Branding Strategy Insider

Brand Strategy For The Chinese CEO

Chinese organizations have unique challenges and advantages in their home market. Here are 10-steps specifically designed for Chinese CEO's to successfully channel their resources to build powerful brands.

1.) Build a strong corporate board of directors: Board of directors can be one of the most important strategic resources for any company. By including directors who are well connected to different strategic resources such as investment banks (to help in funding), regulatory authorities (to obtain permissions), media (to create favorable perceptions), and politicians (to help in lobbying), Chinese companies can further strengthen their ties to multiple stakeholders. Such a move not only erects entry and mobility barriers but also would allow them access to scare resources thereby creating a credible source of competitive advantage.

2.) Develop a powerful local, regional and national distribution system: China is a vast and widely spread out country. Distribution systems in China are not consolidated as they are in much advanced countries such as the United States, United Kingdom or Europe. Given the strategic importance of having a wide spread and well managed distribution system for reaching customers, Chinese companies should invest in creating a well managed, far flung and well coordinated distribution system. Mere reliance on existing fragmented distribution channels will not be sufficient.

3.) Tap the local human capital of customers, collaborators and competitors: As is widely acknowledged by now, China is a very different market from those in the Western world. Chinese companies should leverage this difference to their advantages. In addition to using market research firms, Chinese companies should tap into the human capital across the spectrum and across markets. Local customers, business partners and collaborators would have a wealth of information on local customer buying habits, the local regulatory policies and other strategic information. By establishing a formal network to enable information flow, Chinese companies can create a strong advantage over foreign companies that may not have access to their market information.

China Embracing English Names

Go global, young man.

That was the advice from Harvard’s Theodore Levitt when his seminal article, "The Globalization of Markets," was published in 1983. Since then, globalization has become a dominant theme of international business strategy.

It really is a neat idea: You drive a global brand with one big differentiated idea, everywhere from Akron to Auckland. Your brand gets recognized on the shelf by travelers and natives alike. A single name lowers production and manufacturing costs.

That’s normally what we mean by a “global name.” But in China, the younger generation is giving globalization a provocative new spin. As China talks of opening itself to the world, its young people are presenting themselves to the world by selecting new names in English.

Exploit Advantages in Chinese Brand Naming

As FedEx and UPS expand their services in China, one leading linguist argues that they could have profited more from the positive sounds of their names transliterated into Chinese.

The name FedEx has a strong association in Mandarin Chinese with fei, which is flying – a desirable name hinting at speed. The U of UPS also has a good association: it sounds like yo in Mandarin Chinese, meaning excellent. In Taiwan, UPS has its name transliterated as You Bi Su (literally "excellent-compared-to-fast," insinuating quality service as well as speed).

Fed Ex’s “flying” nuance effectively expresses excellence with a picture of quickness in delivering, according to Andy Chuang, president of Good Characters in Fresno, California.

According to their official Chinese websites, however, both FedEx and UPS chose to translate the meaning of their names rather than transliterate the already familiar American names. The result is a mouthful. FedEx is Lian Bang Kuai Di, meaning Federal Express; UPS is Lian He Bao Guo Yun Sung Fu Wu, meaning United Parcel Service. Fortunately for them and no surprise to nameologists, customers use the shorter, positive-sounding English name more often.

The bottom line: Consider the positive association your brand name might have if transliterated into Chinese, and take advantage of it.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Don't Underestimate Chinese Marketers

 
Greetings from the wonderful, if rather wet, city of Shanghai. About seven years ago I signed on with a big multi-national to train its marketing teams here in China. To be honest, when I started running the programme I had little idea what to expect. Now, however, many years later, China exerts a strong pull over me.

Each year I fly out here and review the plans of the small army of marketers that I have trained up over the years, as well as running new recruits through the programme. Seven years is a long time in China and I have watched the city of Shanghai evolve and improve at a mind-boggling rate. Each July when I arrive I find bridges where last year there was just river, amazing restaurants that have sprung up and established themselves and formerly drab streets that have become wide boulevards.

Even more impressive is the evolution in the marketing skills of my executives. Before my eyes they have transformed from anxious graduate students with no practical experience into the best marketers I have ever seen.

I have been a marketing professor for 12 years and taught all over the world, but it is only in China were I have seen my instruction executed to perfection in the field.

