Bite lee a= ee) Brand Management PUM \elelt eel Re a aed a UC Sem eee Daeg Nation-brands of the twenty-first century Simon Anhalt Breaking into the children's confectionery market Re Rc Ue ote NCS ein ney De ein aN eae esd The next generation of brand measurement eee Cte ee eR ned Ce ee STEWART. iterNation-brands of the twenty-first century Simon Anholt Address: World Writers, 182-170 Wardour Street, London W1V 3AT. Tel: +44 171 267 4877; Fax: +44 171 267 6159; E-mail: simon @worlduriters.com Received (in revised form): 21st May, 1998 ‘Simon Anholt read Modern Languages at Ox- ford, and worked as copywriter and intemational co-ordinator at McCann-Erickson and various other agencies around the world before founding World Writers in 1989. World Writers is the world’s only global creative audit, brand naming, ‘multicultural brand thinktank, foreign copywnlting and creative consultancy service. Its many clients include Microsoft, Nike, Coca-Cola, American Express, Sony, IBM, Adidas, Visa, Shell, Levi's, British Airways, Nestlé, Haagen- Dazs, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, P&G, Unilever, Mercedes-Benz and Benetton. Asstract Throughout the twentieth century, most of the re~ ally successful international brands have come from countries that are successful brands in their own right, and substantial transfer of imagery and brand equity can often be seen to occur between the tw. This paper proposes that a number of ‘emerg- ing’ markets, and especially Brazil, have the po- tential to produce global brands, for the following — because there is already high recognition of the brand-print of the country itself; which will consequently support the ‘rightness’ and ace ceptability of relevant commercial brands from that country; — because the economic environment is increas- ingly favouring an export mentality; — because certain groups of consumers in other emerging markets might eventually favour brands fiom emerging or ‘recently-emerged ‘markets such as Brazil, in preference to first world’ nations like US? The paper argues that exporting brands, as dis- tinct fiom commodities, is part of a package of de- velopment which, together, can significantly accelerate the process of emergence from the third world. It also proposes that countries like Brazil have a real chance to join the fist world ‘club’ of ‘global brand producers in the twenty-first century. ‘THE IMPORTANCE OF PROVENANCE, AS A BRAND ATTRIBUTE. Few things in marketing are harder to define than the personality of a brand, and seldom is this task more complex than when the brand is sold in many different countries. A brand is always a complex mixture of attrib- utes: packaging and visual identity form its face, and advertising creates its voice: but its actual personality really only exists in the mind of the consumer. One attribute which is often of funda- mental importance in the complex makeup of international brands is the influence which the brand’s provenance — or its per- ceived provenance — has on the consumer's perception of the brand. A quick poll of successfull international consumer brands reveals that the vast major~ ity of them come from countries which have a strong and consistent international “brand image’ of their own. In many cases the imagery used by the commercial brands is closely linked with the attributes of their provenancert At its simplest level, this association be- tween commercial and national brand is merely a case of positive associations with na- tional produce: a country is famous for pro- ducing certain items, and brands in related product categories profit by association. Italy is famous for producing pasta and pizza, so Italian pasta and pizza brands enjoy more immediate and positive associations than non-lItalian brands; the French are renowned for their skill in perfumery, so it is natural that French perfume brands play on their French heritage; the best whisky tradi- tionally comes from Scotland, so stressing the Scottishness of whisky brands is almost mandatory. PLAYING WITH PROVENANCE ‘Ata more sophisticated level, manufacturers of products that are not traditional national products can make highly positive and valu- able associations with perceived qualities in their national brand, in a precisely analogous way to the practice of brand extensions, where the owner of an established brand can use that equity to leverage acceptance of a new product or sub-brand, For example, Japan is associated in the minds of Euro- peans with high-stress urban existence, but also with ancient wisdom and mystic healing powers: so marketing K3, a soft drink asso- ciated with stress relief, to ABC1 urbanites in Britain, is a highly intelligent ‘brand ex- tension’, drawing on and extending existing perceptions of brand Japan. These associations of quality or apptopri- ateness are powerful enough attributes to make it worthwhile for a manufacturer to claim a fictitious provenance if it appears to lend more credibility than their real prove- nance, It is, in effect, a shortcut to well-es- tablished brand values for emerging brands: by attaching the emerging brand to an area of established cultural reference within the consumer's experience, it can quickly obtain a halo of recognition, maturity and respect. These ‘cuckoo brands’, as the author of this paper calls them, which borrow brand equity from more established cultural icons, are surprisingly common and have been around for many years, as Wally Olins ob- served in a recent seminar.! The Italian confectioner, Perfetti, for ex- ample, owns a successful chewing-gum brand called “Brooklyn’, a product which bears an image of the Brooklyn Bridge on its packaging, and is manufactured in Turin, This bogus provenance no doubt made per fect sense when the brand was launched — chewing-gum was an US import, and its novelty and glamour derived principally from its provenance. Even today, many [tal- ians still refer to chewing-gum as gomma americana or even in some dialects as gin- gomma, a corruption of the English word. In such a cultural climate, a domestic brand would clearly have taken