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Journal of Technology Management in ChinaImproving global competitiveness with branding strategy: Cases of Chinese and

emerging countries' firmsFrancis R. Ille Claude Chailan

Article in format ion:To cite this document:Francis R. Ille Claude Chailan, (2011),"Improving global competitiveness with branding strategy", Journal of Technology Management in China, Vol. 6 Iss 1 pp. 84 - 96Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17468771111105677

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Improving global competitivenesswith branding strategyCases of Chinese and emerging

countries’ rmsFrancis R. Ille and Claude Chailan

International University of Monaco, Fontvieille, Principality of Monaco

AbstractPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare how some rms from China and some from otheremerging countries (EC) are using a variety of branding strategies to improve their globalcompetitiveness. A total of 14 rms have been compared on criteria related to possible acquisition of foreign brands, development of local brands, personality of the leaders and in some cases use of ideological messages.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is mostly based on case studies coming fromliterature, interviews from marketing executives of major enterprises from China or other EC. It ismainly exploratory in its approach.Findings – The critical success factors for the competitiveness of emerging countries brands areeither coming from the choice to create a local brand from scratch, to buy an existing famous brand,or to imitate successful foreign brands. Few strategic differences appear between Chinese rms andthe ones from other EC. The factors explaining success or failure are linked to the type of industryand the way it relates to the country of origin effect, the level of marketing “maturity” as well as thepersonality and visibility of the entrepreneur.Research limitations/implications – The study does not aim at being statistically representative,the rms which are selected may not be a full representation of Chinese rms branding strategy orfrom emerging nations.Originality/value – The denition of the brand strategy for emerging countries rms is a relativelynew subject and this study is a contribution to helping enterprises in nding the best approach as wellas giving examples for academic studies on Chinese rms marketing efciency.Keywords Brands, Corporate branding, Globalization, Emerging markets, ChinaPaper type Research paper

1. IntroductionDuring the rst half of 2009, the FTSE International Emerging Markets Index from the Financial Times was up 41.1 percent, whereas the FTSE All World Developed MarketsIndex was up only 7.2percent (Oakley, 2009). During the past decade, some of the Brazil,Russia, India, China (BRIC) (O’Neill, 2001) countries have been moving from puremanufacturing, outsourcing or off-shoring destinations to the status of developers andinnovators of new products under their own brand names.

Still, most of the emerging countries brands were practically unknown from mostWestern consumers.

In order to increase their protability by “climbing up the value chain”, manyheadquarters in Bangalore, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Shenzhenor Tianjin have realized that one of the critical success factors for their international

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reputation is related to their brand image and several strategies have been consideredthen implemented in order to achieve this status.

It is a euphemism to state that the development of China in the last 20 years as amajor economic power due to its enormous manufacturing capabilities has not been ona par with the reputation of its brands. When describing the components of what willmake China an innovation-oriented country along with human resource development,innovation culture, incentive system and intellectual property rights, Wei and Li (2009)describes how “Chinese rms are still market opportunist and competitive strategiesare price based”. The fact that the image of China is not one of an innovator and branddeveloper, contributes to this shortage in country of origin effect (COO). Most EC sufferthe same type of COO deciency.

If innovation is recognized as the most sustainable source of competitive advantagefor enterprises in twenty-rst century, Western enterprises have now realized thatinnovation does not only come from hard technologies, but also from the soft onesincluding marketing skills. (IBM, 2010), this is why they capitalize strongly on goodwilland brand image when they innovate.

The ranking of Chinese brands by the international branding organizations such asInterbrand (2006) or Sysomos shows that few of them have achieved the internationalrecognition which is necessary to compete globally.

This importance of brand acquisition or brand building has been a major factor of competitive innovation for the marketing strategies of the Chinese rms which wantto reach the level of global brands.

2. Literature review and methodologyThe marketing strategy of Chinese multinational enterprises in order to penetrateforeign markets has been studied by Larçon (2009) and namely the fact to establish joint ventures in these foreign locations in order to avoid retaliations from foreigngovernments in the form of import taxes. But one of the major difculties they face isthe recognition of their brands. In terms of brand management of Chinese rms, thekey publication in English is the study from Bell (2008) but few articles have beenpublished is major journals in the last couple of years.

