Lucky Beer for the Ox!

Building a marketing campaign on cultural believes is a good way to get closer to the target customer. The coming year 2009 will be the year of the Ox in the Chinese calender and Carlsberg is launching in Singapore a festive campaign for Christmas, New Year, and the the Chinese New Year. During times of economic hardship they try to built on the luck factor associated with the Year of the Ox, a good way to make Carlsberg the "lucky beer" that will bring good times back. In my opinion an interesting way to work with associations and I am curious to see what else this campaign encompasses and how they will promote their brand. If you know about any examples where marketers based their branding efforts on similar cultural believes, please share them with us.

The link to the short article


Picture courtesy of: www.brandrepublic.com

Consumer Brands from the Muslim World

Companies with roots in the Muslim world have been coming up more and more over the last years. In particular Dubai and its neighbors have been signaling that there is more to come and the market is getting more competitive each day. However, many people might just have heard about Malaysia Airlines, Emirates, or Petronas, and are not aware about other important brands that command significant marketshare and recognition in their sector. I have found an interesting article and encourage you to take a look at a few more consumer brands that seem to have a promising future. If you have any experience or knowledge about brands from the Muslim world, we would love to hear from you.

Check out the link to the article

Brand Packaging in Japan!

When it comes to branding it is crucial to reflect the right company image in the marketplace and an integral part of this is product packaging. If it is a tangible product the packaging is the thing the customer can see or feel immediately in the store and as in other aspects of life, a first impression can be made only once. Be it color, shape, or the labeling of the packaging, these are all aspects that have to further enhance and match the strategic message the brand is trying to project. Furthermore, practicality and convenience are other important factors of packaging that are gaining importance as a distinctive feature.

Oi Och Matsch ready to drink green tea, from Japanese tea brand Ito En, shows how innovative packaging can be presented, but in this case the innovative feature is just a tool to provide the consumer with the freshest product possible, which is one of the goals of the brand, stand for freshness and quality. Their PET bottle contains natural water and a cap filled with green tea powder. When ready to consume the beverage the cap is turned, which enables the powder to fall into the bottle and after some shaking a freshly mixed tea is ready to drink. It’s a simple process with a big payoff for the product and brand. Somehow it seems that especially in the Japanese market brand packaging is a crucial aspect of a companies overall strategy. I still remember from my time in Japan that if you bought some random cookies, often each cookie within the box was packed individually to assure freshness every time, and not only with highly priced products, this was quite common in Japan for products from different price segments. Maybe it was not the most environmentally way of doing things, but from a marketing perspective arguably a smart choice, even if packaging costs were high.

Below is a link to a number of interesting pictures about brand packaging that I found in www.businessweek.com. Check it out, and let us know if you have encountered some interesting examples around the world.

Check link here


photo courtesy GNPD, www.gnpd.com

Incognito Burger!

McDonald's Japan has temporarily remodeled two of its chain stores in Tokyo by stripping away any branding and just offering their quarter pounder in a red and black box. According to a spokesperson their aim is to offer the consumer a blind taste test without the preconception of who made the burger - pretty much with the thought "let the quality and taste speak for itself". However, I believe that it is more a stunt to get some press instead of a real taste test. Regular by walkers know that this is a MCD store, even if they changed their decor for a while, and the writting on the box seems to use a common MCDonalds font, which should be a hint about who made this burger. Anyway, I still thought it was an interesting idea and wanted to share this with all of you. Below is the link to the original text.

Check the link here

Branding in China - Positioning and Communications

It is no surprise that when it comes to branding in Asia many companies are focusing their resources on the Chinese market as China has what businesses want, a huge market willing to consume. Some might argue that even China's population of approximately 1.3 billion is a clear incentive, this figure is not a good representation of the market because a significant part of the population still lacks the economical resources that would enable them to go on shopping sprees. However, just to put the market into relation, if only 1% is really affluent and 10% has some disposable income this still represents 13 million and 130 million of potentially consume hungry buyers.

The challenge now lies on how to capture a share of this market where a large number of foreign companies are already facing difficulties in establishing their brands in a highly competitive environment. It should be noted that often those challenges are not due to a bad product or service, instead, cultural insensitivity in their communications and unclear brand positioning strategies are playing the trick on these marketers.

One of the reasons for those difficulties is that marketers commit simple mistakes as using models and messaging concepts not suited for that particular market. Clarins made such a mistake in their male grooming products ad by using ethnically diverse metrosexual models that represented an image the typical Chinese male could not identify with. This simple example makes clear that if a company wants to establish their brand in the Chinese market they have to make sure that all variables in their strategy are aligned and that particular cultural traits of their target segment are accounted for. Paul Temporal exemplifies this in his book "Branding in Asia" with the following statement: “Every image and every phrase included in a company’s communications, the way the advertising looks and the style of language used, every touch added to the product, every niche addressed, every service provided must focus on the strategic platform, that is, its personality and positioning”.


As previously mentioned there are more variables that need to be considered to succeed and clear positioning of the brand is another crucial factor that marketers need to get right when entering a market that is not very forgiving due to its extensive product offering.Positioning a brand as a premium-, mass product, or something in between should be on the agenda from the beginning to avoid confusion during later stages of the PLC and having to re-adjust multiple aspects of the marketing strategy.

