How can Chinese brands become global? - Joel Backaler

+Joel Backaler 

Chinese products are entering the global markets fast, but have a hard time to establish themselves as truly global brands. In European Huawei commercials even the voice actors have no clue how to pronounce the firm´s name. But there is hope writes Joel Backaler, author of China Goes West in the China Daily.

Joel Backaler:

What makes a brand "global?" According to the former head of marketing for Starbucks and Nike, a global brand "can travel worldwide, transcend cultural barriers, speak to multiple consumer segments simultaneously, create economies of scale, and let you operate at the higher end of the positioning spectrum - where you can earn solid margins over the long term". 

Based on this definition we have yet to see any Chinese companies develop brands with global appeal. Even current "success stories" such as Haier, Huawei, Lenovo and Tsingtao have brand names that are more challenging for some Western consumers to pronounce than childhood tongue twisters. 

But despite the current absence of truly global Chinese brands, I remain optimistic that Chinese companies will create globally competitive brands soon. This is due to an evolving domestic business environment that is beginning to reward competitive brand positioning combined with an emerging class of Chinese business leaders who recognize the importance of building a strong globally recognized brand. 

The responsibility of marketing in any company is to strike the right balance between driving sales today and building a long-term brand for tomorrow. In the years of double-digit economic growth, Chinese firms focused almost exclusively on sales to drive corporate growth. Marketing was all too often focused on the next product launch rather than building a brand asset for the future. While researching for my book, a China public relations executive shared an industry joke used to describe the way many Chinese companies perceive marketing: 

"'Branding' means designing a new logo, 'marketing' is the equivalent of purchasing ads on China Central Television, and 'PR' does not stand for 'public relations' but rather 'pay the reporter'."

More in the China Daily. 

Joel Backaler is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more experts on China´s outbound investments at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check our latest update.

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Consumers still pay a premium for brands - Tom Doctoroff

+Tom Doctoroff 

Some branding experts have been suggesting brand loyalty among consumers is on the decline, as they get access to more information. Shanghai-based branding expert Tom Doctoroff disagrees with the interviewer of Knowledge CKGSB. "People are still willing to pay a premium for brands."

Knowledge CKGSB:

 Q. We sometimes find that consumers are less loyal to brands. Where do you think this will leave the idea of branding? 

A. That is the $64,000 question and I wholeheartedly reject it. All you have to ask yourself is: are there still products that people are willing to pay a premium for? That premium ipso facto is loyalty. When you think about brand loyalty, and declining brand loyalty, what you’re talking about on the flip side is increased price sensitivity. So perhaps it’s true, that as consumers evolve they become less brand loyal in some sectors, but more brand loyal in other sectors, as you scale the Maslowian hierarchy of needs, a cleaning detergent could be high involvement for you when you’re relatively poor and you need clothes to shine. [But] as you move up, what you wear in terms of a brand, your car or your mobile phone becomes more high-involvement for you and more relevant to your life and you’re willing to pay a higher price premium for that. In emerging markets, you have waves of consumers entering different phases of economic development, so there will always be new consumers. With urbanization in China people are owning homes or moving to cities for the first time. So their brand choices are high involvement and then there’s loyalty. Societies are always evolving. Different segments of societies’ engagement with different types of categories is always shifting as well. Even in the US—in the recession of 1989 everybody thought that generics would take over the store. They haven’t because of the relationship that people have with categories and brands. So I don’t quite buy it, but I will say certain pockets of commoditization do occur. 

Q. Some experts are saying that people are often ‘product loyal’ rather than ‘brand loyal’ and it’s easy to confuse the two. Is that a differentiation that we need to be paying attention to? 

A. I disagree. I’m not saying that product attributes aren’t critically important. We have to define our terms: what is a brand? A brand is the role of a product in life and it is the relationship that a person has with a product. That relationship is forged through both product engagement, but also from a clear proposition that is in many cases passively received and actively defined by the manufacturer. When you are engaging with Apple, you are engaging with the Apple experience. Ultimately a brand is an experience. So if that experience is not only multidimensional, but also consistent, that experience becomes a holistic brand. Take Lego. It’s not just the fact that you have blocks that makes Lego a strong brand. It’s that you have a clearly defined brand idea, a relationship between the brand and consumer of inspiring builders of tomorrow. So every time you come into contact with that brand—whether it’s Lego Land, the Lego movie, the Lego retail experience, or the Lego toy itself—then you are reinforcing a predefined relationship. Once you start defining a brand as a relationship, you stop talking as if the product and brand can be separated. They can’t. The brand is a relationship that is an alignment of function, emotion and role in life, so that it’s all consistent. Of course if you don’t have a strong and cohesive brand, then the product becomes very important. But that [would be] a very vulnerable product because people can simply out-innovate you very quickly.

More questions in Knowledge CKGSB.

Tom Doctoroff is the author of Twitter is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing and a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. 

Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form. Are you interested in more media experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check our recently updated list.

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Brand building: consistency in a social media age - Tom Doctoroff

+Tom Doctoroff 

Building brands needs more than tools, argues Shanghai-based author Tom Doctoroff of Twitter is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing at Bloomberg Surveillance. "Brands have to make clear where they stand." Uber is an example of a company who seems pretty clueless.

Tom Doctoroff is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you interested in more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out our latest list.

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Twitter is a tool, not a strategy - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff

Branding needs more than social media tools like Twitter or Wechat, says Shanghai-based author Tom Doctoroff of Twitter is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing on his book tour. Virals on social media do not build a brand, nor sell burgers, he says.

Tom Doctoroff is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

 Are you interested in more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check our latest list.

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Building brands with social media - Tom Doctoroff

+Tom Doctoroff 

Author Tom Doctoroff, Asia Pacific CEO of JWT, tries to close the abyss between social media and traditional branding in his latest book Twitter is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing. In Thoughtful China he explains why branding on social media need the more traditional insights.

Tom Doctoroff is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you interested in more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out our recently updated list.

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