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Spreading a Company’s Success with Global Branding

As the world of business becomes accelerated by globalization and technology, global branding presents a great tool for businesses to position and advertise their marketing strategies. This article elaborates on the importance of global branding and the advantages of using such marketing strategies.

What is Global Branding?

Global branding is a marketing strategy that expands a business’s reach to countries from different regions in the world and targets those countries’ markets with your company’s marketing effort. For example, Yum! Brands, Inc. uses global branding to develop its brands – KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill – into a globally recognizable fast-food conglomerate. It has successfully targeted the Asian market by providing reasonably priced western restaurant experiences to the local middle class and younger demographic.

The implementation of global branding helps your company gain a competitive advantage and delivers a strong message of your brand to your customers. The key to global branding is to tailor a story that resonates with the customers and creates a connection to the targeted demographic.

How to Build a Global Brand

Before starting a global branding campaign, your company must decide how it wants its brand to be perceived. It is important to find a strong identity for the business as it allows the business to integrate a robust marketing strategy, and become more coordinated, and adaptable to new markets.

Once your business has found a strong identity that resonates with target customers, the business will then need to select the communication channels to reach these target demographics. The rise of social media and digital marketing has made multiple communication channels readily available but hard to navigate. The best way to see a tangible return is to limit the channels of communication to specific platforms and focus on the target customers. It is beneficial to research the target’s customers’ geography, age, hobbies, goals, education level, preferences, and online activity to create a strong brand positioning. Brand positioning is a marketing strategy that enforces an idea or image of the brand to customers. If a business cannot position itself in local markets, it should consider partnering with a local agency or business that is familiar with the local market.

Global Branding works in conjunction with a robust communication strategy. This can include engaging with the customers in their local language, connecting with local media, and being available for two-way communication. Also, the message that a brand sends must be consistent with the brand image and relatable to the local customers.

What is an Example of a Successful Global Branding Strategy?

One of the most successful examples of communicating with local customers would be PepsiCo. PepsiCo targets its brand to offer a story-telling platform and to initiate a story that resonates with customers. It also manages to combine the global branding message and the local culture in the targeted demographic. The vice president of communication at PepsiCo, Chris Kuechenmeister, suggested that overcoming the language barrier and creating visual-based communication had been very appealing to its targeted demographic. Also, PepsiCo spent extra effort and investments on refining its central vision into stories that can resonate with the local customers.

PepsiCo is one of the most successful examples of global branding. It communicates with customers around the globe by using visual media. The latest re-design of the Pepsi logo in 2008 reflects their design to connect more with the newer generation of Pepsi consumers. The classic Pepsi globe became flat and tilted to resemble a smile, and a brand-new sans-serif font – Pepsi Light – displayed the brand name. Later, PepsiCo decided to further its global branding by creating “PepsiMojis,” which are proprietary emojis created by the PepsiCo Design & Innovation Center. Since its creation, PepsiCo has also initiated numerous campaigns, such as Pepsi Generation, Project Blue, Bring Home Happiness, #SayItWithPepsi, to incorporate different generations of consumers in their global branding. Through the use of emojis and creative logo designs, Pepsi permeates the global market and also cleverly navigates language barriers to make itself ubiquitous around the world.

Advantages of Global Branding

It is a misconception that adapting global branding might be too costly for your business. One major advantage of global branding is the reduced expenses of marketing and production. It is cheaper and more effective to operate with a single advertisement that stays constant throughout the world and to maintain the look of a design regardless of where it’s sold.
There are other advantages to global branding as well, such as consistency and greater awareness of the product. Apple is a global leader in design consistency; Apple concentrates on ensuring every aspect of an iPhone is tailored to the consumers’ needs. Whether the climate is humid or dry, the iPhone’s touch screen must be sensitive enough to respond to the user’s touch, and no matter where someone comes from, the App Store is within a single touch, available in over 175 countries and regions.

Overcoming the Difficulties of Adopting a Global Branding Strategy

Forming a successful global brand team might be difficult as a company must adapt and cater to people from different cultures, languages, and locations. The logistics of running a global campaign are complicated due to the challenging nature of creating innovative designs, data collection, and customer research. This may become a barrier to adopting a global branding strategy. It should be noted that a brand’s image may not apply to all markets and the implementation of a global positioning strategy could be difficult. To resolve these difficulties, a business should create a strong universal style and message before initiating the global branding strategy. Your company may need a strong team of attorneys that can protect your brand image and intellectual property. Our firm is experienced in serving both domestic and international clients in protecting their brand and intellectual property.

 

 

Wang IP Law Group, P.C. is a Los Angeles based full service legal firm that specializes in intellectual property law (patent, trademark, copyright, and licensing agreement), business and commercial litigation, and a wide range of other legal matters including immigration, real estate, and landlord/tenant cases. Our multilingual attorneys represent clients from all over California and internationally from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Israel.
If you have questions or would like a consultation in regards to the content of this publication, please contact us by calling (888) 827-8880 or email us at [email protected]. For more information about the firm and the services please visit www.TheWangIPLaw.com.