Several articles have addressed the branding approach from emerging countries(Schultz, 2008)differentiating betweentheoldChinesemodels in which thetransformationof raw materials into manufactured goods was not aiming at selling Chinese brandedproducts with the Indianmodel turning theprimary materials into Indian branded goods.This has changed dramatically in the last ten years (Magnusson et al., 2008) with theobjective of Chinese enterprises to be independent from Western developers, rst fortechnology products and then for consumer packaged goods.

In the automotive industry, for example, an interesting study has been made tocompare the brand personality perception by US consumers of automobiles withChineseor Indian brands (Fetscherin and Toncar, 2009) showing that while the cars withChinese brands were perceived as “more daring, up-to-date and outdoorsy”, Indian carswere perceived as being less “intelligent, successful and upper-class”.

The general branding strategy can be positioned on two axes representing on onedirection the choice of acquisition of a foreign brand and in the other direction the levelof “westernisation” vs “localisation” of the image (Chailan, 2010) dening the fourfollowing quadrants in the typology matrix:

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(1) Firms buying existing Western brands with a strong image (Lenovo buyingThinkpad, the Indian giant Tata buying Jaguar Land Rover, TCL buyingThomson, etc.).

(2) Creating global brands “ex-nihilo” by using western marketing principles(Haier and Huawei in China, or Reliance and Infosys in India).

(3) Firms which have developed their local brands based on a favourable COOeffect in their domain of expertise, to reach primacy in their eld (Tsingtao inChina, Zain and Teva in the Middle East, Ararat brandy in the Caucasus).

(4) Creating global brands by using local image and marketing techniques relatedto their language, culture, even possible ethnical or religious belongingness,with the examples of Baidu in China, Televisa and TV Azteca in Mexico,or Mecca Cola in Muslim countries.

We will use “Chailan’s typology” as a base for our methodology in order to compare thechosen brands on the basis of their marketing strategy and more precisely their

approach to global recognition. This will be complemented by the study of otherfactors such as the inuence of the company leader.

3. Case studiesThe cases that are described below are coming primarily from China or from a coupleof emerging countries: BRIC like India, or other “smaller” countries in which one orseveral brands are becoming known at an international level: Mexico, Israel, Kuwait,the UAE or Tunisia and Armenia.

For the various rms, we have been looking at the way Chailan’s typology could beapplied, butalso thepersonality of theleader/founder in relation to therm’s recognition.

3.1 Companies from emerging countries which have bought existing well-known brands3.1.1 Lenovo is an excellent example of an emerging country rm which has tried to reachthe global brand position by purchasing an existing world famous brand in the PCbusiness. The company that was created in 1984 under the name of Legend (Quelch andKnoop, 2006) by Liu Chuanzi, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was rathersuccessful in China but practically unknown outside. They bought the PC business fromIBM in 2004 to strengthen their brand image, after switching their name from Legend toLenovo. Hence, they acquired a major competitive advantages coming from theco-brandingstrategy inadoptingthe Lenovo-IBMlogo onitsproduct(Ille,2009).TheyalsoextendedtheThinkpad imageby sponsoring the Olympics inTurin in2006andBeijing in2008. In the deal that was reviewed by Ms Mary Ma, Lenovo CFO, Fortune magazineworld’s 27th most powerful businesswoman in 2005, Lenovo had the right to use the IBMlogo on its products forveyearswhilekeepingownership of the Thinkpad brandforever.The recent years have shown some difculties for Lenovo to live up to its expectationsshowing that acquiring a global brand was probably not enough to guarantee success(Kotler and Pfoertsch, 2007). Likewise, the refrigerator brand “Frigidaire” created byGeneral Motors in 1918, which was so famous in the 1930s that it became a common wordfor “refrigerator” in several languages, became less successful when it was later acquiredby the Swedish group Electrolux Home Products (Kelly, 2005). Hence, it appearsthat acquiring a prestigious brand does not guarantee continuous success although thewill of the management to be perceived as a global entity was obvious.

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3.1.2 Two examples coming from India, emphasize the importance of buying astrong brand.

