brand strategy consultants

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Branding In Asia

Our online detectives uncovered this source for brand strategy and other communications resources throughout Asia.

Yes, we are included.

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Asia Mid-Cap Sees Brand Strategy As Crucial to Growth

Aigo logoGood brand strategy is good business strategy.

One Chinese company understands this fact as it prepares to expand their presence in global markets, as seen in this story from Electronic Engineering Times Asia:

By global standards, the only thing truly big about Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology Co. is its name. Nevertheless, it has big plans. Like dozens of companies across Asia, Huaqi aspires to follow in the footsteps of regional giants like Sony and Samsung to be a household name with cutting-edge technology.

That’s the dream. The reality: Huaqi is a PC peripherals and consumer electronics company that does a little more than $300 million a year in revenue. Outside of China, it is unknown. Its most popular product lines are low-margin MP3 players and USB flash drives. It faces tough competition at home and a steep learning curve abroad.

But Huaqi, like other wannabe giants in Asia, has some of the ingredients to make a run: a low-cost manufacturing base, a growing emphasis on R&D and a newfound respect for building a worldwide brand.

Too often companies are slow to grasp that an organization’s most valuable asset is it’s brand. In contrast, by grasping the strategic importance of brand development, Huaqi is off to a promising start.

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Nanjing Automobile Group Rides the MG Brand

MGlogo+car+flagsA struggling Chinese manufacturer [and] the remnants of a failed British automaker…plan to pool their resources to rescue the iconic MG sports car from the automotive junkyard. This and more from the Los Angeles Times:

A consortium led by Nanjing Automobile Group announced a $2-billion plan Wednesday to construct a state-of-the art production facility in China, reopen a shuttered MG factory in England and open an assembly plant and a distribution center in the small town of Ardmore, Oklahoma…

In particular, experts lauded Nanjing’s decision to base its expansion on a globally recognized brand, because Chinese companies generally are stronger in manufacturing than in innovation and sales…

The acquisition of the MG brand name and tooling — combined with the low-cost advantages of manufacturing cars and parts in China — will give MG Motors North America Inc. an advantage in the competitive U.S. market, said Duke Hale, president and chief executive…

“Our competition, they’re going to bring cars specifically and exclusively designed in China,” Hale told reporters Wednesday at a news conference in Oklahoma. “We’ve got cars with European styling, European engineering, European flair and, oh, by the way, the big bonanza: a brand name called MG.”

In a classic example of the Law of Borrowed Equity, Nanjing and perhaps as importantly, China as a nation brand, stand to reap the benefits to their reputation among American consumers if they get the product right, when new MGs begin to roll off the Oklahoma assembly line in 2008.

The New York Times offers this powerful example of emotions still associated with the MG brand, an automotive badge absent from the U.S. market since 1980:

“It’s the first sports car that I remember as a child,” said Paul Fucito, who grew up around the corner from an MG dealership in New Jersey and remembers its closing.

Mr. Fucito, 34, a spokesman for George Washington University, has never lost hope that he will one day own an MG, although the company’s bankruptcy last year raised doubts for him about the chances of that happening. He participates in several online forums devoted to the brand and fantasizes about a new MG, painted British racing green, with wire wheels and chrome accents.

“It’s been that dream car that I’ve always wanted,” he said.

If the built-in equity of a decades-old brand can evoke similar feelings across a mass market, MG’s return to America can be hugely successful. To evoke the emotion and demonstrate the compelling difference needed to throw sales ahead of projections, MG should listen to this advice.

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Brand Conversation In Cairo

We talk.

Our CEO will address a conference in September, sharing Brand Strategy for Eastern Mediterranean Tourism.

If you are in the neighborhood on September 6, drop in.

MedTravelFair 2006

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Seoul Seeks Brand Image

Seoul’s new mayor plans to rebrand his city, as the JoongAng Daily reports:

Hi Seoul LogoOh Se-hoon, 45, began his four-year term as Seoul’s mayor a week ago with ambitious projects on his mind…

[He] elaborated on his master plan to give Seoul and its 10 million citizens a “brand image” and to make it greener and more foreign tourist-friendly.

…Mr. Oh says his keynote, and the city’s selling point, will be culture.

“As Rome is noted for history and Paris for art and fashion, Seoul needs to have a unique identity,” Mr. Oh said… “Seoul is an interesting place already, where history meets cutting edge technology…

“…Currently, Seoul is a city where foreign businessmen just stop by and never come back. I’d like to make them feel that there is something special in Seoul to bring them back with their families for pleasure…

He believes Seoul has some advantages that other “made-over” cities do not, and that good strategy is the key. “Take Dubai, for example,” Mr. Oh said, “The city had no history and no culture in particular until recently. But because of its leaders’ strategies, the city has become the world’s sought-after place to go.”

Mayor Oh articulates a promising start. And he is right, Seoul, as does every destination in search of tourism or business growth, must determine how best to tell its unique story to develop awareness, consideration and preference, all creating a purchase intent and actual purchase. And yes, good strategy is where it begins.

The potential for success in this effort is further indicated when, for example, Mayor Oh says, “Seoul is an interesting place already,” telegraphing he understands that whatever Seoul’s brand promise is determined to be, it must be authentic.

We wish Mayor Oh well as this brand development project begins. However, let’s hope the mayor and his team are not sold a branding service that is nothing more than advertising or public relations. Otherwise, Seoul will be saddled with a new logo and an advertising slogan with a fleeting half-life, with a result as ineffective as this one.

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How To Choose A Branding Firm

We previously wrote about how to size up a branding firm. Next question? How best to choose a branding firm.

