Craig Davis, the former Worldwide ECD of JWT, is out to make the world better - one brand at a time.
BrandKarma.com is the world's first brand-centric social media platform. It was founded and personally funded by Davis who developed the idea over months of his after-hours time. He started with two questions in mind: What kind of a world do you want to live in? What kind of a world do you want to leave your kids?
The site (www.brandkarma.com) is designed to bring together important information about how brands behave, so that people can easily evaluate and rate them. The goal is to make brand owners more accountable to all their stakeholders - Customers, Employees, Suppliers, Investors and the Planet.
Its mission is straightforward, "to help everyone make better brand choices and influence brand behavior for good."
A beta version of the site was launched this week, with 300 of the world's most powerful brands available for commenting and rating. See www.brandkarma.com
Davis believes those questions are far too important to leave for governments, regulators, experts and business leaders to answer alone. He felt it was time to bring peoples' voices to the table.
"People understand that their purchase decisions have consequences, and they want to do the right thing - if only they knew where to start," he says.
BrandKarma makes it easy for people to inform themselves, and to share their opinions about brands. Davis' hope is that the community becomes a fierce and fair democracy where good brand behaviour is recognised and rewarded, and where bad behaviour is called out loud and clear. The platform also acknowledges that people increasingly turn to family, friends, colleagues and strangers to help make their choices, more than other sources like news or advertising. It's a bottom-up approach to issues that have mostly been fought - but not won - top-down until now.
"In many ways it's an insanely ambitious project." says Davis. But, as Albert Einstein once said, 'if at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it'."
Take a look at the intro video, create an account - and start doo'ing good right now.
VIEW THE BRANDKARMA VIRAL
