How to make local brands go global

1. In the internationalization strategy, the internationalization of brand is a threshold that domestic enterprises cannot bypass. In today's increasingly globalized world, "Made in China" should not only be synonymous with low prices and rough quality, nor should it be a symbol of "sweatshops" where low-cost labor is gathered. What is an internationalized brand? Realistically speaking, for Chinese domestic enterprises, is nothing more than looking for an image in the international market to increase the value of their own products, the product is still the product, change the brand is very likely to make the value doubled.

2. In fact, we are surrounded by a variety of international brands, which represent uniform quality, globalized service and continuous technological innovation. In a sense, a brand is a promise of the value of a commodity. In today's increasingly globalized domestic enterprises, the shaping of international brands is an urgent matter. At present, many enterprises are groping and trying, hoping to find a more effective path for their own enterprises.

3, brand internationalization of the three paths:

After the acquisition of the German white goods brand Schneider (Schneider), TCL Group indirectly acquired the U.S. Govedio. TCL plans to use the Schneider brand in the European market sales in the U.S. market, will be used in the Govedio brand to sell. Together with TCL's own brand and the recently acquired Lohua brand, TCL already has four brands under its umbrella: TCL, Lohua, Schneider and Govedio. TCL's branding strategy is very clear, i.e., it is actively carrying out multi-branding market strategies in both domestic and international markets in response to different marketing regions and different levels of consumer structure.

"Schneider" is a long-established and powerful brand in Germany, and TCL seized the opportunity to acquire its assets and brand when the company needed to be wound up due to financial problems, TCL produces and sells its products under the brand name "TCL" in Vietnam, and under the brand name "TCL" in Germany. In Vietnam, TCL manufactures and sells its products under the brand name "TCL", while in Germany, TCL uses the brand name "Schneider" and still utilizes Schneider's original sales channels. The Schneider brand will also bring TCL into the communications and information sectors in Europe, which is obviously much quicker than if they had to re-brand themselves there.

While TCL chose to acquire local brands to operate in international markets, Haier opted for a different branding strategy, launching a unified private label brand called "Haier" around the world. Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier, explains its international branding strategy this way: "Acquiring a world famous brand or a regional brand will save a little bit of effort for Haier, but what is the end result? That is, the acquisition fees paid by Haier are basically intangible assets, rarely tangible, and in the end, Haier is still doing someone else's brand, and can't establish its own brand at all." In Haier's future map, will be launched in all parts of the world "Haier" a unified private brand, and on this basis to build a strong Haier global empire.

For the establishment of production bases overseas, especially in the United States and other developed countries to invest in factories, most people think of the risk, but Zhang Ruimin has a different opinion. He believes that the risk of setting up factories in the United States is the risk of creating a world-famous brand in the process, "is in the search for development opportunities in the risk, bypassing this risk, you can be successful, you can get new experience, so that we continue to grow, as if after a nirvana. But the risk of not setting up a factory in the United States is the risk of certain death, that is, you can not go out and never grow up".

Some people say that based on cost considerations, the Americans are to China to set up factories, Haier by what reason to go to the United States? Zhang Ruimin believes that the purpose of Haier to go out, with those multinational corporations "into" the same purpose, are to create a world famous brand. The difference is that multinational corporations to China's purpose from the perspective of the global strategic layout, improve its global brand system. Haier to the United States to set up factories is to create their own brand system. Zhang Ruimin believes that if you do not set up their own brands overseas, Haier can only stay in the end for foreign brands to do OEM stage, working for foreign brands, only to maintain survival. Set up an international brand in the end to what? What we want is to be influential in the international arena. Therefore, relative to multinational companies, Haier overseas brand road is destined to face more bumps.

