on global branding [2of2]

problems of communicating brand identity in different cultures


Once the movie deal is inked, product placement is established for global exposure. To the degree to which the regional offices in Europe and Asia and South America can leverage the tie in, to that degree they can participate and capitalize on the exposure. One of the subject matter experts suggested using both the Eastern European actress as well as Miss Ukraine. Another took exception with Mr. Mazur’s posture of being his own little kingdom, instead of asking how he could work with what was being offered him. In addition, of course, we have already noticed that Ms. Singh never bothered to ask Mr. Mazur (or any of her other subordinates) for their creative ideas as to what else could be possible vis-à-vis leveraging the film product placement.

Our Temple University expert acknowledged that headquarters cannot do it alone, working with your team on the ground covers all manner of bases. Such positive and professional team playing was acknowledged by our Unilever expert also, as it was couched in terms of redirecting the competitiveness towards the outside world (not the inside world).



recommended strategies for one region (in this case, Ukraine)

Someday this author hopes to write the quintessential commandments of business. You can bet one of them will have to do with the surgery to remove emotion from basic business decisions. One can see far too much emotion in this case study, and it has nothing to do with sound judgment.

That said; let us also notice of what we are speaking of, cosmetics. It seems only the pharmaceutical industry shares such a distinction of margin. For “a fingernails worth” of powder, some are willing to surrender as much, and sometimes more than, as an hour’s worth of salary. It is literally all packaging, no substance. For cosmetics, it is all marketing! The point here is that this case study has to be fictitious because it is unimaginable that any management in that industry would not have caught these errors.

There are two other considerations too important not to acknowledge. One actually comes from Mr. Johnson (almost), asking to see metrics (“I need to see some research to prove that a worldwide initiative will save Espoir money.”). Actual research is fundamental, and it is surprising that he said this the way he did, in that one would think this would already have been done. Evident that it was not done, our Stanford University expert called for that, and more, when asking for measurement.

Similarly, but with a different focus, our Temple University contact is insightful enough to notice a different measurement, the “price differences between countries (that) spawn gray-market actions by distributors”.

As we walk away from the meditation of this case study, thoroughly beat up from every angle, in many ways it seems amazing that Espoir had management in place like these folks yet made it this far. It seems the three players that we assessed through our document actually all have a lot to contribute, and yet all three fell short in so many and such basic ways.

Apparently, Espoir is a fictional company, its namesake the French word for hope. It is our hope that none of these marketing errors comes to roost anywhere near any among us.


Reference

Raman, A. P., Thompson, P. M., Aaker, J. L., Manwani, H., Gift, S., & Kotabe, M. (2003, ). The global brand face-off. Harvard Business Review, 81(6)(), . doi: AN 9943706