Building and strengthening your brand and customer relationships shouldn’t be done all at once, but one step at a time. Then, customer loyalty will follow.
Dipanjan Chatterjee, vice president and principal analyst, branding and marketing strategy, Forrester Research, helped author the new report, “We’re Not In Kansas Anymore: Building Culturally Relevant Social Brands In Global Growth Markets Processes: The Brand Experience Playbook.”
“As mature economies like the U.S. and Western Europe continue to stagnate, their brands gain tremendous upside from tapping into the economic surge in global growth markets like Brazil, China, India, and Mexico,” the report says. “However, the rules of brand-building in mature economies do not always apply to growth markets, which often present myriad unique consumer traits and cultural idiosyncrasies. CMOs of brands in the U.S. and other developed markets can use this report to decode the nuances of brand-building and give their brands a boost in growth markets.”
Build Your Brand One Step At A Time
Building brands in new markets is a process of continuous learning, experimentation, success, and failure, the report notes.
“Old rules do not necessarily apply, and the new rules are many and varied. Brand-building requires discovering cultural nuances and concomitant behavior, incorporating them into the strategy and positioning process, and deploying the right tactics.”
To succeed, Build the business first.
To build a brand, you must build a business. The unique conditions of growth markets require grappling with basics before mastering the niceties of branding. Netflix’s plan for world domination must contend with abysmal internet service, even in major markets like Brazil.
Position the brand next.
Brand marketers need to develop a deep understanding of the market to be able to position their products appropriately. Barilla pasta is positioned in China as an exotic whiff of la dolce vita, in Brazil as the centerpiece of the family brunch table, and in the U.S. as a throwback to Italian heritage. Activa is about flat tummies for Romanian women and about family health for Middle Eastern homemakers. range rover’s ruggedness takes on lush, luxurious overtones in its Chinese advertising. Indians celebrate birthdays and anniversaries at Pizza Hut outlets. The homework to get this right requires boots on the ground and the acuity to decipher cultural nuances.
Serve up accessible aspiration.
In growth markets, exposure to brands has occurred at a pace more rapid than economic progress, engendering a craving for status without the pocketbook to secure it. In China, you may find consumers with Apple earbuds attached to cheap phones stuffed deep in their pockets. Successful marketers will win with the middle class by making aspiration accessible. This could come from adapting the product portfolio to create accessible entry-level options such as the BMW 1-series. or it could even come from tinkering with the price mechanism, such as when Mexican retailer Elektra uses sister bank Banco Azteca to offer creative financing options to lower the perceived price. sachet marketing is a very popular packaging strategy used in South and Southeast Asia to offer up bite-sized affordable “portions” of consumer packaged goods.
Social and Digital Hold The Keys To Success
Don’t mistake the traditionalism of growth markets for reticence in digital adoption. On the contrary, these markets have leapfrogged into digital hyper-adoption, presenting digitally progressive brands numerous opportunities for effective engagement.