Granz in the internationalization of the brand operation is selected with Haier and TCL different strategy, "not forced to do GALANZ brand in overseas markets, focusing on the manufacture of Granz". This is the best interpretation of GALANZ's internationalized brand strategy. This model is the same as Taiwan's manufacturing enterprises - earning manufacturing profits in the form of OEM. Granz's corporate positioning is to be a global brand-name home appliance production and manufacturing center, and to do OEM for international famous brands, which is exactly the embodiment of this positioning. There is also a consideration to deal with anti-trust in this strategy of Glanz. They once suffered a loss in Argentina, when the market share of their own brand exceeded 70% in the local market, they encountered the anti-monopoly problem, and as a result, they could only give up the territory that they had built up after four or five years of hard work. For this reason, Granz decided to reduce the share of its own brand in foreign countries, and to increase the share of its products through OEM in order to occupy the market in a curved way. The advantage of Glanz mainly focuses on the manufacturing cost, but the cost advantage cannot give it the follow-up power for sustainable development. In the next few years, the brand strategy of internationalization of Glanz is to match self-owned brand with OEM labeling, and make use of the brand, sales and service network and other resources of the international famous enterprises, so as to successfully enter the international market with its own products. In this way, GrandTech can not only skillfully avoid the risks of market development and fixed asset investment and win a certain profit margin, but also realize the low-cost expansion of the global market.

4, the ultimate realization of the international brand

For domestic enterprises, no matter Haier, or TCL and Glanz, the biggest challenge is still how to quickly establish their own brand in an unfamiliar market environment surrounded by strong enemies. After all, the history of their existence is only a dozen years, to overseas development is also a matter of recent years, and GE, Whirlpool, Siemens and other centuries-old stores, compared to the obvious difficult to overseas consumers to tell their own brand value. Such a difficult problem, in fact, Toyota, Sony and Samsung and other Japanese and Korean companies have experienced, and ultimately they are still in the global scope of the establishment of a strong brand position.

From the viewpoint of the development trend of internationalization of multinational corporations, the establishment of a unified global brand is the brand path of SONY, Siemens, Panasonic and other enterprises. Comparatively speaking, fast-moving consumer goods and daily necessities are suitable for the "multi-brand" strategy, a fundamental reason is that the life cycle of these product categories is very short. Consumer durables such as household appliances, on the other hand, have a long life cycle and are more suited to a single-brand (integrated brand) strategy. From the perspective of branding practices in the global home appliance industry, multinational companies rarely adopt a "multi-brand" strategy. For example, LG, SANYO, SHARP refrigerators, air conditioners, fax machines, washing machines, color TVs and so on all use a unified brand. At the same time, consumers have a sense of trust in washing machines, color TVs, stereos and other household electrical appliances brand, can be attributed to a *** same point, that is, based on this *** same brand in technology, quality recognition. In other words, a brand in technology, quality and other aspects of consumer acceptance is the most important. Last year, the world-famous home appliance brand - Emerson cut one-third of its original dozens of brands, while Panasonic chose a single integrated brand Panasonic after years of dual-brand strategy.

5. The reason for the brand concentration is that anasonic and National two brands often confuse users and confuse consumers about their relationship with Panasonic, which greatly disperses brand resources and is not conducive to enhancing its overall competitiveness. As a result, Panasonic decided to use Panasonic as a unified brand mark for global overseas markets. Electrolux, one of the leading companies in the global home appliance industry, has also accelerated its brand concentration strategy recently. Electrolux has acquired more than 400 companies globally with about 22 brands, but it has only one brand, Electrolux, in the Asian market and does not pursue a multi-brand strategy. Electrolux's multi-brand has its historical reasons, the European market in the 1930s was already very mature, Electrolux wants to expand its strength, it is necessary to acquire some companies that are famous in the market, and it is necessary to keep the acquired person's brand awareness is very high. Today Electrolux has too many brands in Europe, which would weaken the mainstream brand in the minds of consumers.

From these examples of multi-brand strategy into a single integrated brand strategy, integrated brand has an unstoppable charm: you can save a lot of advertising costs; to facilitate the concentration of all the resources to shape a big brand; enhance the reputation of the integrated brand, visibility and associations, so that the enterprise appears to be more focused and professional; integrated brand of a single product under the market conditions will feed the other The market situation of a single product under the integrated brand will feed the market situation of other products.

