#OWS: The brand leaders cannot afford to ignore

[Huey P. Long]

#OWS: The brand leaders cannot afford to ignore
2 November 2011

Cannes, France: I can sense very clearly here at Cannes that this is the moment "the masses" start shaping the policy response to the global financial crisis.

Why? Because everybody I speak to, interview or discuss background with keeps dropping the words "Occupy Wall Street" into the conversation. In fact if #OWS were a global brand, like the designer apparel shops that line the Rue d'Antibes here, it would have a profile to die for among the super-elite.

#OWS has, in just a few weeks, become global shorthand among policymakers for "what can happen" if they don't regain control of the situation. Once you get a coalition of perfectly ordinary people saying "we've had enough", and then you have to watch as the cops baton and taser them in the name of the trespass laws, you know you are in a reputational crisis.

Angel Gurria, boss of the OECD, who I've just interviewed, is not the first to say "they have a point". There needs to be a social aspect to the anti-crisis response: something to stimulate growth and give hope to a generation that have had their future cancelled: that is pretty much accepted among every one of the G20 nations that is a democracy.

FULL-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15562965

[Tippy]

1. K&R

[Huey P. Long]

2. Thank you for the kick.

[MedleyMisty]

3. I imagine it's not accepted here

Seeing as we're not a democracy.