many more years o attain any kind of recognition or brand share. Likewise, Dixon's, the UK white goods retailer, launched its own consumer elec tronics brand in 1982 under the mock- Japanese name Saisho, because it rightly believed that a British electronics brand would carry little credibility. By a similar set of associations, it has been suggested that the US laser/fax supplies and photofinishing company, Nashua, has prospered abroad partly as a result of the mistaken belief that it is a Japanese company (Nashua is, in fact, the name of the New Hampshire town in which the company is located, and the word is, I guess, Algonquin, not Japanese) The provenance of certain brands can also switch with a change of brand owner: char~ acters like Winnie-the-Pooh, Mary Poppins and Alice in Wonderland, once perceived as being quintessentially British, are now per- ceived by children around the world as being quintessentially American; likewise, through the power of Walt Disney's brand- ing, Quasimodo, Anastasia, Snow White and Hercules are no longer French, Russian,German or Greek, but all come from the same global-American culture stable as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. This phenomenon is the converse of the cuckoo brand effect: here, the cuckoo steals eggs from other birds’ nests and hatches them in its own, Indeed, if a country begins to produce and market enough powerful brands in a product category that was previously associ ated with another nation, the perceived provenance of the entire category is Hable to switch: for example, outside Europe, pizza is now generally associated with the USA, simply because so many of the global pizza brands are known to be American, even though pizza was a national product of Italy. Interestingly, this process has not occurred with pasta, perhaps because dry packaged goods have been in commerce, and hence branded for very much longer. Conse- quently, Italian brands had time to become established long before the product became adopted as a ‘world food’. Branded pizza has really only existed for as long as people have had freezers, and most of the ‘Italian’ pizza brands on the market are cuckoo brands, claiming phoney Italian provenance EXPECTATIONS OF PROVENANCE There are, in reality, ewo kinds of brands at work here: private domain brands and pub- lic domain brands. Private domain brands are owned by companies; public domain brands are items of popular or traditional culture which, at least in the strict commer- cial sense, are nobody's property. They in- clude countries, cities and regions, races, demographic groups, even individual peo- ple. Itis a measure of the power and value of these public brands that their ‘owners’ or guardians sometimes attempt to exert the same kind of restrictions on their use as the owners of commercial brands: the Italian re gion of Tuscany, for example, after decades of unwittingly lending its visual identity (cy press trees, winding roads, red-ochre villas) to add glamour by association to automobile manufacturers, is now attempting to protect itself by copyright law against unauthorised use. The trustees of Princess Diana’s estate are attempting a similar exercise, in order to prevent the unwanted association of brand Diana with a whole host of newspapers, gift crockery and charities with a powerful brand effectively borrows equity from that brand and thus enables the marketer to increase margin on the sale, it is indeed a kind of theft. Certain products tend to use provenance within their brand character more overtly than others. Fashion labels and cars, for ex- Since association ample, are very often provenance-linked: pethaps because the concept of national dress has all but disappeared, the provenance of one’s clothes assumes a significance which, at times, threatens to eclipse the power of the label itself. It is almost as im- portant for a suit or a pair of shoes co come from Italy as it is for them to be made by Armani or Ferragamo. Style is expected from Italian clothes, chic from French clothes, hold anti-fashion statements from British clothes, street credibility from Amer- ican clothes, and the expectancy of weather- proofniess from German or Scandinavian clothes is so powerful that the Manchester- based Berghaus company saw fit to adopt an ersatz German name for their brand Indeed, the link between certain brands and their country of origin can become so powerful, through consistent and high-pro- file marketing, that it is difficult to decide whether the perception of a particular qual ity derives more from the brand or from its provenance: in other words, brands can cre~ ate or enhance the perception of a country as much as the reverse. Arguably, the effect of technology-led international advertising campaigns on the part of Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Volkswagen over the decades is now a significant part of the reason why people associate Germany with technologi-‘TABLE 1 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALIAN IN THE CAR INDUSTRY Manufacturer Country of origin Name Italian meaning Datsun Japan Stanza Room (in a house) Nissan Japan Serena Serene Nissan Jepan Figaro Opera tide Mazda Japan Piazza Square (in a town) Mitsubishi Japan Carism: Charisma Daihatsu Japan Cuore Heart Sumuki ‘pan Alto High Suzuki Japan Baleno Lightning Hyundai Korea Sonata Ringing Daewoo Korea Leganza (Eleganza) Elegance Ford USA Mondeo (Mondo) World Chrysler USA Pronto Ready (or Spanish: soon) Volkswagen Germany Palio Contest, Siennese festival Volkswagen German Vento Wind Volkswagen Germany Lupo Wolf Volkswagen Germany Corrado Conrad (man’s name} Volkswagen Germany Sciroceo Sirocco (wind) Mercedes Germany Vito ‘Man's name Porsche Germany Targa Plate (name of motor race) Porsche Germany Carrera Name of race-track Opel Germany Corsa Race Aston Martin UK Volante Steering wheel Renault Fran Laguna Lagoon) cal excellence; the belief that Italians are stylish and romantic is perpetuated in the way that Italian cars and other products are marketed around the world (and not always by Italian companies): in