3.1.2.1 Tata group (Kumar et al., 2009) bought the Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) brandsfrom for $2.3 billion in2008; illustratingthe strategydened byCEORatan Tata: “The onlyway I can enter the US market is through mergers and acquisitions, so if I get anopportunity, then I will look at it very actively” (Khanna and Palepu, 2009). Tata hopes toboost Jaguar image and take benet of this development in order to acquire aninternational reputation. It is probably too early to see the result of these acquisitions byTata and whether they will avoid brand dilution by selling at the same time the Nanocheapest car(PrasadandTalgeri,2008). Likewise,anotherIndianindustrialrm,Hindalco,traded on the Mumbai Stock Exchange, acquired in February 2007 for $6 billion, NovelisInc., the Canadian company, world leader in production of aluminium rolled products.More and more the Indian multinational giants such as Mahindra, the automotive, farmequipment and nancial services giant originally from Ludhiana, Punjab, that hassubmitted a letter of intent to make a bid for Ssangyong of South Korea, will be buyingbrands from the western markets to become more competitive (Krishna, 2010, p. 39).

3.1.2.2 In the luxury business, brand image is even more important and emergingcountries are lagging behind. The Indian watch and jewelry brandTitan, also belongingto the Tata group, and which, beyond its large domestic success in India, is rathersuccessful in the Middle East but still notable to achieve a global presence andchallengethe world’s major watch brand. According to a Tata group executive “To be a globalwatch player, you have to have a Swiss brand”, implying that they will have to buy anexisting brand with a favourable COO (Khanna et al., 2008).

3.2 Companies which have created “occidental-style” brands ex-nihiloIn this category, the rms from EC have developed a local brand but using themarketing strategies of Western brands.

3.2.1 Haier, Chinese household appliances brand, whose name was created in 1984by Zhang Ruimin, then a young Assistant City-Manager in Qingdao, in order to soundas a German name, implying technology competence, with a motto “patently geared forglobal stardom” (Batey, 2002). Zhang established the base line:

[. . .] if we can effectively compete in the mature markets with such brand names as GE,Matsushita and Philips, we can surely take the markets in the developing countries withoutmuch effort (Palepu et al., 2005; Roll, 2006).

He associates thecharacteristics of Chineseculturewith thebusiness acumen of Westernleading businessmen. His “All-around Optimized Management Approach”, his“Integration of Individuals and Goals” contributed to make Haier a company famousfor its operational excellence. In 1996, he was awarded the “Five-Star Diamond LifetimeAchievement Award” by theAmerican Academyof Hospitality Science, and in 1997wasnamed entrepreneur of the year by Asia Weekly. Haier famous image was evenstrengthened by the Beijing Olympics sponsorship by applying Western style recipesfor success and is one of the most well-known Chinese brand outside China. In this case,there was no need to “borrow” an outside name achieve international reputation, thequality of the management of Mr Zhang Ruimin was the key to Haier’s success (Larçonand Haier, 2010), demonstrating the importance of the leader’s role. Haier realizesthe importance of convincing the western consumer about its quality (Larçon and


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Haier, 2010). In order to become more global, they have staffed the European HQ withEuropean executives (Latessier, 2010) to better understand their perception of Chineseproducts. Haier tried to buy the Maytag brand in 2005 but their bid failed, this wouldhave given them a strong position in the US in the eld or appliances where theemotional factor has been found to outweigh rational factors (Carey, 2005).

3.2.2Another Chinese brand,Huawei, headquarteredinShenzhen,hasbecomeoneof theleaders of the telecom hardware industry. In March 2010, Huawei was ranked fth behindFacebook, Amazon, Apple and Google, in the ranking of the world 50 most innovativecompanies, ahead of Novartis,WalmartandHewlett-Packard. Its founder RenZhengfei isaformer People Liberation Army Ofcer and for this reason the US Government seems tohave security concerns over Huawei equipment (Hille, 2010). Of course, they aremanufacturing technology products that do not have the same target population asconsumer goods but they will probably become very soon as famous as Cisco, Nokia,Samsung or Motorola by creating a “Western type Chinese brand” (Zhong Nanhai Blog,2009). When facing the internationalization of their brand, they do not follow exactly the“American global” model but rather the local traditions in a kind of “glocalization” – thinking global, acting local – (or “globalocalization”, as the word was coined by AkioMorita) process. For example, Joe Leahy, from the Financial Times (May 2010) wasreporting that Chineseexpatriates fromHuawei in India areadopting Indiancustoms, withIndian names – for example “Weimin Yao, Huawei Vice President has become Rajeev” –,“wearing saris for the Diwali Hindu festival and learning Hindi”. That is probably a goodway to be integrated by foreign cultures when competing with Cisco or Ericsson.

