Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Multicultural Brand Is All about Culture

The Nature of Multicultural

Marc Gobe, the author of Emotional Branding, talks about branding for a multicultural brand in Chap 2 "Disconnection Alert: The U.S Melting Pot is Hot!". As more companies are earning profit overseas, a multicultural and multinational corporation has to realize that "People want to deal with corporations that are responsive and sensitive to their unique needs." In other words, branding a multicultural brand is about building a relationship with people's own culture. 


Case: KFC


  • A leading multicultural brand in the global stage
                                                                     Source: Yum!


KFC in China

  • A local Chinese name for KFC in China, with offering local taste of fish, shrimps, egg tarts, and etc.
  • KFC is opening one new restaurant a day, on average with the intention of reaching 15,000 outlets.
  • "Built a leading 40% share of the Chinese fast food market through patiently tailoring its product offering to local tastes and building a strong team of local managers." ---HBR
  • "KFC would not be seen as a foreign presence but as part of the local community. Out opportunity was to take the best ideas from the U.S. fast food model and adapt them to serve the needs of the Chinese consumer." ---CEO Sam Sue of KFC China division
  • Abandoning the dominant logic behind its growth in the U.S.: a limited menu, low prices, and an emphasis on takeout

Collection of Toys to Bond Relationships


KFC in Chinese market usually provides gifts for purchasing combos. Those gifts are for collections, often for collections of a series of toys. Those reward activities increase intimacy with KFC brand, and bring more acticities for friends and family gathering.


Familiar Cooking Styles


As Chinese people prefer cooked food, KFC made those fried coats with cooked food inside. The image above displaces the "Shrimp Hat," which grabs attention by its cute design and cooking style.


Meets People's Desire to Try Different Western Styles Food


The image displays above is "New Orleans Series." Even though Chinese people are addicted to their cooking style food, they have the desire to try different Western Styles food. KFC China division caught this important insight and applied it in their marketing strategy for Chinese market. For "Orleans Wings," they named them directly after Orleans, the city in France, and made the wings seem similar to the real Orleans wings but adding a local taste into it. It turns out a huge success, and  "Orleans Wings" become the most popular wings among its Chinese consumers. 


KFC as A Multicultural Brand

  • Western Fast Food
    • Limited Choices
    • Mainly Deep Fried
    • Very Few Vegetables
    • Encourages Overeating
    • Fast and Cheap
  • Chinese "New Fast Food"
    • Abundant Selections with Chinese-Western Fusion Flavors 
    • Cooking Styles
    • Plenty of Vegetables
    • Balance Food & Drink (e.g. soup)
    • Changing Selections Always
    • Family Gathering and Sharing
    • Mostly College Students as Employees


For multicultural brands such as KFC, marketers should realize that in order for corporations to be successfully international and multicultural, they have to convert "international" into "local". Through localizing, marketers can understand the culture and grab key insights from their local consumers.




THE END.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

How Color Works for A Brand?

Colors are very important for a brand in order to be recognized in the market. A good brand campaign should be based on several components. Constructing a good color and a suitable color branding means to create a successful and focused use of colors in order to describe the product not only for its beauty but also for its specific features.

Human brain is very sensitive to colors, so once they reach the cerebral cortex modes of perceptions can become active. Color is about conveying crucial information to your consumers. The effect of colors arises both from acculturation and physiology, and these influences are enforced by one another. Color often sets the mood of a brand through logos and packaging. The role color choice can play in brand identity should not be underestimated.


Select A Right Color

Selecting colors is complex, and choosing colors without the consultation of professional designer is like hiking the Andes without a guide. Selecting the right color is about the audience. Therefore, you have to consider: Who is your audience? And what is the message you are trying to convey to that audience?


Coca-Cola with  RED


From Gobe, who is the author of Emotional Branding, Red means power, activity, energy, and rescue. Red is long wavelength and it's arousing. Red is a stimulant. Studies show that red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure.


Why Coca-Cola Chose Red?

As Coca-Cola product is unique in its genre, so, for its originality, customers should recognize it and love it more than other drinks in the market. In this sense, red is the perfect color for this kind of product. It is a product who is able to meet a huge part of the target audience playing on two winning factors: individuality and customization as the second.

Red is a very energizing and makes you feel brighter, energetic, and full of life. Coca-Cola matches perfectly with red because it is a bubbling product, made by a secret recipe with full enthusiasm. 

