// Rita Clifton ❝ ❞
For me a brand is any organisation’s most important asset. Sometimes people
say to me that people are the most important asset and I usually say, “Organised to do what?”
When you are asked to work with a company, where do you start? It’s a bit like an audit, looking at opportunities as well as risks. There’s a great quote by Howard Schultz, the global CEO of Starbucks, who said, “I don’t run a business, I run a brand”. As far as he’s concerned, the brand and the business are inextricably combined. Everything he does is based on, “How am I going to build this fantastic asset, which is my brand?” So the decisions he makes, both commercial and operational, are dictated to by, “Is this going to help my brand? Is it going to continue to create a competitive advantage?” Not every business gets that or feels the importance of brand, so sometimes you can be asked to go in and just help create a new logo, or communications, when actually, the problem lies with how the business is led and operated in the round, and it’s not living distinctive values or delivering a competitive advantage, Sometimes they think you are going in for one thing, but of course you discover all sorts of stuff that lies beneath.
Your CV and the list of companies you work with is hugely impressive, so with so many experiences it might be hard for you, but what has been your most challenging role or project that you’ve undertaken? Oh my goodness, that’s very difficult to highlight one project and also because much of my work is confidential, for many reasons. Sometimes, if you’re working with a company and they say it’s about branding, the British press have elevated cynicism to fine art, and you’ll see headlines that Company X has spent £10m on a new squiggle [laughing] and clearly there is so much more that goes into branding to generate value. It’s so not just a logo! Branding can be looked at like an iceberg, the name, logo and packaging is the visible bit, but there’s so much more that goes on below, such as culture, process, values, overall strategy and the products and services that relate to
that that makes it work. I’ve worked with the widest range of businesses, from tiny start up businesses such as a private club started by a male celebrity, which was fascinating from the outset, to the other end of the spectrum and major corporates who were trying to make all their various offices and businesses connect with each other across the world, so using the brand as a transforming and uniting tool in those situations. My work is incredibly satisfying and that’s why I’m still doing it.
The environment and sustainability are issues very close to your heart and you do much pro bono work around those issues – where does that passion stem from? When you believe in something and are affected by something it’s so very hard to say no! I do a lot of work with charities both as a Trustee and advisor. Also, specifically on the branding front, whether it’s pro bono or reduced fee, because you want to make a big difference. However the world needs changing and whether we like it or not, business runs the world, so we need to change business fundamentally too. I’ve had a huge crush on Sir David Attenborough from the age of seven, I used to watch ‘The World About Us’ with him in the rainforest and these extraordinary places and would watch these huge, beautiful trees in the Amazon being cut down and I would be in floods of tears thinking, how can people do that? So I loved him from a very early age and I was able to tell him that in the nicest possible way when he very kindly spoke at a dinner I was hosting a few years ago. He was an early inspiration and I’ve always been interested in the environment and I’ve been a member of the World Wildlife Fund. When I graduated from university, I got a ‘proper job’ in the commercial sector partly because I needed money and also because I thought that you needed to make a difference in business. In 1988 Margaret Thatcher made a speech about the importance of the environment and suddenly I was able to come out of the green
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