3.2.3 Reliance, the Indian rm created by Anil Dhirrubai Ambani, ranks amongIndia top three private sector business enterprises in terms of net worth as well asranked in the world top 500 most valuable brands (Haigh and Krishnan, 2006). Reliancename is all over India and the neighbouring countries synonymous of quality, be it inthe elds of communication, energy, insurance or portfolio management for enterprises

and individuals. Although the ght between the Ambani brothers: Anil, Chairman of Reliance Natural Resources, and Mukesh, Chairman of Reliance Industries, who sharedthe legacy of the founder has made the headlines of the nancial press ((The) Feud,2009), the Reliance Communication brand has become a symbol of Indian technology inthe eld of telecom services, namely through Reliance Infocomm. Reliance has becomeIndia’s biggest private sector company and is now under process of completing a jointventure with Atlas Energy (Wagstyl, 2010).

3.2.4 Infosys Technologies Ltd – a global most admired knowledge enterprise – hasbeen a pioneer of knowledge management and one of the rst brands to demonstrateIndian software expertise (Mehta et al., 2007). The software giant (Capelli et al., 2010),created by N.R. Narayana Murty, Nadan Nilekani, N.S. Raghavan, Kris Gopalkrishnanand S.D. Shibuhal, in 1981, in Pune, had to face the challenge of building a global brandout of a service industry and built its strategy on their global delivery model (GDM) formulti-location engagement teams (Murty and Desai, 2005). Infosys realized that it couldnot compete with IBM, Accenture or the major IT consulting rms in terms of recognition and therefore capitalized on in predictability, namely in the elds of banking and insurance applications.

Haier and Huawei in China, Reliance and Infosys in China have all becomesuccessful by developing the brand they created without having to buy some outsidebrands but the role of the founder was a strong component of their development.

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3.3 Companies which have used local brands already existing in their home countryIn that case, the brand name can have a strong local image, but not necessarily portableabroad, as a consequence of difculties such as the pronunciation of the foreign brandname, or even its reading/identication when written in a non-latin alphabet, likeCyrillic, ideograms or because the word is not acceptable in other languages.

3.3.1 Tsingtao beer of which the brewery was created in 1903 to produce Germanstyle beer for the German troops occupying the Shandong peninsula after the boxer’swar (Hull, 2007), from the name of the town now spelled Qingdao, Shandong, in thepinyin transcription. In this case, the brand is so powerful in its home market thatAnheuser-Busch bought 27 percent of it, another 32 percent owned by the ChineseGovernment through the Chinese State-Owned Assets Supervision and AdministrationCommission of the State Council State (SASAC). The Anheuser-Busch shares werebought by Asahi Breweries in 2009 (Miller, 2009). The 2008 Beijing Olympics were anopportunity to promote Tsingtao through the motto “Passion, dream and success”(Zhao, 2007). Although, China was totally cut off from the western economy between1949 and 1979, it was a state-owned enterprise (Hill, 2004) and they were able to keeptheir competitiveness as a branded consumer product and to rejuvenate its marketingin the 1980s, in such a way to attract foreign investors 30 years later.

3.3.2 In the Middle East, Zain Telecommunication, headquartered in Kuwait, is aimingat becoming a top-ten global mobile operator by providing a world-class service tocustomers in the Middle East and Africa ( Emerging Market Monitor , 2010). It started as amodest, single operator serving 600,000 customers in the Emirate of Kuwait to become aconglomerate with a commercial presence in 23 countries from Nigeria to Bahrain andfrom Jordan to Zambia with a 13,000dedicated workforceserving 70,000,000 customers inAfrica and the Middle East. Their marketing strategies are based on motto such asaccelerate-consolidate-expend (ACE) (Dinar Standard, 2006). Just like Nestle´, which earlyrealized that the territory of Switzerland was too small for its success, Zain very soon

decided it had to work outside the tiny emirate of Kuwait. The success of Zain hasstimulated some other Middle Eastern telecom operators such as Qatar TelecomCo (Qtel),which continues its development in the Gulf as well as Indonesia.

