MARKET BELIEFS ABOUT BRANDS

Companies can no longer hide behind the carefully manipulated image of their product brands. Even giants like P&G and Unilever have learned that they must explain themselves to global consumers more effectively. Consumers are more demanding than ever before and competitors are ruthless . Therefore those companies that can reconcile brand names from their original parentage with the cultures of the new markets using these creative translations have to work a lot less hard in communication by heavy advertising. Brand name translation is so much more than simply avoiding any embarrassing faux pas.

But what is important behind this model is that attitudes and meaning are formed in a context and are therefore different in different cultures. For this reason, the consumer tends to infer hidden dimensions in the product or service from tangible or observable attributes. This is why we are keen to tidy the garden, put flowers on the table, and make the bathroom smell nice when we are trying to sell a house, hoping prospective buyers won't notice the terrible traffic noise outside. Carefully washing and polishing a car that hasn't been serviced or maintained for ages is similar.

The key to moving brands across cultures is therefore to reconcile the original attributes that helped establish the brand in the first place with new associations relevant to the value orientations of the new market. Thus in a culture that has a long time horizon and a propensity for the past in terms of the way they give meaning to "time," consumers will form an association between the quality of a brand and the length of time the manufacturer has been in business. In cultures with more of a future orientation, they will tend to form a positive association with new variations of an established brand. In other words, purchasers tend to see what they are looking for. But for the brand managers, this is a major challenge: to try to influence these basic beliefs. The dilemma is between the changes required for the new market versus keeping the original brand image.

It is interesting that the categorization of products has strategic significance here. How a product is grouped determines its competition and what criteria prospective purchasers will apply. When trying to estimate the market share of Heineken beer, do we include only other premium beers, or lager, or all beers, or even soft drinks? What is the group of alternatives from which the consumer is making a choice? The concern for the international brand manager is to discover that the brand they are responsible for is not in the same "category" as it is in the original, successful home market. People from low-context cultures tend to see smaller categories - they are more specific about their range of choices. They want a lager beer, so what choice is available to them at the point of purchase? Those from diffuse cultures see the need for a drink as part of a meal or social setting and as an element in the whole scene. They may not start from the perspective of wanting a beer, but wanting something that is complimentary to and reinforces the total situation.

This is easy to misjudge. Pepsi A.M. was an attempt to position this brand as a coffee replacement with consumers who would normally start the day with a cup of coffee. It was so successful that consumers wouldn't drink it at any other time, so the product failed to broaden its market.

Today's brand manager needs a conceptual framework to help navigate this minefield. Macrae and Unclex (1997) propose "brand chartering." They break the problems down to three steps, which we translate into our "language" as the dilemmas that derive from:

• creating and communicating the brand,

• managing the brand system and organization, and

• directing and structuring the brand.

The first process involves eliciting the dilemmas that arise from how certain products can be branded so that they offer value to consumers and customers in a profitable business model. This means understanding issues of meaning from the essence, identity, and heritage of the brand. The basic dilemma is between the meaning communicated by the brand owner and the meaning given by the potential buyer. Differentiating what you have to offer is becoming increasingly difficult as markets become ever more oligopolistic. Many markets - such as that for small family cars - are perceived as converging in attributes by consumers. Being different costs a fortune and requires full risk assessment. Smaller players have an advantage as they can offer distinctiveness .

The second process is also a dilemma. On the one hand we need local adaptations, but we have to retain consistency in the operational management of the brand. How does the international supermarket chain Tesco maintain its commitment to both food and clothing when it has branches in disparate locations? More checkouts may be required in some areas where customers want fast service. In others, such as Eastern Europe, this type of "new" shopping in plentiful stores is a social experience, and talking to your neighbor at the (relatively few) checkouts is part of the pleasure - not the pain - of that experience.

Finally, in structuring the brand, marketers face the dilemma of how far to push the marketing of the end product as the brand. Renault is recognized as a corporate brand, whereas the Clio is advertised as a distinct brand within the portfolio of vehicles. What is the appropriate architecture? And by architecture we can question at the strategy, organizing, and operational levels.

We can also usefully consider the notion of brand archetypes, which we discussed in Business Across Cultures in more detail. The aim is to develop a perceptual map of how value systems translate into consumer needs, and thereby define characteristics of brand products or brand services that meet these needs. By linking this thinking to our seven dimension model - described in Chapters 2 and 3 - we can construct a number of typologies by combining the dimensions. For example, if we combine individualism on one axis with challenge and stability on the other, we find a number of archetypes that are shown in Figure 5.7

Figure 5.7: Brand archetypes

Pears' Soap was one of the longest running brands in marketing history and was named after a London hairdresser, Andrew Pears, who patented the translucent soap bar. The famous "Bubbles" marketing campaign featured a small boy and established Pears as part of everyday life across both sides of the Atlantic.

As Haig recounts (2003), in recent years the mass-produced block of soap has been replaced by liquid products such as shower gels, body washes, and liquid soap. "In pursuit of cleanliness, the soap bar has been deemed unhygienic," Madelaine Bunting wrote in the Guardian (October 2001). It is especially seen as such in the US.

In addition, the Pears brand was built on advertising and when such support was taken away, the brand identity lost its meaning and became irrelevant. Brands built on advertising need advertising to sustain them.

The market share fell to only 3 percent and Unilever announced that it was to discontinue the brand in February 2000. The shift to liquid soap products was obviously a factor in the decline of Pears but Unilever held on to their "Dove" soap. This still sells exceptionally well because it is highly differentiated - it is bought not for cleanliness being next to godliness, but for keeping skin soft and beautiful.