This seems to be a no brainer taught in every Marketing 101 class, but even successful companies commit such rookie mistakes from time to time. Just to mention one, Buick, a famous US car company, tried to capture a new segment of the Chinese market and decided to offer a low cost model that would appeal to less affluent Chinese baby boomers. The formula worked at first, but with time it turned out that there was a flaw in their strategy and overall sales fell sharply. The problem was positioning! With their low cost model they had diluted their brand image to the extent that consumers which were interested in Buick vehicles as a status symbol felt no longer attracted by the brand. On the other hand, the segment that bought the low cost model was also disappointed as Buick had only been able to offer the car at an economical price by using inferior materials, not representative of the standard expected from a Buick vehicle. This mistake illustrates how easy it is to dilute a company’s highly respected brand image by choosing the wrong positioning strategy.

The lesson to be learned as a marketer is that you have to know exactly who your “real customer” is and what your brand stands for, particularly when entering a foreign market as complex and competitive as the Chinese one. However, on the other hand it is interesting to learn about the complexities of cultural branding and cases like these give us something to talk about. How about you share some of your experiences with all of us?

Nation Branding - Focus on South Korea

Nation branding has been generating more interest over the last years as countries are tying to establish or even reposition themselves in the global marketplace. Overall the process is similar to branding a product or service, but on a much larger scale. Having a strong brand as a nation can help attracting foreign investment and positively affect the reputation of brands from that country as numerous studies on country of origin and branding have shown. However, this leads to the question if it really is the country that makes its brands or the other way around. I guess it’s like the chicken and the egg story, where it is difficult to find out which one came first.

When thinking about what is crucial in nation branding the association effect comes to mind. Associations are an integral part of nation branding and probably all of us have certain perceptions about specific countries. Normally, if we hear that a product comes from Switzerland we associate high quality and precision with it, on the other hand, in particular Asian countries, with the exception of Japan, still have to fight their reputation of producing low cost/low quality products. This affects the brands reputation and even though corporations from South Korea, Taiwan, and China have created a number of very successful brands over the past years, they are still often linked to the aforementioned.

Many of those countries established themselves and grew their economies over the last decades as low cost producers, a stigma that has stuck on them. Furthermore, political ties have had an impact on their brands, and in particular South Korea has to fight some of those hurdles. They have world renowned brands as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai, but I have personally heard more than once that South Korea is sometimes linked to the North in the mind of some consumers, which is not ideal from a branding perspective. Even though there are general efforts to change the image of South Korea, they have not been completely successful in showing the rest of the world all they have to offer and that they are a developed high-tech country. The challenge South Korea faces lies in repositioning themselves in the mind of the consumer while building on the success of their top global brands. Recent events as the World-Cup and the Hallyu phenomenon (Korean Wave for television dramas and music), have surely been putting them on the right track, but they need to continue working on their communication and positioning strategies.

From my personal experience living in South Korea I believe that from a branding perspective there is plenty to build on.

Other countries as Malaysia with their 2020 initiative or South Africa with the coming World-Cup in 2010 are also putting significant efforts into their branding. A good example for regional branding that comes to mind is Dubai. Dubai is creating a city of superlatives, which is well known around the globe through a very focused communication plan. There lies the difference to the efforts of other regions and countries, effective communication. Just as an example, close to Seoul a huge development project called New Songdo City is creating a business focused city from scratch, but they have not been very successful with their communication strategy. I have not encountered many people yet that have heard about this project and an opportunity to strengthen a countries reputation like this one can be of considerable impact. It might not be product or service, but modern developments of this scale could positively impact South Korea as a brand. I suggest you check out the link yourself; it is a pretty interesting project. As countries develop and establish themselves economically, nation branding becomes increasingly important and I look forward to hear about some examples you might know about.


New Songdo City project

A number of articles have been published on branding Korea in the Koreatimes

Welcome!

Welcome to Globalguy Branding, where brands meet culture!

Food, isn’t it a great thing that connects people from all over the world? As for myself, I like to immerse myself in culinary experiences from east to west and I am a firm believer that food is part of and represents particular cultures.

Now you might ask yourself, why I am talking about food, isn’t this supposed to be a branding blog? Well, I think when it comes to branding we have to think outside the box, look further and search for intangibles that make the consumers heart beat faster, like a cook trying to capture our senses and attention serving us his best dish. Just as foods represent part of a culture, brands represent certain values and personalities, and in order to create a connection to the consumer on a global scale it is necessary to take into consideration country specific cultural factors.

What this blog and my persona are trying to do is adding a little spice and flavor to the branding equation, share insights and have some vivid discussions about classical as well as current branding topics and whenever possible add some cultural notes. I hope to cover branding issues from all around the globe, but as we progress you might notice that I have a slight inclination towards the Asian market. However, I want to keep it open to all regions and look forward to hear from you. If you landed on this blog, branding is probably part of your life already and I am sure you have lots of interesting insights to share, so let’s make this a platform where we can all learn from each other about what happens when brands meet culture.

Yours truly,

Globalguy