Whirlpool, SIMENS and other brands to enter some of the emerging markets is very similar to TCL's approach. For example, SIMENS after entering the Chinese market, the first acquisition of the Yangzi refrigerator, and then in a period of time along the "Yangzi" brand, when the Yangzi brand line more and more narrow, SIMENS grandly launched its own brand. The essence of this multi-brand strategy is to implement the first "multinational brand localization", and then gradually towards "multinational brand globalization".

6, the current strategy adopted by TCL should be such a path: a short period of "multi-brand strategy" is just a transition, which allows TCL to enter the market of developed countries in a short period of time, there is a "low-cost operation of the brand" effect. Effect. It can avoid market entry, reduce the tax burden, and bring TCL closer to local consumers. However, with the transfer of time and market development needs, in order to be consistent with TCL's "multinational brand globalization" market objectives, TCL should still use a single brand. You can be sure that Lowe's, Schneider's, and Govedio will continue to exist in the future, and TCL can utilize these brands to enter some specific markets and channels at low cost without additional investment, and obtain more benefits in the short term.

Granz's current brand strategy in the international market is an OEM strategy, which has a lot to do with Granz's own situation as well as Granz's brand strategy. However, it is certain that this is also a transitional brand strategy, and this strategy is also undergoing subtle changes in GrandTech, which is gradually moving from a single OEM strategy to a route combining OEM and private label strategy.

In the internationalization of brand operation, Haier represents the future direction of the domestic enterprises - from the very beginning based on building a global brand. When it comes to Chinese products, the impression of cheap price and inferior quality is y imprinted in the minds of Europeans and Americans, the same as what happened to Japanese products in the United States in the past. In order to achieve the right price point for their products, Haier had to continuously improve the quality of their products, which helped them improve their brand image abroad. Therefore, Haier started from a high point by building brand awareness from the very beginning, and the testing ground was in the developed countries of Europe and the United States, to establish its own unified and integrated brand. That actually means it will be hard to reap the rewards in the short term.

Domestic enterprises' current international branding strategies, whether they are "curves to save the country" or "shortcuts", are closely linked to their overall internationalization strategies. The establishment of a strong international brand, behind the strong R & D, manufacturing and marketing capabilities to support the final international brand from the real international competitiveness of enterprises.

7, brand internationalization refers to: to make the brand known as the international brand, both: in the international brand has a greater impact on the efforts of the brand.

8, international brands generally have the following three characteristics:

1) the brand has a long history, some have decades or even hundreds of years in their own countries;

2) often lead the industry's development direction;

3) there are experts, masters or teams to support the brand.

9, brand internationalization commonly used in two ways:

One is the domestic production, but the products are sold abroad;

The second is to set up branches in foreign countries as well, to achieve all-round expansion.

The second way is most commonly used by the world famous big companies. There are some famous multinational corporations that do not even have their own production capacity but pass it on to some foreign companies that have very low local production costs. This way it can still enjoy most of the benefits of its own brand. This is the case with Nike.

But the difficulties of creating a brand on a global scale are enormous. Every competitor, especially those in their own country, will be highly sensitive to foreign intruders. In addition, language, beliefs, living and consumption habits will be very different from country to country, as will the characteristics and prices of products, which makes brand internationalization more difficult.

Therefore, brands must be integrated with local specificities, i.e. localized. Building a brand without taking into account local consumer behavior can have a negative impact. Nokia has done a good job in this regard, and its products are always changing to meet the needs of Chinese consumers. Localization of product production and marketing is a feature of MNCs' business strategy. Utilizing the halo effect of famous brands, producing similar products in overseas subsidiaries, and utilizing cheap local labor resources, make the cost much lower, and the competitiveness of the products will be further strengthened.

10, the brand is not all of a sudden to create, the need for a solid brand architecture and platform. As long as not afraid of failure, adhere to the road of independent brands, I believe that China will soon have a world-class independent brands.

The author, Yi-Chien Chen, is the founder of Wei-Hann Global Marketing Agency and currently a director of Daga China Media Co. Born in Hong Kong and graduated from the University of Wisconsin, he has more than 20 years of advertising experience and is the pioneer of Jingxin China, a judge of the American Effie Awards, deputy director of the Corporate Committee of the China Advertising Association, and chairman of the Hong Kong Advertisers Association.