greatest opportunity to overcome sustainability and transparency challenges which lies within innovation and collaboration. As a science company, 3M partners with its customers and communities to make the world cleaner, safer and stronger. Starting with technology and working toward the improvement of every life on the planet allows the company to think holistically about addressing global challenges. With an eye toward the future, 3M launched their 2025 sustainability goals. These goals range from investing in sustainable materials and energy efficiency to water management and helping the customers reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through the use of 3M products. 3M has also set goals around building a diverse workforce and worker and patient safety in health care and industrial settings. 3M continues to invest in developing products that help its customers reach their environmental goals, as well as increasing its social sustainability efforts.

Driving Brand Equity With Radical Transparency

The main purpose of this chapter is to analyze the categories of brand equity assets through the prism of radical transparency. The results reveal that the brand equity requires investment and disappears over time if not maintained consistently with the selected business model and the company's values. The chapter is dedicated to systemize the theoretical and practical findings over the brand equity elements. Brand loyalty is the first element of the brand equity model. The benefits for the company which uses the radical transparency practices can be simply synthesized into one big advantage - satisfied and loyal customers who generate stable revenues and profits for the company in the long term. Radical transparency has a major impact on stimulating brand awareness as a factor that is particularly important in the sense that the brand must first enter into the considerations set. The company should be ready and open for cooperation with all interested parties and provide positive feedback whenever necessary. This enhances the perceived quality of the brand and the trust. The application of the radical transparency concept in the overall operation of the company enables the creation of a special set of brand associations that create long-lasting relationships with consumers, mixed with positive emotional mix that seals the success in the long term.

Radical Transparency and Brand Equity as Key Factors for Successful Business Strategy

This chapter analyzes the phenomenon of branding and the related process of creating new value, and thus a sustainable competitive advantage through recognition of the concept of radical transparency. The brand equity is a common denominator of all tangible and intangible resources of the company, the amount of its abilities, of any activity indicating a slightly higher value, any attempt to be better and to achieve more. Therefore, in addition the brand equity is elaborated as a source of value for the business. This chapter examines the role of brand equity in providing greater market share, creating entry barriers for new competitors, achieving production and market expansion, providing a price premium, attracting quality workforce, ensuring consumers loyalty and stimulating innovation. For the brand equity to truly provide value it should be more than the company's image or position of the product – the brand should be a unifying force across the company, providing the business with direction and purpose.

Defining the Concept of Brand Equity With Radical Transparency

Every company must seek the formula that works best for its particular culture and industry. There is no one right way to transform a conventional company into a value driven company. But all the authentically responsible companies subscribe to a set of principles about: the mission, vision, transparency, working, responsibility, openness, authenticity and innovation – all this put in an agenda for value driven companies which are prepared for the challenges we all face. This chapter analyses how the transformational forces: the tangible worth of intangible assets, the war for top-grade talent, the impressive power of inspired employees, the transparent supply chains, the global impact of NGOs, the informed global consumer reshape the business landscape. The insurgent companies that seize on these drives will create real value and increase their long-term profitability. The concept of radical transparency in business gives the companies the opportunity to win the battle for success differently from the competitors, which would ensure the company's sustainable growth and profitability, arousing from the well-shaped relationships with the stakeholders who provide value for the company. The company's brand would be a synonym for those connections.

Unilever and Its Supply Chain

The chapter refers to Unilever and its efforts to implement the concept of radical transparency to implement sustainability and it is split into four sections in order to complete its purpose. First, the chapter provides a background on Unilever as a company. Second, the authors discuss several lenses with which Unilever may view their options to find the most optimal starting point or points to enact sustainability measures. The chapter then demonstrates one such tool, Sustainability Stakeholder Rating Tool (SSRT) and discusses how this weighting tool may be applied to three key products including dairy, vegetables, and palm oil. The chapter discusses various ways in which Unilever may encourage sustainable supply chain compliance, verify practices, and drive sustainability down the supply chain via the innovation and still relatively new radical transparency practices of certification, crowd-sourcing, and trust -based networks.

Henkel

This chapter analyzes how Henkel aims to create sustainable value with everything they do – together with employees, partners and stakeholders. The company holds leading positions with its three business units in both industrial and consumer businesses thanks to strong brands, innovations and technologies. Henkel also takes responsibility for the safety and health of its employees, customers and consumers, the protection of the environment and the quality of life in the communities in which it operates. In conducting its business, Henkel wants to create sustainable value through innovative solutions. The findings reveal that Henkel creates more value for its customers and consumers, for the communities it operates in, and for the company – at a reduced environmental footprint. Henkel's 20-year goal for 2030 is to triple the value it creates for the footprint made by its operations, products and services - this is an ambition to become three times more efficient. Looking ahead, Henkel intends to continue developing innovations that combine performance, environmental compatibility and social responsibility in equal measure.

Combining Radical Transparency With the Brand Pentagon

This chapter completely covers the process of building and managing the brand through the concept of radical transparency. If it is more than certain that the brand equity is a source of sustainable competitive advantage, than it is important to find the best way to build and manage it. This chapter includes each phase of the model named as the brand pentagon: birth, definition, articulation, measurement and expansion of the brand. The model is a compilation of recognized models from world-famous authors, globally validated by major corporations worldwide. The detailed analysis presents the importance of each stage in completing the mosaic called the brand. The brand birth is the initial stage, directly related to the vision of the brand, and the brand-dependent areas: the environment in which the brand is developed. Next, the brand definition analyzes the brand reasons, through positioning and mapping. In the brand articulation phase the ways of brand communication are discussed. The brand measurement and expansion are elaborated in the fourth and fifth stage. The process of building and managing the brand is summarized with a discussion over the need to create a separate culture of nurturing the brand and living for the brand, by building a so-called brand culture and brand company.

How Radical Transparency Can Turn the Brand Equity Into a Basis for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

This chapter begins with the analysis of the question whether the real sources of sustainable competitive advantage derive from the strengthening of the companies' internal strengths and eliminating internal weaknesses or are they the result of a successful manipulation with the opportunities in the environment and the avoidance of external threats. Despite the efforts of many authors to summarize the first with the latter, modern scientific thought in the field of strategic management underlines the first variant. As a logical sequence, the analysis of the intangible resources of companies and their (im)mobility follows as a necessary condition for sustainable competitive advantage. The authors analyze the idea of the brand equity as a resource which summarizes all typical resources and capabilities of the company creating and maintaining the desired competitive advantage. Finally, the analysis of the brand equity through the prism of the VRIO model is a further proof for the brand equity role as a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

Evaluating the Brand With Radical Transparency

The justification of all the theoretical knowledge in this book is verified through the evaluation of the brand, which is analyzed in this chapter. Gradually, we fully complete the concept: from idea to evaluation of the brand. The valuation of the brand through radical transparency is elaborated through several variants: the brand equity as a measure of the value of the brand, financial approaches to valuation of brands, integration of finance and marketing through the “best practice” approach for brand evaluation and the brand value chain. Thus, we conclude the efforts for the understanding, application and assessment of the brand equity as a source of competitive advantage through the prism of radical transparency.