Opinion

Brand culture in China should start with managers

By Mike Bastin (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-25 14:23

While we see an increasing number of well-known Chinese companies, such as Haier, Lenovo, Huawei and Li Ning, we still do not observe the development of successful brands. Indeed, Lenovo recently announced a 20-percent reduction in its global workforce and Haier and Li Ning continue to experience extremely low brand awareness among US and European consumers.

Clearly, a sea change in Chinese business culture is required in order to move towards a brand-focused approach. With this in mind, the key point is the need for a brand manager role within Chinese organizations. Such a position is considered a foundation in any process towards a brand-oriented Chinese business culture.

The brand manager should report directly to the board of directors and probably directly to the chief executive officer but should not be a directorial appointment. The title brand director should not be used because this would not create the urgency required inside Chinese organizations regarding a more brand-focused business culture. Neither should the brand manager role be confused with the product manager, sales manager, market manager or advertising manager. Product management should continue to be responsible for functional product quality, whereas brand management builds on this with the development and maintenance of this 'emotional customer experience'.

Brand managers should not be a current, recent or even former marketing or advertising manager. This is to be avoided because such a person may not work well across other departments. In particular, advertising managers could easily resort to a purely advertising-led approach and neglect product quality management and the use of other more innovative promotions methods. Sales or marketing managers could also resort to a purely sales-led or marketing promotions-led approach.

A manager who has received multi-disciplinary training, for example an MBA graduate, and has worked successfully in many different departments and is financially literate should make a good brand manager.

A good brand manager should possess exceptional creative ability. It is often not necessary to spend huge sums building the brand. Smaller companies and even larger Chinese companies still do not have the financial resources to match the advertising and sponsorship spending on established Western brands. However, creative thinking can prove a successful way to building a brand without the need for huge financial investment.

A brand manager needs cultural awareness, understanding and linguistic ability, probably overseas experience and/or experience inside a Western organization. Chinese brands need to become more and more international and hopefully global which will undoubtedly require collaboration with companies and colleagues from a multitude of different cultures.

The key responsibilities of a brand manager include the establishment of a branding culture. Ongoing responsibility for a change in corporate culture is most definitely necessary within Chinese organizations, which may take some years to achieve.

He or she should also set up a brand management steering group. Such a team should consist of key managers from each functional area and meet regularly to monitor brand development across the entire organization. The brand manager should also have ongoing responsibility for the valuation of intangible brand value. All aspects of brand strategy should be under the authority of the brand manager. These include brand identity, naming, association, architecture and brand extension.

The author teaches brand management at the International College Beijing, affiliated to China Agriculture University.