Brands must evolve with markets, but must stay true to their values

WHAT ARE THE KEY FACTORS FOR GOOD BRANDING? WHAT ARE ITS SUCCESS COMPONENTS?

I THINK a good brand does two things really well. One, it knows what people want from it. I think this is something a lot of organisations overlook because they just sit in a room and do not get out enough into the real world to understand what the consumers expect. The second is consistency – making sure that the brand, whether you are experiencing it in a retail store, or on Instagram, or in the box that comes in when ordered online – does it all feel the same? Does it have the same value? Does it have the same way of allowing you to experience it? Do you understand that it is all from the same place? If it feels that way, then a brand really has a lot of value in the mind of consumers…And making sure that it ties to things like your overall mission, your values, and the way your organisation is set up. A brand that just looks cool, for example, but does not connect to values and purpose and mission and things like that is empty and consumers can see that right away. 

HOW CAN A BUSINESS CREATE BRANDS THAT WILL ENDURE IN THE LONG TERM? WHAT ARE THE KEY STRATEGIES FOR IT? WHAT WILL BE THE KEY SUCCESS FACTORS IN MAINTAINING AND STRENGTHENING THE BRANDS OVER THE LONG TERM?

For a brand to stay relevant and evolve over time, it should be willing to evolve. A brand that stays static and stays fixed has a very hard time staying relevant, as it grows through different changes in a marketplace, the way a consumer is changing. So one of the things that we develop with brands is what we call a “Brand Code”. A Brand Code has things like, ‘what is your mission?’ Your mission should be something that is going to be willing to change as the world changes around you. But certain things should be true all the time, like your values. Your values should not change the way the market changes. So make sure you have a sense of that. Make sure you have the sense of how it looks and feels but also how it finds ways to intersect with consumers and absorb their information. I was talking about this with my colleague the other day when the new Apple iPhone was announced. The past five iPhones have all said that they were bigger than the previous ones – bigger screen size. I think that they are actually missing a part of the market that wants smaller phones, something that will fit in their pockets. I do not think they are doing a good job paying attention to that. They are only seeing half of the story…One is to practice listening and I think that is really hard for a brand to be successful doing any of this if they are sitting in a room with the doors closed and only talk to each other. You have to get out in the world. You have to actually experience it, but it does not mean focus groups, it means actually meeting people and having real conversations and connecting with them. We just worked on a big project globally for ESPN and one of the big things ESPN is interested in is the fans’ rights because if they do not have sports fans, then they do not have a TV network. And so one of the things we have to do is to help them figure it out: how do you meet fans, how do fans come into your conversation. We actually helped created a fan advisory board that actually comes to their global headquarters a couple of times a year and sits down and says this is what we care about, this is why we love the teams we love. It is really a kind of a different way of thinking that puts their consumers first. That is one of the big ones…. So I think strengthening a brand comes as much from inside as from outside. What I mean by that is: do you have the right people inside the organisation who are going to ask hard questions and make sure that we are being true to who we want to be and how we grow this business? Do you have the right processes? Do you have the right principles? Do you have the right products and services? All of these sorts of things are internal work that help make a brand durable in the long term. But then, going back to what we were saying earlier on the external side, you also have to be willing to listen. You have to be willing to talk with consumers and meet them halfway and understand that as they will need to change, you have to change with them. And also find the right types of leaders inside the organisation. When I say “leaders”, I do not just mean seats and suits. Anyone can be a leader in the organisation but the type of people who are willing to make the effort and investment internally as well as externally are the ones who they think really create the long-term scale and success.

HOW DO YOU SEE THE POTENTIAL OF ASIAN BRANDS, AS WELL AS LOCAL ASIAN COMPANIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GLOBAL BRANDING? WHAT ARE THEIR KEY CHALLENGES IN TERMS OF THEIR ABILITY TO COMPETE WITH GLOBAL BRANDS, WHICH HAVE BEEN DOMINATING THE MARKET?

I think it is hard to generalise because the culture here is so different. But one of the things that I have seen pretty uniformly across a lot of APAC work that we have done has been a real attention to the quality of the relationship, and a service-minded approach in many instances. We have done work in probably five or six different markets out here and I think everyone has a service-oriented DNA that helps them create brand experiences and businesses that ultimately feel connected to the consumers. That is not necessarily true in Western Europe, not uniformly at least. That is not necessarily true in the Middle East and North Africa where we have done some work as well. And there are some brands that do it well but I think here it has been such a part of the hospitality culture of Southeast Asia overall that having a kind of mindset that actually allows the businesses to differentiate and to be more consumer-minded than perhaps other markets… I mean one is awareness. It is super-hard to…especially in the louder markets like the US where they are tons of domestic brands who are all trying to get your attention. How does a brand with a name that is not necessarily recognisable enter and cut through and become relevant and meaningful. But, there are tons of success stories of that as well. I can think of Muji, which has done an amazing job in the US. They did not come to the US and try to be something different. 
They came and said, ‘These are our values. This is the type of expression as an organisation we want to have in this marketplace’. And because they were so true to that and they did not water it down to try to be like an American Muji, it was really differentiated. So, I think you must make sure that when you enter these foreign markets, you must not give up what makes you special, or to try to be more like the rest of the competition there…I think the compromise is, ah, it is important to know what you are willing to compromise on and what you are not willing to compromise on and know that before you start spending money in the new market. 

WHAT ARE THE KEY STRATEGIES FOR THAI AND ASIAN COMPANIES TO OVERCOME SUCH FUTURE CHALLENGES SO AS TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THE LONG TERM?

One of the things we talked about in the lead up to being out here was actually looking at King Rama IX. Someone who is really making an effort to know the people and to understand the people. I think one of the important things with particularly Thai businesses is to kind of embrace the lessons but not just embrace them and put them on a shelf and revere them but to embody them and to practice them and to make sure your teams understand them and make sure they become a real behaviour and a part of the organisation’s mindset. To me, one of the things that will help guide a future growth plan is to connect to those empathic traits that I think are probably innate in many organisations have not necessarily been embodied here. You have to make them a part of the blood that runs in your veins.