Sustain your brand...brand equity matters.

A picture of a brand. Source

In the public relations profession image and brand management is the most important elements to have a successful and recognised organisation. “Image and brand management is the strategic and tactical tasks involved in the management of positive, personal and continuing communication between an organisation and its target audience overtime; recognising this should be complementary of customer/audience relationship management” (Pickton and Broderick 2005:9)
    

It is in the power of an organisation to keep its target audience happy and satisfied at all times but, it becomes a problem if the issue raised by the target audiences are not carefully monitored and taken into account. This is one of the problems that are facing the African National Congress at the moment whether they just ignore the issue or not.

My question is where to from here? How is the ruling party going to solve this problem for their brand name is sinking in the water?! One of the issues relating what most of the people have detected is of the ANCYL and of cause the expelled Julius Malema. Why were the problems of the public not issued from the very on-set so as to make the ANC unit to seem a little more connected?  What kind of an organisation is ANC if they are not delivering the same and connected messages to the public? From a public relations philosophy if a system is not well connected together then it so means that internally there something wrong going on. A system should always stand together in order to produce a system that is integrated. Lack of integration in a system can be caused by a lot of things such as conflict, lack of environmental scanning, and less communication, etc.

What does it mean for a person in an organisation to always want to win and not listen to other people’s concerns? It is said and we all know that Julius Malema was found guilty for putting the party at disrepute and for not respecting the ANC’s constitution (READ MORE). When an organisation does not adhere to their stakeholders concerns then they will obviously turn away from the company so as their concerns can be clearly listened to. Brand management and sustainability is done through identifying your brand, building your brand, promoting your brand and lastly being and living your brand because people are not only concerned about the products or services an organisation renders but the brand itself.

From my observation the African National Congress should start rethinking about how to sustain and maintain their brand by thoroughly researching their target audience, scanning their environment because change is taking place within the 21^st century, they need to adapt from the olden days of doing things to the change that is taking place in South Africa. I think they should listen to the people more often and give them what they want for it will help them survive in this very competitive industry of politics…oh well the ball is in their court to be there for this nation.  

What would it mean for South Africa to nationalise the mines?

Maybe we should get clarity on what the nationalisation of mines would do for our country?! It a question of how able are we as a country to sustain what belong to us as South African. I am certainly not a fan of Julius Malema but I have to say that he definitely has point on the fact that mines should be nationalised. The constitution of this country states that each and every citizen of this country has a right to land and minerals of this country.

Firstly allow me to explore around the meaning of the nationalisation of mines this country, South Africa since this blog is aimed at informing and creating an on-going dialogue. When South Africa was involved in a whole lot of protests, campaigns and many other things that led this country to becoming what it is today the purpose was to have a free and fair South Africa and this includes the distribution of land and minerals to the people for this country belongs to all who lives in it.

The nationalisation of mines means that the control of ownership and mining activities such as extraction, production, processing and trading to other countries will benefit the whole country ANCYL . Though nationalisation of mines has its own advantages and disadvantages to it but from the research that I have made the advantages weigh more to the disadvantages and they are as follows:

• Nationalisation to increase the state's fiscal capacity and better working conditions.
• Nationalisation to industrialise and create more jobs.
• Nationalisation as a means to safeguard sovereignty.
• Nationalisation as a means to accumulation path in the South African economy.
• Nationalisation to transform South Africa's unequal spatial development pattern.

Disadvantages of the nationalisation of mines are as follows:

• Inefficiency due to lack of competition.
• Kills the private sector.
• Begins to acquire the greater control over the lives of the people.
• Leads to complete centralisation of economic power in the hands of the state.

Hence the paragraph above argued that the advantages out weigh the disadvantages, I believe that we should carefully consider what it would mean for us as a country. What makes me wonder is that our minerals are being exported to the foreign countries and making them benefit more than us. I know the worry for most of us is that this will give the government more power to keep corruption going within the government sector, but there is more to it than we know. Let us carefully understand what it would mean for our economy to make the right decisions...therefore should we nationalise or not??

LEADERS WITH ONE MISSION, ONE GOAL!




http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2294

 

I was watching SABC 1 on Thursday April 12, when it was show-casing the life and times of Chris Hani and for a while I realized that South Africa has lost good representative, well orientated leaders who had a very clear vision of what they wanted South Africa to be like. I’m talking of Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko, John L. Dube, Chris Hani and anymore others.

Allow me to specifically focus and relate to Chris Hani since we just celebrated his 19^th anniversary of his assassination. From the research that was done about, he certainly was a servant of the people who believed in what he did with the understanding of the struggle of this country and would not allow any disrespect and ill-discipline that we find our leaders and the  young leaders are doing today .

Today South Africa finds itself in the mist of greedy and disorientated leaders who have no clue what leadership, integrity and accountability means and that is what Tembisile ‘Chris’ Hani had all through his political era. It is said that “he was a man who had courage and ability to tell the truth irrespective of what his audience expected from him”The Times.

Our leaders today are not only throwing stones and blowing their own whistles but they are also tearing their own nation apart, they have utterly lost the mission and vision that has been fought for by not sustaining their promises and not keeping this country together particularly the ANC for it is the ruling party of today. They are obsessed with careerism, opportunism and infighting the movement.

From a public relations point of view an organisation has to always sustain and protect its image for its stakeholders is the most important thing. We have seen in the ANC that lack of research and understanding of the target market being a corner stone the fall of their brand image. I salute and give praise to Chris Hani for being a man of good and honest calibre with good leadership skills. I should say that this country is really in need of his leadership calibre.