Global Brand Management

A Guide to Developing, Building & Managing an International Brand

Laurence Minsky, Ilan Geva

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749483616
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

In today's hyper-connected world, any brand with a website or digital presence is 'global' by its very definition; yet in practice it takes an enormous amount of strategic planning and adaptability to successfully manage an international brand. Global Brand Management explores the increasingly universal scope of brand management. In an era when many brand managers will find themselves working for large multinationals operating across varied territories, categories and consumer groups, developing an understanding of both the opportunities and risks of multinational brands is truly essential. Meticulously researched, Global Brand Management shows readers how to manage an existing global brand, while simultaneously equipping them with the skills to build one from scratch. The text uses fascinating case studies including Oreo, Harley Davidson and Xiaomi to demonstrate the challenges of maintaining a stable brand identity when operating across territories with different languages, cultural values and logistics. With helpful pedagogy throughout and built-in features to enhance classroom learning, Global Brand Management is the perfect springboard for students to appreciate, enjoy and embrace the nuances and complexities of brand management on an international scale.

PART ONE

Theoretical and strategic foundations

01

A definition of brands, branding and brand management

READING OUTCOMES

At the conclusion of this chapter, you should be able to:

• define such terminology as ‘brand’, ‘brand development’ and ‘brand management’;
• communicate the importance of brands, branding and brand development;
• identify and describe the various types of brands and their differences;
• describe the difference between product management and brand management.

Introduction

In our era of increasing globalization many of the traditional approaches to branding and brand management are becoming outdated and require new thinking. These days, any brand with a digital presence can be considered ‘global’ by default. But the crossing of borders online doesn’t mean that the brand automatically understands the consumer behaviours, ethics and trade laws in the territories beyond its owner’s home country. And not being fully prepared for a global audience and conversant in the risks, particularly in light of citizen activism, can hurt the brand and its owner.

Meanwhile, the era of a ‘matching suite of luggage’ approach to branding, where every execution looks exactly the same as the previous executions regardless of the context, is over. For success with branding today, brands need to be able to flex – or have elasticity – as well as display a range of behaviours, so that they’re appropriate for the audience, location and contextual situation. Even when the brand is ‘flexing’, it should be easily identifiable simply by its behaviours – without the logo attached to the element or the brand experience.

In addition, while brand managers have traditionally focused on a single product in a single market, they increasingly need to focus on many products across many market situations all under one brand umbrella, given the rapidly changing global environment. Complicating the situation even further, while many Western companies focus on their financial results every quarter, brands from Asian countries, such as South Korea and China, plan for the long run.

In this chapter, we’ll set the stage for an updated brand-management approach, one that accounts for how brands are perceived and practised differently across the globe, and that incorporates key recent developments in the theory and practice of brand management. In outlining this approach, we believe that brand managers from any country can learn from the best practices of others to improve their outcomes. So, if you are ready to improve the outcomes of your brand-management efforts (or future efforts), join us.

Overview

In this chapter we’ll be asking what we mean by ‘brand’, before running through a brief history of branding and exploring the role that brands continue to play in our era of increased consumer control. We shall take a look at why brands are important for their owners, purchasers and consumers, as well as other stakeholders. Next, we’ll provide a definition of brand management and touch on some of the branding and brand-management challenges and opportunities that exist, including the image-versus-action debate. We’ll conclude with an extended case study on Oreo Cookies to help demonstrate one of the concepts of branding – that a brand is not a product – and to show that brands need to be managed on a global scale. We also have a ‘guest perspective’ from global advertising leader Jorg Borgwardt, who looks at why brand-development efforts often fail – one of the first steps towards learning how to ensure that yours will work.

Some working definitions of ‘brand’

What is a brand? Some say it is the logo. A few toss in the consistent use of selected colours, fonts and/or other parts of its visual identity. Others say it’s simply the name. Some include the mission and vision and/or the brand promise. And there are those who claim that it is the consumers’ benefits. Some look at the physical attributes of a product, while others point to its visual manifestations. And some combine parts of all these definitions. All are partially correct, and all are wildly wrong.

While the logo, trademark, slogan, colours, fonts, advertisements, owned communications (such as the website), mission, vision, promise and more – even the product, service or other ‘entity’ itself – are ingredients or components of a brand, they are not the brand. So, what is a brand?

We believe that the simplest way to define it is: ‘what consumers, prospects and other stakeholders think, feel and say about the product, service, person or other entity’. There are many other, more nuanced and, thus, more complicated definitions of a brand, but in the end, the intention is similar and points to the same intuitive understanding of the concept. For example, here is one definition: ‘A brand is a cluster of meanings.’1 Another definition, one that we heard in a presentation (the original source of which we can’t identify) is: ‘A brand is a covenant with the consumer. It is what remains from past behaviour that allows the consumer to anticipate future behaviour. The more consistent the past behaviour, the faster the brand can generate the conviction that we as consumers “understand” what it is about and anticipate what it will or will not do.’2 Stan Richards, the founder of the US-based ad agency and design firm, the Richards Group, says that, ‘a brand is a promise’. Others connect the brand with the fame and fortune of the product or service or its overall reputation. Jean-Noël Kapferer in his classic brand-management textbook defines ‘brand’ as ‘a name with the power to influence.’3 Meanwhile, best-selling marketing author Seth Godin defines a brand as ‘the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another’.4 Or as Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, purportedly said, ‘A brand is what they say about you when you’re not in the room.’5 Most of these definitions imply the same core idea – that a brand communicates meaning and offers, when positive, a form of reassurance to all, or virtually all, the brand stakeholders. Let’s examine the significance of the brand for its various stakeholders – the consumers, owners and employees – in more detail.

CONSUMERS OF THE BRAND

The conveyance of meaning is particularly important for consumers and the users of the brand (not always the same) because it helps reduce any of the ‘perceived risk’6 and anxiety in making a selection. Consumers like to have confidence in the products and services that they use and, as behavioural economics shows, we naturally aim to conserve the energy in our brains by seeking decision shortcuts,7 even becoming creatures of habit so that we don’t have to think about our actions. In other words, brands create a ‘cognitive bias’.8

Think of it this way: when we as consumers need to make a selection or decision about a product, service or other entity that we don’t know much about, we seek cues for reassurance. It is for this reason that we tend to prefer brands for over-the-counter medication and cooking and baking ingredients, while consumers more educated in those areas – medical practitioners and bakers and chefs, respectively – are typically more comfortable with taking generics or using unbranded ingredients; they know what they are buying without the overlay of a brand.9

Brands reduce perceived risk in other ways too. Humans are tribal and seek the reassurance of other like-minded individuals – it is why we prefer to enter our neighbourhood store and be greeted on a first-name basis. But often we need a ‘badge’ to communicate our personality, beliefs and values so that the connection with others can happen, and often the badge is a display of a brand logo or colours.10 In other words, the brand badge helps eliminate the perceived risk about ourselves or helps communicate that we are a risk to one group in order to appeal to another – just as strong brands that have an avid following tend to have just as fervent a group of rejecters. Think Apple versus Microsoft. People who are loyal to Apple tend to reject Disk Operating System-based computers, and people who embrace DOS tend to diss Apple users.11

Likewise, consumers pay attention to brands that engage with them, treat them well and provide a competent service with a human flair. In return, brands that take care of consumers are rewarded with thei...