There is a saying that goes “it is better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a small fish in a big pond”. Not a big business, but the President of the World Marketing Association, Mr. Hermawan Kartajaya, believes that small-scale businesses have an advantage in building brands.
Interview with Mr. Hermawan Kartajaya about branding
Do you think branding is a business or a national matter?
In my opinion, there are three important factors for brand building. I call them ABG: experts (Academicians), business people and government (Government). The task of experts is to discover and share new knowledge about brand building. From that work, everyone in the country can grasp the most correct way to build a brand. Enterprises have the task of implementing the ideas and knowledge that experts have developed. They themselves must implement those ideas in their business activities. The third factor, the government, has a very important task of facilitating and protecting the rights of experts and businesses in implementing their brand building ideas.
So how can we understand the division of labor between enterprises and the state in brand building?
As I said, to have many strong brands, the state must create a favorable environment and resources as well as protect the legal rights of enterprises in creative activities and brand building. On the part of enterprises, there must be dynamism in creativity and innovation to nurture their brands.
On what basis do you conclude that?
Compare the world’s two emerging economies – China and India. You could say that the Chinese government has been the driving force behind the country’s economic dominance. It has facilitated open trade both within and outside the country. This is important for China’s leading manufacturing industries, which are heavily dependent on imports for raw materials. Moreover, they need to export their products to create global brands. As a result, there are a number of emerging Chinese brands, such as Lenovo, Midea, etc.
In India, entrepreneurs are more influential than the government. Innovation has been initiated by businesses, which is very strong in the service sector, especially in the information technology industry. Because the government has given businesses the freedom to innovate and create innovations in this sector, there have emerged Indian companies with leading brands in this service sector, such as Tata IT and Infosys.
For Vietnam, I believe that the efforts of businesses, the State and experts will be the key to effective branding.
There is a view that before building a brand, you must make really good, quality products. What is your opinion on this issue?
In fact, building a strong brand does not start with building the product or the brand itself. That means the work of building the brand and the product must be done simultaneously. The first step must be to create a strong position (also known as Positioning) and differentiation. Differentiation is how consumers do not see your product as similar to any other product. After you decide how to position your brand in the minds of customers and create that difference, then create products and brands that match that positioning and differentiation.
In the Vietnamese economy, most enterprises are small and medium-sized and the consumption level of Vietnamese people is not high. What solutions do you think are suitable for brand building?
In my opinion, it would be great to be small players. I have two pieces of advice for small and medium sized businesses.
The first is to target a niche market and position your brand correctly in that market. There is a saying that goes “it is better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond”. So it is better to target a small market segment because we are on a small scale. That means you should take advantage of your advantage, which is to focus your resources on the target. The second thing is to be “intimate” with your customers. Smaller fish swim faster than big fish. Because at a small scale you can grasp the customer needs in more detail. You can understand each of your customers clearly. That is something that sometimes big companies cannot do.
SGTT
