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We have
gone through many solutions on how to deal with the
apparently shrinking world. First came the rather brutal
“one-size-fits-all” approach, particularly from the US,
with all the concomitant charges of US imperialism. Then
we had the softening “think global, act local” approach.
Glocal, with its underlying desire to demonstrate that
“we’re all the same reality,” brought some uncomfortable
stereotyping. And then came the rather ephemeral idea
that we are one “global village”—less a statement of the
brotherhood of man and more a clumsy attempt to find
workable global statements. National and cultural
differences are still huge despite the ever-shrinking
world, and there is still positive advantage in
tailoring a brand to find a unique match with a local
need.
Hermawan
Kartajaya, president of the World Marketing Association,
quite rightly dismisses the idea of a market leader
segment called “the world.” In his keynote speech,
“Repositioning Asia 2.0,” during the recent 2008 World
Marketing Conference hosted by the Philippine Marketing
Association and supported by the Asia Marketing
Federation held at the SMX Convention Center, he said:
“The challenge for all Asian marketers is to refresh
ourselves—change our behavior, we have to renew
competency and collaborate.”
The pace
of change varies from country to country. But, with each
passing year, the worldwide trend away from
mass-marketing practices to new database-driven
individualized marketing has become more pronounced.
Whether the population is large or small, whether the
country is booming or in deep trouble, whether inflation
is raging or under control—none seemed to have slowed
the universal trend toward one-to-one marketing in the
world’s developed and developing economies.
“Repositioning Asia” seems to inspire greater leaps of
creative imagination in developing new adaptations of
this approach. “In marketing,” he said, “you don’t need
to be better, but to be the best [you just have to] be
unique. You must keep on innovating and be different all
the time.”
Asia is
no longer just Japan when the West looks at the economic
and business potential and power of the region. While
Japan continues to amaze the world by constantly
inventing and reinventing products and brands, there are
now many successful innovations in products and
services, coming not only from the newly industrialized
economies such as Singapore and Taiwan, there are also
newly developed powerful business models and
products/brands coming from even the emerging economies
of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the
Philippines.
The pace
of change is so rapid that the ability to change has now
become a competitive advantage. Regional chairman of
McCann Worldwide, Asia Emily Abrera, however, observed:
“We do not yet have truly Asian brands to speak of.” The
ability to change requires the ability to learn. “Most
people are willing to be entertained, uplifted or even
learn something new.”
Kartajaya suggests that marketing doesn’t stop with
marketing mix. The marketer needs to make sure that
brand vitality is differentiated in the consumer’s mind
from other brands. “You don’t sell on price, but sell on
differentiation,” he said.
He
illustrated the process which sees a continual narrowing
of a brand’s focus, funneling down from the broad
positioning based on the business strategy to the
specific positioning based on benefits that establish a
definition of a value. This positioning is best
described through new wave marketing.
“Before
1998, we had pseudo marketing. After 1998, there was
this legacy marketing then after 2008, social media
[horizontal marketing] will be very, very effective.”
Besides technology and globalization, other forces are
reshaping the new wave marketing. The positioning
differentiation brand is viewed as the more effective
contemporary approaches to profitability,” he said.
Fumihiko
Iwamoto, president of K&L Advertising of Japan, noted
that products no longer sell well unless brands seek
particular responses from the customer, and people
respond to people almost better than any other
stimulant.
“Brands
should create emotional charges and experiences that go
well beyond the products,” he said.
The
emotional charge, according to him, is a complex of the
message sent and the impact of that message on the
beliefs and needs of the consumer. “It manifests itself
through the range and nature of interactions the
consumer has with the brand,” he said.
Though
many Japanese brands are not really innovative in terms
of marketing, Iwamoto pointed out that personalities
attached to the brand could do all sorts of things for
the emotional charge.
Abrera
earlier agreed that “celebrities [as endorsers] work
because they get through the dense barrier of language
and culture across countries.”
K.C. Loh,
president of Marketing Institute of Singapore, cited
Singapore’s positioning as the second most competitive
economy—after the US—with its “Uniquely Singapore”
selling point of branding. “Singapore is ranked fourth
globally among valuable brands and the world’s easiest
place to do business,” he said.
Loh
asserted that Singapore sets the scene for the global
brand as “the world’s needs and desires have been
irrevocably homogenized.” He pointed out Singapore
Airlines as an example of the brand that knows no
borders. Singapore Airlines lead a passenger-service
driven group of Asian airlines from Malaysia, Japan and
Thailand in setting comfort and convenience standards
for air travelers.
By
direct experience with a product, a consumer finally
gets his “feedback” in terms of social gratification and
primary sensory experiences that the brand image and
cultural definitions have set up for him.
