Counterfeiters' alert! – How to decode a bank note

This is most probably my third, nay fourth consecutive entry on the beauty of commerce and money. Well what is branding if not an instrument embodying value, the tree sap of commerce. (Secretly, I think its because I still don’t have nearly enough money).

My friend, Dayo, had this interesting thought the other day. He had been researching the nature of trust in business relationships and had some brilliant ideas. We played around a bit with them and observed that a bank note could serve as conceptual model for understanding trust.

Think about it for a moment.

Money has been around since we were all born yet remains unchanged as the currency of exchange for our continued survival (You could check out my previous post, What brand is your money). Yet experiments have shown that we can nearly not tell the original coins or bank notes apart from a small group of imitations with minor alterations from the original. Hard to believe right? Yeah thought so too. Donald Norman in his book, “The Design of Everyday things” describes this as the difference between “knowledge in the world” and “knowledge in your head”. I guess that’s story for another day

Well, here are some things we discovered from observing a bank note:

• - The value it represents is darn obvious (often represents this in words and figures)
• - Security features (difficult to imitate and might only reveal themselves upon closer inspection)
• - Unique design language or theme
• - Recognizable parsonage, place or even symbol
• - Features indicating a sense of heritage (take the use of old font types for example)
• - Mystical or mysterious representations (for instance inscrutable writings or mystical figures)
• - Specific colors
• - Tactile prompts for easy identification by the visually impaired
• - Bears a unique identification number
• - Endorsed by some authority figure (e.g. the Governor of the Central Bank)
• - Name of the country

With this conceptual tool, I believe any one forging a brand could generate ideas for eliciting trust in clients. But isn’t it interesting that you are carrying in your wallet, a really cool brand strategy document?

What my next door Neighbor has to say about the Alaba economy

Alaba International is a financial hub in the heart of my adopted home city, Lagos. It’s a capital within a capital, if you know what I mean. It is a typical market but then it is different in a way. Like China town, there is an ethnic undertone to its trappings. The brand of the Alaba economy is “international” in scope in that (1) products sold here are from all over the world: from Malaysia to Italy, India to South Africa and (2) that it doesn’t discriminate in what is sold: whether imitations or originals, “no-testing” or brand new. If it can be sold, then it can be gotten at Alaba, some would say. It is a crucial muscle in economic arm of the Ibo Nation.

My neighbor like his Ibo “brothers”* is a player in this economy. His story testifies to that social contract which admits new pupils into this exchange and grooms them into astute business men. At the risk of generalizing and being somewhat simplistic, I would make a stab at how it works:

A young boy leaves his village in the care of a relative who is a Lagos-based business man. His patron feeds, clothes and generally takes over his upkeep for the tenure of this apprenticeship. The young boy works at his patron’s store and learns the rubrics of the trade usually for years. When he has proven himself and learnt what he needs, his master (as his patron is referred to) would provide him with capital in the form of money, inventory or even a few of his clients to get his ward up and running in managing his own business.

This simple system is the life blood of the entrepreneurial success of this great market place. It is replicated in different parts of Nigeria wherever Ibos may be found. I remember visiting a village in the North which was roughly a street long. True to nature, an Ibo trader was there running a store. Where ever there are people who have got money to buy, there is an Ibo man to sell, people joke.

These businessmen have had their minds stewed in the fundamentals of business, from negotiation to international strategy. Small wonder they command vast empires of wealth while some MBAs in my country are still on the unemployment line.

There is a system of doing business that enables these businessmen circumvent the more formal sector with its bureaucracies, expenses and delays. In the place of these bottlenecks, Alaba economics accommodates entrepreneurs raising capital from money lenders or “brothers”; monetary transactions across international boundaries without banking routes; the presence of agents of their own ethnicity resident in foreign countries serving as some unofficial “Chambers of Commerce” to protect and facilitate their business interests there. Their capabilities are numerous. They have perfected an extralegal system that is as old as an empire. And it works.

In truth, the Alaba brand epitomizes that unique ability to adapt to change. Or what do you think?

*The word “brother” is a colloquial expression common among some Nigerian ethnicities. It could refer to friend, relative or even business partner.