Enterprise for Peace – Building the Afghan Brand

What?

Developing and implementing a new marketing strategy to make Afghan goods competitive on the global market.

Why?

Insurgency & terrorism require a recruiting pool and at least the tacit support of a significant portion of the population. People with jobs and businesses have something to lose and will make a stand against those that threaten their livelihoods.

According to international military and law enforcement organizations engaged in Afghanistan the country requires a 170,000 strong national army and a 134,000 strong police force to provide security. Even without other public expenditures such as basic healthcare provision, education and infrastructure development Afghanistan doesn’t, and won’t for the foreseeable future, have a tax base to pay for it. Therefore the Afghan government will be dependent, focused and accountable to their international donors and not the taxpaying Afghan electorate.

You want democracy? Then get the electorate to pay the bills. They will hold the government to account.

Additionally it is only a matter of time until international dollars get focused elsewhere and without a tax base the government will collapse.

Opium accounts for a third of Afghanistan’s GDP. Afghanistan is the second least developed country in the world. The economic and social impact of eradication prior to the establishment of alternative livelihoods will fuel discontent and the insurgency.

Those involved in opium do so because it provides them the best opportunity to improve their financial situation. Given a more lucrative alternative – along with increasing the risk to involvement in the opium trade – those involved would have a simple decision to make; ‘Do I want to earn more money, or do I want to risk jail/ruin?’

The opium trade demonstrates that Afghans are capable of organizing and running vertically integrated businesses with complex supply, finance and distribution systems to meet a global demand.

What is required is a new global demand for licit Afghan products.

Why Aren’t Current Interventions Working

Too much development effort has been focused on what Afghans can produce not what they can sell. No market, no point.

Afghan goods are of a poorer quality and more expensive than the equivalent products from other developing nations. Competing on a commodity (price/quality) basis is not viable.

The only way to become price competitive in a Global hyper-competitive market would be massive long term investment in infrastructure, training, education, communications, finance and building investor confidence. Even in more favorable economic conditions the international community’s governments could not invest enough, fast enough to make Afghan goods competitive against private sector investment in countries like India, China and Brazil.

Even if the long term investment were possible Afghanistan is a landlocked country surrounded by nations with their own security, economic and infrastructure issues.

So What is the Solution?

Building the Afghan mark and associated brands with enough brand equity to negate the price and quality disadvantage.

This means building brands that consumers will pay more for than the unbranded equivalent.

An example is the Swiss mark and Tag Heuer watches and Lindt chocolate.

This may not appear to be a good example because the Swiss mark is based on high quality design and engineering.

But if you imagine the Afghan mark to be built around history, tradition, exploration, the exotic, the rare, the unique you can see the potential.

Afghanistan has considerable untapped brand potential with the opportunity to leverage well known icons such as:

• Alexander the Great

• Marco Polo

• The Great Game

• The works and characters of Rudyard Kippling

• The Hindu Kush mountains

• The Silk Road

• The death mask of Tutankhamen (made from Afghan lapis lazuli)

• The Buddhas at Bamiyan

Consumers will pay above the odds for something special. Something no one else has. Something that can start, or stop, conversations.

Are you more likely to be the centre of the dinner party conversation by wearing the latest necklace from Versace or the Hindu Kush?

With the right strategy and execution it would only take Angelina Jolie to attend the latest premier wearing an Afghan necklace to make them the ‘must-have’ A-list accessory.

Made in Afghanistan - Re-positioning Afghan products in the minds of consumers.

Currently there is a media created perception amongst the public in the US and other western nations that we are at war with Afghanistan, not helping the Afghan’s defeat the Taliban and build a better future.

If that’s the perception why would anyone want to buy or be associated with Afghan goods?
But what if you knew that by buying Afghan goods you’d save the lives of our troops and get them home sooner? That you’d have to pay less tax. That you could play a vital part in getting the Afghans standing on their own two feet so that they wouldn’t need handouts. That you could help stop the violence, the extremism, the threat to your own security.

That’s much easier to sell.

Pay more for Afghan dried fruit but pay less tax.

Buy an Afghan carpet so your son doesn’t have to serve in the same place as your husband in five years time.

How?

• Identify Afghan products with the potential to compete in the international market – low bulk, high value and robust. Carpets, jewelry and dried fruit have already been identified but what else is there? We understand that a number of organizations have already carried out this vital work which we could draw upon.

• Identifying markets for Afghan products – military towns, A-list celebrities (and wannabes), creative communities, small businesses selling ethnic and fair trade goods and readers of ‘Three Cups of Tea’ for example.