India’s
IT revolution has also provided a whole new medium for
interaction with many consumer brands operating web
sites that offer product information, deals and, very
often, advice that helps position the brand on a much
wider footing. The global sourcing trend has become a
popular source of India’s explosive growth. Indian IT
professionals are creating software that are changing
the way we do business and lead our day-to-day lives.
The
interaction is two-way, providing information to the
brand owners on how to steer their brand positioning in
the future. The consumer is given new access to
competitors’ sites, there is an increase in the
transparency of the brand for the consumer. Choice is
made easier, comparisons are made easier and, in some
cases, genuine enquiry into value received can be made.
In this way, the Internet promises to keep brands on
their toes as much as it gives them a new medium of
interaction.
According to Prof. Oscar D’Souza, head of information
management at S.P. Jain Institute of Management and
Research (India), global IT spending totaled $1.7
trillion with an annual growth of 7.3 percent. The IT-BPO
services growth reached 8 percent while global sourcing
growth rose 30 percent.
“Marketers will need to rethink fundamentally the
processes by which they identify, communicate and
deliver customer value. They will need to improve their
skills in managing individual customers and allies. They
will need to involve their customers in the act of
codesigning their desired products,” D’Souza said.
For his
part, Dato Sharifah Mohd Bt. Ismail, president of the
Institute of Marketing in Malaysia, said global brands
need to go beyond a broad positioning to express a more
concrete benefit and reason to buy.
She
presented how the smartest entrepreneurial companies in
Malaysia gain a competitive edge by going beyond the
fundamentals of marketing—the manipulation of pricing,
distribution, advertising and promotion—and by
rethinking how the business relates to its reason for
being, the individual customer.
Once
dominated by the West, growth opportunities are now
everywhere, particularly in the populous East. “The
crisis ended the former ‘flying geese’ and regional
‘squadrons’ are developing to increasingly drive
regional integration,” said Y.W. Junardy, president,
Indonesia Marketing Association.
Indeed,
Junardy sees many of these winning marketers taking
advantage of these turnaround trends and pushing beyond
the marketing wisdom of the 20th century into the
marketing of the future. According to him, the new
complexities of production, the integration of many
diverse (and constantly changing) technologies and the
demassification of markets continue to increase the
amount and quality of information needed to make the
system produce wealth. It explains why the battle for
control of knowledge and the means of communication is
heating up all over the world.
As the
battle heats up, the pressure on marketers to forgo past
assumptions and adjust to the new “informationalized”
economy will continue to grow.
“Innovation is not an end in itself,” said Globe Telecom
Inc. president Gerry Ablaza.
The
competition in the mobile marketing emphasized on brand
preference. The marketing mix also changed from
advertising focus to one creating competitive advantage
as the task of competing for customers became more
evident.
The
conference was an unrivalled opportunity to spend
quality time with the other leading marketing thinkers
in the world during the two-day world marketing meet.
Their journey is not limited to what is happening here
in the Philippines. In today’s globalized economy, what
happens in the commercial arena of any single developed
country anywhere in the world has relevance everywhere
else as well.
As
overall conference chairman Tom Banguis put it, “Asian
marketing takes a spotlight with each inspirational
story.”
These
are not pat “how-to-do-it” formulas, rather it offers
creative ideas and innovation that are characteristics
of Asian creativity. It is what we found driving Asia’s
new way of marketing innovation with remarkable progress
while competitors are slipping backward or spiraling
downward.
Today,
the Western world looks at Asia with greater degree of
respect than has been accorded to the region
historically, for today’s quality of the region’s
manufacturing and marketing skill.
Wikipedia founder to speak in Asian forum
Into its
fifth successful year, Global Brand Forum, called the
“Davos of Branding,” is unveiling yet another stellar
lineup of the worlds leading brand and business icons to
speak for the first time in Asia, at this year’s Global
Brand Forum in Singapore.
This
year’s theme of the forum, “The maverick approach to
brand building,” includes Jimmy Wales, founder of
Wikipedia; Spike Lee, the avant-garde American
filmmaker; Al Ries, marketing guru; Will Wright, creator
of The Sims and more.
S.
Karthik, the founding chairman of the Global Brand
Forum, says: “In a world of ‘manu-fake-ture’ and
low-cost imitators, the only sustainable strategy for
leadership is the maverick approach to brand building.
That means having the courage to step outside one’s
comfort zone and go against the grain. This is one of
the reasons why the Global Brand Forum 2008 has chosen
to bring to Singapore some the worlds leading marketing
mavericks.”
Spread
over two days at the Ritz Carlton Millenia in Singapore
from August 14 to 15, these celebrated speakers will
share and discuss their experiences, learning and
insights on what it takes to build maverick brands. |