Organizations are often sold a “branding” service which is nothing more than, for example, advertising, public relations, or some other discipline. The reason is that many identity/design firms, public relations groups, advertising agencies, research houses, architectural firms, human resource specialists, events managment firms, and business consultants offer “branding” services. But they do so from where they sit, so they can sell you their core expertise — their logo design, public relations, advertising, research, architecture, HR, business conference management, and business consulting services. Most of these firms will claim to be brand experts, but the reality is this: branding is a by-product of what they do.

When faced with such options, ask questions such as these:

As suggested previously, how do you define the term brand?
What are the fundamentals of a brand?
Have you ever developed a client “brand” without a new logo?
Without a slogan?
Without advertising?
Without a press kit?
Without also offering new website design?
Without also offering a new HR system?
Without also offering a new organizational planning process?
How do you differentiate your firm from the competition?
How do you apply the fundamentals to branding your firm?

Better yet, reduce the query to this:

Tell us, how did you brand yourself, and how does your own name and branding demonstrate your ability to help us with ours?

If a coherent answer is not offered within a few seconds, you are not dealing with a brand strategist, but rather a firm that uses the label loosely. The reason is the discipline of branding requires skill sets different from those of advertising, PR, or any of the disciplines mentioned above.

So next time, get a true brand strategy consultant to create your brand. Otherwise your branding will look like this, or this, or this.

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GM’s Death Wish

GM Merge logosDespite a recent uptick in it’s share price, and talk of an alliance with Renault and Nissan Motor Co., General Motors remains a sclerotic company.

General Motors U.S. marketing vice president Mark LaNeve recently told Business Week:

“Everybody asks me if I think we have too many brands? The answer is No, but we have to manage them a lot better.”

Mr. LaNeve starkly demonstrates the lack of will by GM management and it’s board of directors, unwilling to cut to the chase of GM’s core problem, as illustrated further by this from Mark Ritson:

GM has…become dangerously addicted to economies of scale at the expense of brand differentiation. It is over-reliant on building different branded vehicles from a shared platform. While this is an excellent way to reduce development and production costs, it results in ever-more homogeneous products and a rapid reduction in differentiation and brand equity. The latest Pontiac Torrent, for example, is little more than a rebadged version of the Chevrolet Equinox, and consumers know it.

GM is also economising on front-of-house systems, with many dealerships now merged into cost-efficient, but brand-killing, shared retail points. Target segmentation and brand differentiation are being replaced by cannibalisation and commodification as GM gradually destroys itself.

GM offers 12 brands, from Cadillac to Hummer to Saab to Vauxhall, with over 80 models, all of which created a 2005 P&L drain of $5.8 billion in advertising costs for a company that suffered a $10.6 billion loss.

GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz has flatly stated, ‘We are not discussing the elimination of any brands.’ Yet GM while staying the course, does not address how they plan to answer the question crucial to any successful brand, the one implicitly asked by every consumer GM or any other automobile manufacturer seeks to attract: Why Should I Care About You?

In the absence of an answer, one can only assume GM has a death wish.

A pity, for those of us who remember when a GM car meant something.

They could again…and become patriots to a nation starved for oil.

With a powerfully recharged brand.

GM EV1 billboard

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How Customers Think

Another volume to add to your reading list in understanding effective branding is Gerald Zaltman’s How Customers Think.

How Customers Think jacketZaltman, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, speaks in his book of finding the information crucial to understanding the mind of the market. It’s all about getting at what people don’t know they know, in finding the unspoken drivers that prompt awareness and conversion resulting in a purchase decision, and in creating the ability to see yourself as others see you.

Robert Burns would be proud.

For us, How Customers Think is the seminal volume to which we point our clients if they wish to further understand qualitative consumer research.

Or, you can listen to us demonstrate it in less than thirty seconds.

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Brand Promise vs. Business Profit

We are fans.

Mark Ritson brings a pull no punches quality to his writing on brands and brand strategy that we appreciate. His latest offers an example of the tension between brand promise and business profit:

British Airways logoThe British Airways pilot sounded calm, but he urgently needed a decision. Shortly after taking off from LAX one of the four engines on his Boeing 747, had exploded. With 5000 miles to fly and 351 passengers on board, should he return to Los Angeles or continue the flight to Heathrow?

Senior BA managers on the ground faced a crossroads. If they considered BA’s brand values, the direction was clear: the airline that defined itself as ‘reliable’ and ‘reassuring’ would obviously advise the pilot to turn the plane around and head back to LA. But if the management team started to look at the financial implications, the decision became more difficult.

Turning the plane around would cost the airline upward of £100,000 in reimbursement costs. Should they take the brand path or the profit path?

At 29,000 ft somewhere over Northern California the pilot’s radio crackled into life and his orders were conveyed. Continue on to London. The pilot was probably not surprised. In 15 engine failures since 2001, BA had made the same decision. For all the fine identity work, advertising and PR, when a pile of money is put on the table, brand values cease to be relevant.

A brand promise is little more than words on a wall. It is how those words are embraced and lived daily which says much more to consumers, and employees, about the values of a company and its leadership.

Johnson & Johnson logoIn contrast to British Airways, look at a company that takes its brand promise seriously, such as Johnson & Johnson. The Johnson & Johnson brand promise is a one-page credo, written over 60 years ago.

Look at any one of Johnson & Johnson’s business crises — Tylenol laced with cyanide in 1982, Zomax, a pain medicine withdrawn from the market in 1983 after patients died from using it, and counterfeit versions of the anemia drug Procrit in 2003. In each case, J&J executives credit the company’s brand promise with guiding their decision making. Rather than simply talking about it, Johnson & Johnson lives their brand.

Whether Johnson & Johnson, or British Airways, the brand of any organization is only as good as those who lead it.

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