• Matching the product to the market and building the right brand endorsed by the Afghan mark. Example: Greg Mortenson’s new book ‘Stones into Schools’ is focused on the Wakhan in north east Afghanistan. There is a NGO project teaching the local women to make jewelry in the area. It would not be difficult to develop a brand and marketing strategy to sell this jewelry to the millions of Greg’s readers, especially if he endorsed it….

• Changing the news. The mainstream media has already decided Afghanistan is a lost cause and are doing what they can to make the story a reality. However there are scores of local media, specialist publications and online outlets who would love quirky, well produced, stories of exotic products, local heroes and the latest thing. These can be as diverse as fashion, farming, business, history, travel, foreign policy and educational magazines, websites, radio and TV outlets.

Example: The story of a girl taught at one of Greg Mortenson’s schools has graduated and is now undergoing vocational training in jewelry design and manufacture. She has just sold her first piece to the US Ambassador’s wife who will wear it to the opening of…. Great story, great pictures. Might not make the front page of the Washington Post but it could be a multi-page spread in Cosmopolitan.

• Building international small business to small business relationships. Afghanistan is a small business environment. Building large enterprises is difficult because of the limitations of infrastructure, communications and the instability of relationships between stakeholders.
We would propose that linking small businesses in Afghanistan with small, specialist retail outlets in the US and other developed nations would be the best method of building a viable distribution channel. This would help build and maintain the Afghan mark of rarity and uniqueness.

Additionally it would be the perfect way of breaking down barriers and building relationships between the people of the US (and other nations) and Afghanistan. The two peoples would have a common interest and shared goals.

• Strategic, Focused and Effective Donor Support. We can build a demand but the Afghans must be able to meet it in the right quality, quantity, timeframe and price. To do this businesses identified by the marketing strategy will need support to improve their business functions, particularly product design, quality control, finance and distribution. By focusing support on those businesses where there is already an identified market; donor investment will be supporting something that will grow and become self-sustaining. One small, high profile, success could be enough to build investor interest and confidence. Strategic success is always delivered at the tactical level.

Turning a Concept into Reality

The next step towards turning this concept into a successful reality is a short research, analysis and strategy development project.

'A stand can be made against mighty armies but not an idea whose time has come'. Victor Hugo

email me at davidjamesemail@googlemail.com

Still Optimistic in Kabul

After nine years of being optimistic about Afghanistan I keep wondering if I'm being naive or misguided.

I'm definitely swimming against the tide of public perception but my experiences in Afghanistan keep reinforcing that this is an amazing country and that there is still a hope that refuses to die.

Yesterday I met Rashid Ghyasi he is a young entrepreneur and the co-owner of the Wakhan Cafe in Kabul. One of the many tucked away cafes and restaurants that provide good food, great service and a chance to check your emails. There is a growing number of young, well educated, ambitious and internet savy entrepreneurs throughout Afghanistan driving an economy that desperately deserves more international support.

I also met some of the ex-patriates who have been working for the NGO International Assistance Mission who has been operating in Afghanistan almost continuously since 1966. The workers have lived in amongst the Afghan people even during the Soviet and Taliban eras and tell amazing stories of their hospitality and generosity.

Today I met Yousaf Zaland. In 2003 he started with an $800 contract to do some painting. Seven years later he is the President of the Zurmat Group of companies that provides construction, logistics, business consulting and other services throughout Afghanistan.

I've been getting around town using the excellent Afghan Logistics and Tours mini cab service. Today I was unable to get back to the car as the roads were closed for President Karzai's motorcade. I found myself befriended by Wafiq, the sales and marketing director for Toyota in Afghanistan and we ducked into a air conditioned shopping centre to get out of the heat.

I have to say I was nervous about returning to Kabul because I, along with everyone else, gets bombarded with the media and political messages that Afghanistan has gone to hell and there's nothing we can do about it. However having been back just a few days has reconfirmed to me that there is a whole other side to Afghanistan that is never reported and is actually the route to success.

I had two depressing experiences since I've been back. The first was a conversation with an Afghan consultant working for a Washington based firm. He told me about his work in Bamiyan, which he claims has gone six years without a single shot fired. The local people there were asking him if they should start blowing things up so they could get some of the investment that Helmand is receiving.

The second was with a diplomat from one of the international coalition countries who basically confirmed that we weren't going to get any funding because we weren't in Helmand and effectively all the money is going to be spent on insurgents.

My thinking about Afghanistan is consolidating around a number of short phrases, soundbites if you like:

• No jobs. No peace.
• "It's the economy stupid."
• Buy Afghan goods.
• Focus on winning the peace not the war.

...and a quote from the greatest counter insurgency strategists of the modern age

• "What did the Romans [NATO] ever do for us?"