Name: 【TEDx】TEDxUFM: Magatte Wade - Disruptive Brands as Cultural Innovation
Uploaded: 2014-03-06T20:19:40.000Z
Duration: 19 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Buenos días.  Thank you so very much all of you for being here.

Future simple

I guess for me, I'm just going to start by telling you I hope each one of you has a higher purpose.

Gerund

That's my all reason of being in this world: having a higher purpose, that's beyond myself.

It is this vision that I have for Africa to do well and be well,

'cause I'm from Senegal, west coast of Africa.

What does it mean for me that Africa be well and does well?

Well, do well by becoming an economic power in the world,

and be well by being a cultural power in the world.

That's my vision and that's my goal for my continent.

Now, how do we do that?  Some people think, you know, government to government aid is the solution.

I'm like "get back to me when you’re done smoking whatever it is you’re smoking."

Others think: Oh, well, you know, let's go for wild savage unconscious type of capitalism,

meaning to extract everything we can from anyone we can, we don't care who gets destroyed   in the process.

Whether it's people, human rights, social rights or environment rights, we don't care.

Let me make a buck, and that's all I care about.

Well, I have no patience for that either.

So, in my quest of how can I help and be part of the correlation

of people who will ensure that Africa becomes an economic power as well as a cultural power?

I started wondering and I started opening my eyes and looking around me as to

what it is that the world was telling me.

You know, anywhere I go around the world, starting with my own country...

And, by the way, everything I say you can take it and apply it directly to your country,

to Guatemala, because all of us in the developing world, we do share some of the same issues,

and hopefully we share some of the same dreams to see our countries really rise to the top,

in a way that we can be proud of, when it's all done and said.

So, what I look and see in my country, in Senegal, what do I see?  Most people have one dream, one goal:

it's to make it to the western world, and when you ask any Senegalese young person,

and pay attention guys "young person."  I say: which passport would you rather have?

If I could put any European passport in your hands or the American passport, any other passport,

without one single hesitation, do you know which one they say?

I give it to you, which one do you think they say they want?  I heard it: America.  Absolutely.

We go to Rwanda.  My husband and I were in Rwanda the August of last year, and I said...

we know, we had this young driver, and I told Michael, I said: "just watch."

And I asked the young driver, I said: "Where do you wanna go in this world?"  He said: "America."

I said: "If you had the choice between going to France or America first, which one do you go to first?"

"America."  Okay, that's true.  Yesterday, we were having dinner at friends' homes.

And Valeria was talking to... Turns out they have four children, four grown children,

and I know that here when you turn fifteen there's a special party that happens for you, right?

And she said that her and her husband, they decided that they don't do that party; but instead,

her husband takes the kids anywhere in the world, of their choice, for one week.

And that is his way, their way, of celebrating the turn.

Four children, Guatemala City, she said: "Child number one, Chicago; child number three,

New York; child number three, New York; and child number three, New York."  Right?

Can we deny it, guys?  Quite frankly, America must be doing something right.

If America is at the bottom of all of our dreams,

to people who have never even gotten a chance to get in a bus, in the first place,

to even go the next city, left alone traveling half way across   the world.

Where do you wanna go?  I want to go to America.

So, what's this telling me is that America has a beautiful brand.

People really, really have a beautiful perception of America; otherwise, why would they want to go there?

Then, I started thinking and trying to find out why; why do they want to go to America so badly?

What has America done so well that the perception of its country is so powerful?

To the shallow observer, you're gonna think that it all has to do with America being "economically" strong.

I think the reason why America is winning is because America has invited itself in each one of our hearts.

America is in our lives day in and day out.

When I asked the same young people "why do you wanna go to America?" and then I asked them:

"Tell me about what are your favorite products, your favorite brands?"

I hear Levi's, I hear Nike, I hear Google, I hear Facebook; all types of brands, and again,

So, if the youth, if your youth... wherever your youth is, that's where your country is going to go next.

So, when I had them talking to me about all of these brands, what did America do?

America has succeeded beautifully in exporting its culture.  Culture, that word is so powerful.

The young kid that I'm talking to and who is talking to me about the fact he want to go to America,

he want to go to America because America is cool.  He's not thinking about the richness or anything like that.

Because thanks to Hollywood, thanks to all of these different brands...

and some of them are as young as only... some of them are less than ten years old.

Google is a the ten-year-old brand, but Facebook... I'm not... it's unbelievable.  So, wow!

So, when I look around and because I always want to learn from the best, what did I tell you that I wanted to do?

I wanted for my continent to be an economic power and I wanted it to be a cultural power.

Who around the world has done that better than anyone else in the world?  Them.

And, we just found out that the way they did it was through building powerful consumer brands,

to invite themselves into your living rooms; on your roads, through the cars you drive; in your bellies,

through the drinks you drink: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, all of that.  You go into Google every day,

you facebook your friends every day, you don't even think about it.

So, I'm like wow!  There goes my answer, right there, right there.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try and make sure that I work at building brands,

but doing it in a certain way, in such a manner that we do contribute to what I call the global culture.

When I look at the top one hundred brands in the world, global consumer brands, guess what?

There is no African brand, whatsoever.  We're talking about consumer brands,

we're talking about what people see day in and day out about the world.

And, for me, if you're not on that list, technically you do not exist,

and that's very much what's happening to many countries in Africa, to probably Guatemala,

So, we gotta make sure that we get on that list, that's my goal, 'cause once we start getting on that list,

that will be my proof that all of the sudden, you know, we are able to start...

we have succeeded at exporting a culture.

And, I just believe that once you get to that level,

it's getting into this virtuous circle of people having a different perception of you,

and then being able... trusting you, therefore, and doing more trade with you; and that trade,

actually, brings about more economic power.

You see how the virtuous circle works?  So, that's where I wanna get myself to,

and that's where I'm trying to get people to go to.

So then, the idea becomes very simple, like I said,

use the power of brands to change perceptions via joining the global culture making.

There is a global culture that's happening right now, and I do not wanna be left out.