Believe it or not, social media has been around for over a decade. Considered just a fad at the beginning, it has invaded our personal and professional lives to a massive extent. Still, the biggest difficulty for brands and people working in social media is to understand its rules. The sheer advice in the form of articles and blog posts available on the Internet doesn’t make that ‘mission’ particularly easy.

We read and hear all the time “follow the trends (e.g. visuals and infographics, Pinterest and Instagram)”, “do that, don’t do that”, “focus on that, ignore that” – oh my! Checking out a few of those articles in a row doesn’t really make it clearer; you get even more confused.

Therefore, when I came across the infographic you can see at the end of this post I was yet again impressed with the power of visuals and how they manage to transmit a number of messages in a quick and easy to understand, yet creative and fun way. Well done to Jeremy Waite for compiling the rules and creating the infographic!

The truth is though,

Over the past decades companies have gained enormous power – some have become more powerful and resourceful than entire countries. Just think of Nestle or Procter & Gamble; you probably don’t even know that you are using products and brands that belong to one of those organisations. Yesterday I came across a chart I had to share with you – it illustrates just how strong and influential corporations are today.

The chart below shows how exactly 10 (yes, just 10!) global corporations control almost everything we buy; from food to household products to clothes.

Isn’t that fascinating?

Only 10 giant multinationals determine the purchase choices we make through a massive network of parent companies.

What would make you change your name? I am not talking about establishing a nickname, a creative name as an author, musician or similar, but legally a new name? I personally have thought about changing my last name – Stareva – to something simpler such as “Star” because living abroad (i.e. in Western European countries where people find it rather difficult to pronounce Slavic names) I’ve always heard people saying or spelling my name wrong. Nevertheless, I still like my name – it brings me back to my routes and it’s my family name that I carry with honour. But what if there was another pretty good incentive besides personal reasons to officially change your name?

That’s what Lufthansa is currently trying to find out by encouraging Swedish citizens to change their names to Klaus-Heidi (a fusion between two very German names). The prize? A brand new life in Berlin. Doesn’t sound bad at all, does it?

I am a big fan of H&M. It’s not just because I like the fresh design, but to a large extent because I had researched the company’s sustainability goals and activities and I was impressed with its efforts. (I have detailed them pretty extensively in this blog post here.) Now proving their drive for sustainability once again, the global fashion brand has launched a new initiative called H&M Conscious Foundation. In this post I would like to introduce it to you and urge you to join the sustainability movement together with H&M.

The H&M Conscious Foundation is a global non-profit foundation with the mission to “reach beyond H&M´s value chain, and contribute to positive long-term change for people and communities where H&M operates.” After consulting global experts in the field, including for example Sir Richard Branson (whom I am a big fan of too), H&M developed a list of five most immediate global challenges: safeguarding natural resources, strengthening women, reduction of poverty through self-employment, clean water and education.

Of those five,

Remember my recent blog post about how people do not trust brand messages? There I was explaining that for brands to earn the trust of consumers, they need to develop an authentic and transparent two-way dialogue, which includes honest sharing of information and the more active inclusion of ordinary people into business operations.

A new research by Edelman called brandshare digs into this and other matters and manages to give some interesting insights into the evolving relationship between consumers and brands.

Before I move on to the research results, I just want to say that I love the motto of the new study: “an ethos and framework that puts people at the centre of your brand.” Indeed, people are becoming more closely involved and are dictating more strongly brand decisions. The motto also reminds me of Brian Solis’ latest Conversation Prism, where “You” is in the middle, i.e. in the centre.

So, what did brandshare find?