Taking a Brand Global: Ten Steps to Success
Essay by review • November 6, 2010 • Research Paper • 7,697 Words (31 Pages) • 3,391 Views
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“Taking A Brand Global: Ten Steps To Success”
I. Introduction: The Importance of Being Global
A strong global brand is a powerful weapon. These days, however, it may also be an
indispensable one, even as the economy challenges our faith in brands to deliver a profit.
According to Interbrand’s “World’s Most Valuable Brands 2000” study, for example, although
Amazon’s share price has declined, its brand value has increased by 233%. On the other
hand, international power player Coca-Cola, although still the world’s #1 brand, saw its value
drop by 13%. And technology brands did quite well— Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and Nokia placed
second through fifth—not at all foreshadowing the precipitous crash in their stock prices about
half a year after the study findings were released. Overall, notes marketing writer Jane
Bainbridge in Marketing [20 July 2000], Interbrand’s second annual study of this kind reveals
not only that global brands are “stable assets,” but also that “the most valuable brands are
global.” In fact, she argues, “to have a billion-dollar brand, a company has to be global.”
II. Branding As The New “Universal Language”
Based on a recent survey of more than forty-five thousand people across nineteen countries,
Young & Rubicam makes a rather startling claim. In its newest Brand Asset Valuator report,
issued in March 2001, the firm asserts that brands have taken on a godlike status: consumers
find greater meaning in them and the values they espouse than in religion. As Conor Dignam
reports in Ad Age Global [12 March 2001], the study claims that superbrands like Calvin Klein,
Gatorade, IKEA, Microsoft, MTV, Nike, Virgin, Sony PlayStation, and Yahoo! can therefore
also be called “belief brands.” Although Dignam argues against the idea that consumers would
treat brands as gods (because they will not be dictated to by them), he does accept the
implications of the argument and make a different analogy. Brands, he says, are more like
“best friends,” in that they are an important part of people’s lives, do carry specific meanings
for the consumer, and they are respected or rejected based on how well they keep their
promises.
Yet whether one calls them gods or “best friends,” brands have clearly started to take on
greater importance in consumers’ lives. In fact, they have gone from objects with identity to
identities in the guise of objects.
The trend has gone so far, in fact, that people are beginning to speak the language of brands
and even to market themselves as brands in their own right. There is more than one book in
print along the lines of Brand Yourself [Ballantine, 2000] devoted strictly to the notion that the
self can be carefully concepted in order to ensure success. In fact, contends Giles Lury, brand
consultancy director of Springpoint, in Brand Strategy [2 November 2000], “branding has been
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one of the most important commercial phenomena of the last century—almost everything is
branded nowadays.” As examples, he points to the U.K. football team Manchester United,
which successfully markets self-branded clothing, ketchup and beer; The Spice Girls, with its
“girl power” message and “brand architecture,” complete with distinctive “sub-brands” (e.g. “Do
you want Scary Spice girl power or Baby Spice girl power?”); and the success of Tony Blair’s
New Labour party, with its updated spin on “core values.” Even places are being branded
these days. As Adrian Shaughnessy of Intro notes in Design Week [16 March 2001], the cities
chosen as European Cultural Capitals for 2001, Rotterdam and Oporto, have ordered new
logos for the occasion. The cities are part of a new wave of urban brand makeovers aimed at
enhancing consumers’ awareness of them, not to mention tourism and trade. “We are deluged
with zippy logos,” Shaughnessy writes.
III. Defining The Global Brand
What is a global brand? Is it the same as a “multinational,” “international,” “worldwide,” or
“cross-cultural” brand, or are these distinctions irrelevant? According to brand expert Paul
Temporal, writing in Branding in Asia [John Wiley & Sons, 2000], specificity about this is
indeed important, because understanding what a global brand means is critical to developing
an appropriate strategy for managing it. In fact, he notes, “true global brands are relatively few
in number,” probably because they manage the difficult task of consistency. In every market
they play in, global brands have a consistent:
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