The obvious strategy to addressing poverty in many third world or developing
countries is to provide jobs to the people. Dole outs from the government in
the form of free food or shelter are not sustainable. As it has been said
“give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he
will eat for a lifetime”. The smart policy is to give the people the means
to generate income, and thus they will have a sustainable avenue for
improving their standard of living.
Ask yourself – what is your country known for? What are the world-renown
brands that anyone in the world would associate to your country.Look at
Japan: anyone in the world even in the remotest parts of Africa and South
America will readily name brands such as Toyota, Sony, Panasonic and Honda
when asked that question about Japan.
But think of a less developed country like Laos, Somalia, or Ecuador. Does
any brand come to mind when you think about these countries? How about your
country, what brand would people in the first world associate to it? Or do
they simply associate your country to a fruit or raw material?
There is nothing wrong with exporting fruits. However, the problem is –
there is little profit compared with selling a brand. And the main
entities that stand to gain are the traders and retailers, not really the people who produce
them. Moreover,what does it tell about your country if the only thing it
can produce is something that does not involve any creativity or
intelligence? Like it or not, the respect a person gets on the world stage
is very much related to the type of brands produced by their country of
citizenship.
In other words, a country’s economic status is proportional to the number and
quality of world-class brands it can field into the world stage. Go to
Walmart and survey the famous brands on the shelf and you will understand
the reason why the countries that produced them are on the top of the list
of developed/advanced nations.
So the better strategy is to aim at fielding a world-class brand that
involves a product that entails creativity, innovation, and intellect to
produce. The profit margin is much greater than exporting raw
produce/materials.
Other than the financial and image benefits a brand can bring to your
country, your people are posed to reap the advantage of having jobs that are
more interesting and challenging. Employees are less likely to jump ship for
greener pastures if they are engaged in a fulfilling endeavor.
Personally, would you prefer to take on a job that requires you to pick
fruits and package them in boxes, or would you rather work on something that
requires you to design, innovate, experiment and pull in much of what you
learned in school into useful practice.
Brands create creative jobs, rather than jobs that are outright boring and
repetitive. Think of the job of picking fruits from a plant. Ask the people
working on the field if they find satisfaction in what they do. But if
instead we had made these same people work on designing a machine that can
harvest fruits automatically, wouldn’t you see smiles on their faces
instead? The harvesting machine can be a brand that the country can be known
for.
One goal of Zaxxun is to provide a brand name that poor or developing
countries can use as a platform for fielding their products into the world
stage. Zaxxun is an open brand, so anybody can use the name and logo.
The advantage of Zaxxun is that manufacturers using the brand name are not
competing but rather they are unifying to promote and advertise one
another’s products. A manufacturer of Zaxxun sports shoes is advertising for
the one that produces Zaxxun air-conditioners. And the better known the brand
becomes, the bigger the market it can penetrate.
Lastly, we cannot produce excellent products under a world-class brand using
corrupt and incompetent minds. This is why the Zaxxun mindset encapsulated
in the Zaxxun Creed is key to this entire strategy. Yes, jobs can be created
by a good brand, but a good brand can only be created by Zaxxun-class minds.
It is therefore critical for a Zaxxun manufacturer to ensure its employees are all Zaxxuns. Either hire only Zaxxuns, or reprogram all workers to take on the Zaxxun way of thinking.
Poverty is a mentality. To get out of it, the first step is the Zaxxun
Creed. The rest of the steps out of poverty like producing top-quality Zaxxun brand
products will naturally follow.
Andy Philips | 2015-0802