Branding practices

The lack of well-known brands is considered to be one of the weaknesses of Chinese consumer products manufacturers. A 'famous brand strategy' has been advocated by the government in a bid to improve the brand images and marketability of locally produced products. Painstaking efforts by local marketers has yielded some results, with some brands having established national recognition. The majority, however, have not yet made much progress in breaking away from the images of a local brand. Worse still, many brands are still unknown to their intended consumers.

Local marketers have a tendency, as they do with numbers , to favour brand names that convey goodness, luck, happiness, longevity and prosperity . In some cases, brand names are associated with historical events. Few have tested their brand names before affixing them to their products. Because of the reputation of foreign products as premium quality, many local marketers even go so far as to give brand names that read and sound foreign. Local brands are often unrelated to product content or attributes, and therefore brand communications tend to be weak. In fact until recently, little effort was invested in developing a name or product image using integrated and holistic approaches. Clever marketers skipped brand name testing by putting out advertisements inviting consumers to give names for their products, but whether the arbitrarily chosen ones are liked by consumers is still unknown.

While some local marketers are trying to use brand names that have a foreign touch, foreign marketers are struggling to find a proper Chinese name for their brands. Indeed, it is often very difficult to translate a western brand name into Chinese. The usual approach is either to take on a new name and create new meaning, or give a similarly-sounding phonetic name. For example, P&G's Rejoice shampoo had a completely new name, Piao Rou, whose pronunciation is totally different, meaning 'softly wave to and fro', while its Pantene shampoo was transliterated as Pan Ting, which is phonetically similar and does not carry a specific meaning. Ideally, a brand should both have phonetic similarity and good meaning. A classical example of this is Coca- Cola, which is phonetically translated as Ke Kou Ke Le with the meanings of 'deliciously enjoyable' and 'bringing about happy laughter '. Asics sportswear has a Chinese name, Ai Shi Ke Si, which is again pronounced very similarly, but the meaning of 'love the world and overcome selfishness (or ego)' does not seem to be particularly well associated with the product.

Some foreign marketers, recognizing the difficulties in translating their brand names into Chinese, avoided the effort of associating the name with any particular Chinese meaning. Brands such as Philips, Nokia, Motorola, Electrolux and Sony are all using their transliterated names, and all have established brand recognition.

There are also instances where brand names already in use in Hong Kong are transplanted to the mainland. Some of the brands were a result of transliteration into Cantonese and read differently in Mandarin. McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Del Monte are typical examples.

Whichever way you go in adapting your brands to the local conditions, it is important that the Chinese brand names should be easy to read and to remember, and not too long. Brand names longer than four Chinese characters will be difficult both to read and remember. The name chosen should be commonly used words. Strange words will cause difficulties in brand recognition. For example, the last word of the two-Chinese- word brand for Del Monte is difficult to find in a regular dictionary. Another factor that should be taken into consideration when adopting a Chinese brand name is the diverse dialects. A brand name that reads well in Mandarin may be read very differently in different dialects meaning very different things. A normal exercise of brand name testing would cover at least three cities such Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing to make sure that the name does not carry undesired meanings.

However, a good brand name does sell itself on the merit that it has a good meaning. Effective branding means more than Chinese labelling. A brand image manifests itself in many ways: in a memorable brand name and well-designed logo, attractive packaging, in the quality and services associated with the brand, and, importantly, in integrated marketing communications.