Both examples show that it is also possible to grow successful localbrands andmakethem famous abroad, without acquiring a foreign one. Zain and Qtel both originate fromoil exporting countries where cash is not an issue, but Tsingtao survived the littlemarketing development of the years of Maoism and is still in good shape.

3.3.3 Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, from Israel started as a small foundationexploiting the scientic expertise available in their country with a “population of PhDsper square meter” higher than in most countries to become later the largest producer of generic pharmaceuticals in the world (Khanna et al., 2006). Of course, the brand power isknownmainlyby medical professionalsbut its imagehas been built on quality and Israelmedical research reputation. In their case, Teva forgot about European countries whichseemed to be a good choice for proximity reasons and concentrated on the US marketwhich offered a more uniform and liberalized market for generic pharmaceuticals.Among the critical success factors, the way they were able to master the US regulatoryenvironment as well as their speed of developing new molecules were both determinant.Generics nowrepresent 72 percentof theUS pharmaceutical market volume(deGuzman,2010). Teva’s Legendary Chairman, Eli Hurvitz, was recently replaced by the founder of Ivax Corp., Philip Frost (Business Middle East, 2010). This means that even in the highly


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technological pharmaceutical industry, brands from emerging countries can competewith the products of the giants Novartis, Pzer, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and SanoAventis. Some critical success factors in Teva’s case were innovation, technology imagelinked to high R&D image and quality of management. Of course, Teva does not sell itsgenerics under the Teva brand name but the medical doctors prescribing them knowperfectly who produces them.

3.3.4 In the late nineteenth century, in what would become later the Soviet Union,Nerses Tairyants established a brandy production in Erevan, Armenia, associating itwith the most prestigious mountain of the Caucasia, Mount Ararat. Ararat cognacbecame so famous that the French spirit giant Pernod-Ricard bought Yerevan BrandyCompany with the Ararat brand name. The Shustov family who owned Armenianbrandy factory have been using some marketing techniques as early as 1912 when theywere named “Ofcial Purveyor to the Russian Imperial Court” and they ancestors of undercover marketing techniques by sending some friends in restaurants where theyorder the brandy and shout when it was not available (Johnson, 2009). Armenianbrandy was promoted by Josef Stalin himself when, after the Yalta conference, he sentup to 400 bottles to Winston Churchill (Kwaiatowski, 2008). The COO effect was apositive factor linked to image of Armenia as a spirit-making area.

3.3.5 Another example of building of a brand starting from a local enterprise is givenby the Indian rmWipro, which was an insignicant vegetable oil company in 1947 andbecame a multinational technology conglomerate in the twenty-rst century: WiproTechnologies, one of the leading software companies in India. Its founder, Azim Premji,demonstrates great leadership style including sound values, personal integrity andprofessional will and “helped him to give the impetus that drove Premji to churn Wiprofrom a $2 million company to a $1.76 billion one serving customers across the globe”.“Premji’s sharp strategic vision and crisp communication skills led his team to strive forexcellence. He has been known for his modesty, simplicity and non-extravagance”

(Shalom and Ravi, 2009). This example supports the fact that the charismatic role of theCEO is a major factor for brand development (Bhalla, 2008).The examples of Tsingtao, Zain, Teva, Ararat and Wipro in different countries

show that it is possible to be successful by using brands developed locally and acquiremarkets abroad.

3.4 Creating new brands ex-nihiloIn this case the creation of the brand was done locally out-of-nothing by capitalizingwith some local aspects related to the language, the culture or even the religion.

3.4.1 Baidu, founded by Li Yanhong in 2000 in the Beijing Zhong Guan Cun “Chinesesilicon valley” is an example of a brand developed as a search engine for the Chinesemarket (Baidu means “hundreds of times”). According to their site (www.baidu.com)“as a native speaker of the Chinese language and a talented engineer, Baidu focuses onwhat it knows best – Chinese language search”. It has become the core engine used inany campaign such as Search Engine Optimisation or Search Engine Marketing(McDougall, 2007). Google may have to leave China for some censorship issues, butobservers mention that it was not going to be successful in any case (Madden, 2010).Since Chinese branded companies are supposed to lack own innovations (Bell, 2008)someare combining characteristics of Western brands (quality, service, trustworthinessand modernity) with the consumer need for low prices. Sasserath Publicis (2006) call

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them “clever brands”. Baidu has achieved the “clever brand” compromise, namely byusing its knowledge of Chinese users specic needs.

