The historian will have to be very kind to this globalfinancial meltdown and should reward it for the most needed rude awakening callforcing a dramatic change of traditional business models. Right now, all overthe world, this crisis is teaching CEOs new things, firstly, face the music andchange the tune and secondly, appreciation for finer details and angermanagement during this extremely-hyper-loss-count.


Why our world suddenly became a massive junkyard, crowdedwith junky-ideas on junky-promises with junky-finances is now where brand newcorporate philosophies and structures will harshly collide with the wide rangeof old business models.


Survivors still engaged in the market need to becongratulated for their stamina, as even more chasms have to be jumped. Thelandscape clearly points to an eventual metamorphosis where businesses willeither totally collapse or fully transform into new butterflies.


Currently, for every great successful business there areeasily a million businesses that are uncontrollably rolling down the hill anddespite all the resistance their organizational units keep falling andcrumbling. Simplifying in general terms, the most identifiable business problemtoday is the lack of funds which are often due to lack of sales, which attimes, despite great product lines are due to lack of right image and branding,which is often blamed to some disconnected brand name identity or imagepositioning that never grabs the attention or the cyber-branding that nevercatches online customers. This chain reaction seriously pulls down the entirecorporate entity often into darkness and this constant deprivation tovisibility keeps the business gasping for more oxygen. Of course, there aremany other complex factors also.


Auto industry has damaged hundreds of brands year after yearas their image and name identities was never allowed to mature enough and mostended up in some quick alpha-numeric soup and eventually ended up being bundledunder the umbrella identity of the manufacturer, which in most cases onlyprojects the image of an old dying dinosaur. Banks too all over the worldsimply got short changed on their image by having their names abbreviated tothe point that there was no differentiation, they too kept pushing the similarproducts and services and most are now in one giant bowl of hot alphabet soup.


Of the top 50 business sectors from agriculture toconstruction or from technology to consumer goods, the highly skyrocketed costto stay under the spotlight will now have to turned off. Excessive waste anduseless fame both will be replaced by truly streamlined operations and what's50% or 90% trimming of wasted operations if it puts through a sophisticatedmetamorphosis?


But first an open discussion about pushing of the dying oldbusiness models is needed before it has to be completely re-invented. So longthe boardroom-fear-factor inhibits the critical questions and so long corporateexpansion strategy simply remains unaligned to its external image just not fitenough to catch the right fish the business stays gasping in the dark.Corporations with great products and services can easily check why 90% of thetargeted customer base are not lined-up outside their doors and panic willsurly make the cash run out. For those leaders with any brilliant business ideaand great selling proposition, their efforts will be completely useless unlessthey are properly branded in the right language creating the maximum value forits targeted customer base and they will be equally wasted if their brand nameidentity ends up sending wrong signals.


The current times are filled with very powerful hiddenopportunities visible only to open-minded thoughts leaders with foresight,opening of such debates and reforms will bring teams together and encourage thenext quantum leap.


Despite all the gloom the world is still spending billionsall over the place and this meltdown has simply moved the bars up to a veryhigher notch where more advanced strategies are the minimum new-pre-requisites.Today being reliant upon panic cut backs or sudden surges is not the answer. Re-conversions,re-emersions, and re-evaluation leading to a total corporate metamorphosis isat play and its time to plan out of the old cocoon into a new butterfly.


About the Author


Naseem Javed is widely recognized as a world-authority onglobal image strategies and corporate nomenclature issues. He is the author ofNaming for Power. He introduced The Laws of Corporate Naming in 80s andcurrently is lecturing on global cyber branding and the ICANN's new gtldplatform.