The Hindu Business Line : Essential guidance for the brand-brained

SONY, Honda, Toyota and Samsung. These are the only brands from Asia that made it to the worldwide top league in a 2004 survey. "Looking at the region as a whole, there are less than 10 powerful global brands originating from Asia," writes Martin Roll in Asian Brand Strategy, from Palgrave Macmillan (www.palgrave.com) .

Branding in Asia is often wrongly limited to changing company logo, design style and colour scheme, writes Hellmut Schütte of INSEAD in his foreword. The real challenge for many local brands comes when they try to sell outside their country, he points out.

Branding is strategically important, and so boardrooms have to take charge of the branding domain, urges the book, and shows through telling bar graphs the proportion of `brand gross margin' ranging astoundingly between 40 and 95 per cent. Here is an example: "A branded sports shoe is produced in Asia at an estimated $5, and sold to the sports shoe brand for $10; and the consumer buys it in the retail store for $100 - in other words, a twenty-fold increase throughout the `product-to-brand' value chain." Thus Asian manufacturers are left with "only a fraction of the substantial value that customers are willing to pay for the brand in the end."

The author presents a new paradigm in `Asian brand leadership model', with `New Asia' symbols replacing the `Oriental' ones, `collaboration' instead of `silos of activities', `brand audit' rather than `awareness', and so on. Another `audit' that finds mention in the book is of the boardroom's mindsets and beliefs, skill sets, and resources, with questions such as: `Does the boardroom believe that branding drives ROI? Has the entire organisation been given training and guidelines on how to live the brand?' Elsewhere in the book, Roll explains the role of brand audit in brand management.

Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West, wrote Rudyard Kipling more than a 100 years ago. "There is too much Asia, and she is too old," he'd reasoned. With this quote begins a chapter on understanding Asian cultures and consumers. Asia is not a homogeneous region but a mosaic of cultures, many marketers have learned. Roll narrates the example of how, in China, De Beers positioned diamonds as a symbol of everlasting love. But that did not resonate with young Chinese couples' desire for success and their belief that marriage was `the graveyard of love!' "De Beers eventually decided to position diamonds as symbols of a harmonious and successful future for couples."

An important chapter for policy makers and party think tanks is the one on country branding, such as `Uniquely Singapore', `Dynamic Korea' and so forth. While `Amazing Thailand' scores high on `differentiation' and `inclusiveness', `India Shining' comes off poorly in the second measure. Roll explains why: "The critical mass of people did not connect with the advertisement because it didn't portray their experience of the past few years ... It was the NDA's downfall to have picked the smallest group - the urban middle class - as the key audience."

The discussion on celebrity advertising cautions that overexposure is negatively associated with credibility. "Bollywood personalities have such a huge fan base that it has become the norm for them to endorse a wide portfolio of products and brands. The spectrum spans FMCG, consumer electronics, cars, cosmetics and leisure destinations," notes Roll, on what may be an instance of extreme exposure.

In the chapter on `successful Asian brand cases', don't miss the description of Aman-i-khas of Amanresorts (in India), located in "an abandoned village from the 12th century that everyone had forgotten about."

This is not a hotel but a lifestyle company, maintaining 6:1 employee guest ratio. It is "the only resort brand in the world to have achieved an iconic status with absolutely no advertising since its inception," you'd learn.

Essential guidance for the brand-brained.

BookMark@TheHindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Training is for all

"We have been very effective"

WOMMing its way in

Cricket's back with a blast

A Titan's tale

Essential guidance for the brand-brained

Loo-ks!