3.4.2 Another possible justication in the strategy of some brands from emergingcountries is reaching some of the 200 million people who, according to the UnitedNations (2006), are living outside their home country. Guzman and Paswan (2009) givesthe example of two Mexican cultural brands: Televisa and TV Azteca, both Spanishlanguage broadcast brands. When comparing the perception of brands personality,Guzman nds that Mexicans living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas associatecriteria such as sincerity, excitement, sophistication, competence and ruggedness withboth brands more than the Mexicans living in Mexico. This implies that a kind of nationalist support to the brand is more powerful with people living outside theirhomeland and could be a strong justication for populations that have large diasporas(Chinese, Indians, Mexicans in the USA, etc.) to support their product abroad.

3.4.3An interesting branding strategy in some developing countries is the onecallingto nationalist or religious feelings inorder to create support to some ideologyor religiousfaith. A good example is Mecca Cola, the rm from Tawk Mathlouthi, a Tunisianentrepreneur, who has created as soft drink aiming at supporting the Palestinian cause.The brand is a “drinkable manifestation of hostility toward America”, and it appears tobe taking off (Hanft, 2003). The company is headquartered in Dubai, UAE, and althoughcompeting with Coke and Pepsi, takes advantage of its representation in the Arab worldin which a part of the people are ready to sympathize with the Palestinians. As aninteresting point, Mecca Cola was inspired from the Iranian Zam Zam Cola and hasgenerated its own emerging countries competitors with Qibla-Cola, Muslim Up andArab Cola. Most of these brands are giving away around 10 percent of the prots toIslamic Aid or Palestinian organizations (Times, 2002). Religious branding is alsoexploited in India where “religion is a way of life” (Bhalla, 2008). Likewise, Be´nedictineliquor, produced in the French region of Normandy since 1510 and that celebrated

recently its 500th birthday, is produced by monks and uses religion as a promotion tool.When analyzing the reasons for the absence of strong Islamic brands, Sharma andWilliams (2006) argues than one of the reasons is the level of marketing sophisticationof the Muslim communities as well as the income distribution and the major barriers toacceptance by the non-Muslim word. This element of little marketing culture can alsobe frequently found in other EC.

4. Brand strategy may also be inuenced by the following factorsBesides, the strategic choice analysed above between developing your own brand orbuying an existing one, we have found that some other important elements havestrongly inuenced the success of brands coming from emerging countries in generaland China in particular (Lou and Davies, 2006) such as the following ones:

. COO effect . It is easier for Germany to develop a brand in the manufacturingindustry or for France in luxury goods than India for luxury or an African countryfor manufacturing. Likewise, a brand from China may suffer from the image of itspolitical orientation, or poor quality. On another hand Japan, between 1950 and1980, has demonstrated that this COO effect could be changed like it has been thecase for Toyota cars moving from the “junk status” to the panacea of qualitywithin three decades. Therefore, China and emerging countries have to keep oninnovate to improve the image that inuences the COO effect (Ramo, 2007).


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According to a study conducted by Shapiro and Associates, only 17 percent of Americans expressed high interest in buying products imported from China(Tucker, 2006). This effort to work on the image from the country has beendemonstrated in several studies (Akotia, 2005), namely in Africa where the localbrands lack foreign countries’ recognition.

. Product category. Russian raw materials (Gazprom, Lukoil, Rosneft, etc.), SouthAfrican diamonds, do not require the same level branding than products forwhich “know how”, expertise, etc. such as ne watches, software or nancialservices which infers that brand strategy of emerging countries products (ECP)depends of the type of industry and is easier for non-sophisticated products.

. Degree of marketing “maturity” of the country. The countries which went througha planned economy “discovered” marketing in the 1980s/1990s and starteddeveloping their brands much later than countries coming from market economy,for example, Lada did not use marketing campaigns (Daye and Emil, 2009).Among the Chinese brands Haier, Tsingtao beer and Lenovo were among the rst

ones to develop their communication, but still faraway from theWesternproductsin terms of budget. We can hence infer that branding strategy of rms from ECalso depends on the marketing “maturity” including the cultural backgroundand the stage at which they were involved in marketing exposure.