Choosing red as a brand color for Coca-Cola indicates that they have a passionate and motivated personality. That is what Coca-Cola always shows. They are determined and fully motivated. In this way, the target of its audience are characterized by proactive and dynamic people, who like to enjoy themselves and their life.


Coca-Cola Brand

The name of the brand is written with simple white font in order to highlight the red color behind it. It is a perfect match with simplicity and color branding option. About Coca-Cola brand, there is no need to have a more elaborated logo because the red background is seductive enough to take a look at and stay focused on it at first look. 

As soon as the brand appears, the desire to grab one drink it is almost automatic: in daily life, for example, among other drinks in shelf, the first bottle picked up would be Coca-Cola. It is red, and cheap and, above all, seductive and catchy like only RED can be. 



THE END.





Sunday, November 11, 2012

We are Entering into the Mobile World


Harvard Business School--held its 18th annual Cyberposium conference on Nov 2, drawing over 700 attendees to a panel of  co-founders of various technology companies. Mobile is the major issue for the panelist to talk about, especially the mobile advertising and the evolution of payment due to the mobile world. While technology drives the evolution of mobile, it changes the business model as well. 


What "Mobile" Means?

"Mobile" is the word to describe various platforms out there in the marketplace other than your desktops. More people are adopting smartphones and tablets and they are getting comfortable using them to surf on the Internet and chat with their friends. In fact, mobile is 2-6X faster than PC and online equivalents. In this way, people share, comment, chat and make purchases anytime and anywhere.


Mobile Advertising

Marketers are finding new opportunities in mobile advertising. The panelists mentioned that 60% mobile advertising is from search, others are from direct messages, websites banners, intervals between online streams and etc. Mobile advertising could be more attractive than PC's or online's because of the reason that once you click on an ad on your mobile platform, your focus is the ad that permeates the entire screen. Say, when you are playing an iPhone app game, advertisers like to insert ads before you start the game or before you are about to enter into the next level. When those ads appear, they stretch into the full screen so that you have to either click "skip" to skip them or wait for them to pass. In this way, effectiveness for mobile advertising is maximized. 





Real Time Engagement

Positive sentiments about particular brand take action immediately but negative sentiments as well. In the mobile world, people tend not to hesitate to post their true feelings about brands on social medial such as Instagram or Twitter. Targeting for particular brands is improved for marketers thanks to the increasing use of social networks. People are generating information about themselves, making it easier for marketers to target them. However, this makes harder for markets to create a clear brand message without people's disruptive inputs, so there is a growing challenge for marketer to pick a unique position for their brand to stand out in the marketplace. Also, due to people's higher expressive capabilities, it makes harder for managers to measure the advertising effectiveness as well.


Geolocation Provides Relevance 

Geolocation might be the most important aspect for mobile business. Most smartphones have the capability of providing geolocation data, providing more relevant data for marketers. For example, people use Foursquare to check in to find ads and coupons nearby their physical locations. Sharing locations on Foursquare is a great start to find ads that are relevant to you. Foursquare takes a more personal approach to their consumers. Consumers might miss some data relevant to them, but geolocation data can compensate for that. Geolocation data on Foursquare also provides recommendations from your close friends. However, challenges are still great for marketers because they have to figure out how to offer special coupons or ads for people with geolocation devices instead of just telling basic information as well as how to measure contributions from mobile.





Mobile is the Wallet

Mobile brings about the revolution of new transactions, and it changes the way marketers approach to people. Seeing PayPal and Google Wallet as examples, which connect mobile advertising to the global world. In order to work as a wallet, consumers have pay to get in, so it is not popular to make transactions on mobile wallets. How the mobile wallet is utilized is through ACH, which requires a banking account on all the links the bank build on the retailing network. Even though it seems exciting for marketers to do new business on mobile, regulations are many, and incumbence makes it difficult to innovate. Intermediary connection such as Google wallet or direct connection such as companies' websites is a choice for new business model in the mobile world.




Therefore, the development of both digital technology and social media is challenging the traditional business model. Mobile becomes a great part of the challenge to traditional business models. It is still a great challenge to make all mobile platforms compatible and to let banks and retailer agree on a selling model. But I think the new challenges end up pouring more energy and opportunities into the market.



THE END.