The Marketing Executives Group International

Written By: Rodolfo Herrera
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/herrerarodolfo

For the national economies – In view of an unprecedented sustained development and economic growth of main emerging markets such as China and India, it is critical for these countries to focus on the creation and implementation of strong multinational brands. This necessary approach on today’s global stage, along with increasingly better production, research and development, innovation, and revenue creation capacities, will prepare the fastest-growing players to better compete with 1st world economic powers such as the U.S., the E.U. and Japan.

Today, the overall business values of the biggest multinational corporations are heavily determined by their brand values and intangibles. As these national economies become more resource-based, they need to be able to better compete on intangibles such as successful domestic corporate brands and product brands. This could be achieved, among others, by: increasing leverage on further improved Chinese and Indian products and service innovation; promoting their own brands domestically and globally; progressively going from being reactive in effective marketing communications (when copying and adapting foreign marketing know-how) to being leaders in locally developed marketing communication strategies; and also by maintaining strong government initiatives to promote potential acquisitions and partnerships with some leading foreign companies and brands.

In the end, these enormous world’s fastest-growing markets need to implement successful marketing and branding initiatives that cope with their extraordinary growth through proactive, intelligent and highly customer-oriented efforts. (China and India currently rank top two and three respectively in market size after the U.S., but still rank disproportionably low in business competitiveness).*

For the multinational corporations – It is critical for multinationals operating in those fastest-growing top emerging economies to focus on the strict monitoring of, and further contribution to, their strong global brands, while benefiting from unparalleled business expansion.

Due to today’s complex redistribution of purchasing powers worldwide, multinational companies need to have a better understanding of extensively diverse customer behaviors and needs to develop marketing communication strategies, advertising campaigns and effective sales efforts. Multinationals will only be able to make fundamental strategic decisions in these highly beneficial markets by truly understanding how to market there, and by developing efficient customer intelligence in the different marketplaces. Also, the overall competitiveness of transnational companies should be enhanced by the sustained positive global customer perception of those corporations as well as their products and services, through strong brands.

Furthermore, it is important to monitor the specific company’s brand strategy to keep a strong brand identity in such vast and diverse Chinese and Indian markets. Global branding should play a more strategic role concentrating on issues such as protecting the brand equity and developing the right product offerings for those markets and submarkets, while a more tactical local branding should focus on executing different marketing and branding plans. In any case, the more widely recognized the brands, the more important it is for the multinationals to inflict accurate marketing and branding governance throughout the diverse Chinese and Indian markets.

Finally, any successful global branding approach in the fastest-growing emerging markets would also depend on efficient partnerships with global-conscious advertising agencies to deliver the desired global communication through market-specific corporate and product-compliant advertising. Success would also depend on effective affiliate marketing through cross-promotion, which in some cases has proved very successful in generating cost-effective increases in sales revenue and market share, while consistently strengthening the brand.

*Per information included in The Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008 (World Economic Forum) www.weforum.org

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