. Use ofpersonality of thefounder/CEO as a promotion tool. Zhang RuiminforHaier,“Captain Wei” Jiafu for Cosco (Meyer, 2008), Yang Yuanqing for Lenovo, LedjmiMittal for Arcelor Mittal, Nandan Nilekani for Infosys, Azim Premji, for Wipro,although all coming for emerging countries, just like Bill Gates for Microsoft, Jack Welch for GE, Steve Jobs for Apple, Tom Watson for IBM or Bernard Arnaultfor LVMH, all had at the same time the charisma and the reputation to bring theirbrands to the highest level in world recognition. Every year, all marketingprofessionals read with great interest the list published by the Financial Times of the”Most respected businessmen”, (orbusinesspeople, since more and moreladiesarenowbeen part of it), because they know it strong inuence on the brand image.This leads us to another possible explaining factor for a brand business success:human personality of the leader strengthens the brand efciency of emergingcountry brands.

5. ConclusionOuranalysis tends to supportAmitava Chattopadhyay, Professor at INSEAD Singapore(Brown, 2010), who predicts that the number of Asian brands will now grow rapidly andwill reach the top 100 of Interbrand “league” to join the only eight Asian companies, Japanese and Korean, appearing in the 2010 ranking. The odds are that more rms fromChina andIndia willacquire Western brands but wehave seenthat thisdid notguaranteesuccess. As argued by Wang Fengying, CEO of Great Wall Motor, the rst Chinese carmanufacturer to get approval to sell its cars throughout the EU (Waldmeir, 2010),“it could take 20 years before the Chinese brands can reach true global competitiveness”.

But the determination of some clever and charismatic BRICs CEO can contributehighly to the change in the COO effect, just like it was the case for Japanese brandsbetween 1960 and 1980 with people like Akio Morita for Sony, Konosuke Matsushitafor National Panasonic and Kiichiro Toyota for Toyoda.

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Therefore, based on the sample of enterprises that we have been using, we found outthat Chinese rms trying to improve their competitiveness by implementing innovativebranding strategies were very similar to other rms either from BRIC or other emergingcountries: some of them buying existing Western brands to benet from a long-termimage, some developing their ownbrands, either by using some western approach, or bycapitalizing on their own local idiosyncrasies. In addition to the use of Chailan’stypology in identifying the options of brand development we have found what seems tobe a link between the rm leader’s personality and the business success of the rm suchas in the “clever brands”. Therefore, as there is no sure recipe for success, imaginationand innovation of the leading team will be the critical success factor to reach the globalrecognition status.

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About the authorsFrancis R. Ille is an Associate Professor of International Business at the International Universityof Monaco. He has been a Visiting Professor at Ocean University of China in Qingdao in 2005 atIILM, Delhi, India in 2009 and a guest lecturer in several Western universities, namely in the

Balkans states. His previous 30 years business career took him from Procter & Gamble to IBMfor which he held marketing and sales management positions in Africa, Middle East, IndianOcean, as well as in the headquarter of IBM World Trade Corporation, in White Plains,New York. He also participated to several consulting missions as an expert for TACISprogrammes of the European Commission in the elds of development of the private sector in theCommonwealth of Independent States and Africa. He has published in the Journal of Chinese Economic and Foreign Trade Studies. Francis R. Ille is the corresponding author and can becontacted at: [email protected]

Claude Chailan, prior to joining the academia, held high-level positions in InternationalManagement from 1985 to 1999, including senior positions at Dannon, Sara Lee and L’Ore´al. Hewas actively involved in the development of international brands in France, Mexico andVenezuela. Claude Chailan is currently Professor of Marketing at the International University of Monaco, and Visiting Professor at ITESM, Puebla campus, in Mexico. He is a guest lecturer in

several foreign schools (ESAN in Lima, ESA in Beirut, CFVG in Hanoı ̈), and several Frenchuniversities. Claude Chailan received his Master’s degree from ESSEC Business School in Parisand his Diploma in Political Science from IEP, Aix-en-Provence. He also holds a Doctorate inMarketing Management from the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis. His articles have beenpublished in journals such as EuroMed Journal of Business , Journal of Product and Brand Management , or Journal of Marketing Management .

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