Chinese Naming Strategy Q&A

Someday, it will be the biggest consumer market in the world. No wonder that marketers are increasingly interested in Chinese naming.

With his training in classical and modern Chinese literature plus an advanced American psychology degree in bilingual memory research, Andy Chuang is the first in his family’s 1,500-year history to master not only Chinese but also English. His company, Goodcharacters.com in Fresno, California, specializes in Chinese naming and linguistic evaluation.

We sat down with Andy to talk about the rationale and the process of Chinese naming.

Q: Americans have a set of basic assumptions about how they name things. Is it true that the Chinese have a completely different orientation towards naming?

Americans typically choose existing first names for their babies. For example, John, David or Mary. However, the Chinese name their babies in the same manner that you would name a company or a product. The Chinese pick some “good characters” and put them together to form a “good meaning.”

Consider the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, as an example. Jiang is his family name. His first name, Zemin: the combination of the two characters, Ze and Min. Ze is a “pool” or “benefaction.” Min is “the people.” By putting these two together, Ze-min means “benefit to the people” or a “blessing for the people.”

China's Brands Imitate to Dominate

From the moment the fireworks exploded over Beijing at the Olympics' opening ceremony, you knew something fantastic was taking place.

But you'd have been forgiven for underestimating just how truly fantastic those fireworks were, because many of them did not actually occur. They were digitally enhanced video effects superimposed onto the Beijing night sky by a team of special-effects experts headed by Gao Xiaolong. 'Most of the audience thought the display was filmed live, so that was mission accomplished,' smiled a clearly delighted Mr Gao after the event.

Meanwhile, equally fantastical events were taking place inside the 'Bird's Nest' stadium, where little Lin Miaoke was belting out a rousing rendition of Ode to the Motherland. It emerged later that Miaoke had been lip-synching and the real singer was another, slightly less photogenic, seven-year-old called Yang Peivi. Chen Qigang, musical director of the opening ceremony, explained to the world's media that Lin Miaoke was chosen ahead of Yang Peivi because she was nicer looking.

In China, there is often a vague but accepted disparity between what is seen as genuine and what is real. Fake fireworks that look real can be better than actual gunpowder. It's acceptable to have a little girl singing with someone else's voice if it makes for better entertainment. Copies and fakery can be better than the real thing. That's important, given the influence China is about to have on branding over the next century.

China's Big Brand

According to that notable macro-economist Frank Zappa, you aren't a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It also helps if you have a decent football team and some nuclear weapons, he added, but at the very least you needed a beer.

Perhaps Western thinkers have exaggerated the influence of Mao on China and in doing so overlooked the influence of Zappa. For it is indeed a beer brand, Tsingtao, that will usher in the new era of Chinese capitalism.

Tsingtao is more than merely a good beer to accompany your spicy dumplings.

It is quite simply the most important brand on the planet because it is the only great Chinese brand.

China and branding are the sexiest concepts in modern business. At the moment, however, the two have almost nothing to do with each other. The growth in China's economic power, its developing infrastructure and the rise of its production capabilities are now widely known.

However, among the hyperbole, mind-boggling market sizes and extrapolation effects, there is a glaring weakness in the nation's business model. For all their economic scale and prodigious production, the Chinese have not got a clue about marketing; 50 years of communism is not the best preparation for brand-building.

While the Chinese are making and consuming an increasing proportion of the world's consumer goods, they are doing so using other countries' brands.

China And The Branding Highway

In a recent visit to China, I had a sense that the nation's high-speed manufacturing machine was in need of a course change to avoid a very rough road ahead.

Built as a low-cost machine aimed at the OEM market, China is truly the world's workshop. But the explosive growth has come at a high price. There are big environmental problems of factory pollution and energy shortages. There are quality control problems that are causing many customers to rethink China as a reliable supplier. There are "social responsibility" issues that have led the government to force entrepreneurs to pay higher wages. Managed growth and more controls are in the offing.

But here's the difficulty. All these problems will only increase China's manufacturing costs. That in turn will force manufacturers in China to shift production to lower cost areas in the country or move to places such as Vietnam. Since there is always someone out there that will do it for less, if you live by low cost alone, you will die by low cost.

China must consider taking what can be called the "branding highway." This takes it to where it can start to build local and international brands that offer more than just low price. In other words, instead of making products for someone else, it makes them for itself. But this road also leads it into the land of intense competition.