effect, brand own- ers ate helping to perpetuate or create global cultural myths in their own right, Consequently, consumers around the world continue to expect engineering ex- cellence ftom German cars, safety and ecology from Swedish cars, chic design from French cars, wood and leather from British cars, economy and efficiency from Japanese cars: but the almost universal habit of coining Italian and Italianate names for cars, irrespective of their real provenance, indicates that a measure of sporty style or panache is considered an indispensable in- gredient in the brand mix of any car; the habit appeared to take root in this country in the 1960s and 1970s with the Austin Maestro (master), Austin Allegro (merry), the Ford Capri and Ford Cortina, but has since become a truly global trend (see Table 1) It was recently reported that as many as 50 per cent of all new brands in Japan are now named after Italian towns and rivers, although this has probably more to do with the glamour of European-sounding names, the fact that Italian words are not too hard for Japanese consumers to pronounce (like Japanese words, Italian words almost invari- ably end with vowels) and the musical sound of the language, rather than any strict associ- ation with Italian brand valuesBut, despite the evident attractiveness of Italian attributes, and, indeed, the dispro- portionately large number of global brands which come from Italy, it cannot begin to challenge the dominance of brand America. BRANDS FROM AMERICA More than any other country, America ap- pears to be blessed with a huge range of positive brand attributes: one only has to observe its more successfull export brands to see the expressive power of these attributes America is associated with the definitive youth lifestyle (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, MTV, Levi’, Wrangler); with sporting prowess (Nike, O'Neill, Rockport, Reebok, NBA, Timberland, Nautilus), with technological supremacy (IBM, Compaq, Dell, Hewlett Packard, AT&T, Motorola, Intel, Microsoft); America is well-traveled (Boeing, Hertz, Marriott, Avis, NASA, Holiday Inn, Shera- ton); well-informed (CNN, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, NBC, Reuters); and, naturally, wealthy and power- ful (American Express, Forbes, Citibank, Diner's Club, Western Union). Coming from America even lends authority in areas that were once considered quintessentially European, such as fashion (Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lau- ren, The Gap), beauty (Elizabeth Arden, Revlon, Max Factor) and even food, albeit of the convenience variety (McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell etc). ‘These and many other attributes make America, without doubt, the world’s most powerful public domain brand. This may be merely one of the privileges of being a powerful and productive nation, but it is undoubtedly also the result of the fact that American has branded itself so competently asa country. Brand America enjoys the ser~ vices of the world’s best advertising agency -— Hollywood — which for nearly a cen- tury has been pumping out two-and-a-half hour commercials, which cinema consumers around the world have enthusi~ astically paid to watch, Brand America also employs such high-powered sales promo- tion agencies as NASA, which periodically launches a rocket into space, in order to communicate the superiority of American technology and industry. Consequently, American brands can sim- ply hitch themselves onto this powerful na tional brand, and a cultural and commercial trail is instantly blazed for them around the world. Little wonder that so many brands from other countries are keen to borrow American attributes. There are only a limited number of other countries and regions in the world with clear, consistent, and universally understood brand prints, of which a large proportion are European (England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland). Naturally, they are best understood by their near neighbours, but just like successfull pri vate-domain brands, the key attributes of these brands are known by consumers more or less throughout the world, Whether one asks the question in Australia, China or Chile, the same basic associations exist: Switzerland and wealth, Italy and style, Scandinavia and cleanliness, England and tradition. It is equally clear that other countries are not brands, and have decidedly few interna tionally-understood attributes beyond their immediate neighbourhood: ask 2 Mexican, an American or a Sti Lankan what qualities they associate with Belgium, or Portugal, or Liberia, or Greenland, and their answer will be neither long nor fluent. THE IMPORTANCE OF SWISSNESS Switzerland is in many respects the classic well-established European brand, and it seems that no matter whom one asks around the world, the same set of Swiss at- tributes always comes up. These attributes can be expressed in many different ways,rt 4 TaBLe 2 THE Swiss: ACCORDING To MYTH (1) Switzerland is boring. The Swiss are never lively or exuberant. (2) The Swiss are methodical. They are never in a hurry (3) Switzerland is rich. There is no poverty in Switzerland, (4) Switzerland is efficient. Everything in Switzerland runs like clockwork. (3) The Swiss are diplomatic. They play a key role in international affairs because they are always neutral (6) The Swiss are secretive, Swiss banks are legendary for their discretion. (7) Switzerland is conservative. The Swiss are very attached to traditional values. (8) The Swiss are internationalists. They all speak many languages. (9) The Swiss are dependable. They are solid and srustworthy. (10) The Swiss are arrogant. They think that all these qualities make them superior to other nations. ranging from the insulting to the adulatory, but the basic ideas are always remarkably similar. As might be expected, they are nei- ther particularly profound nor necessarily accurate, and are commonplaces or clichés rather than observations based on under~ standing or familiarity. The principal Swiss myths, as expressed by small groups of mixed age and mixed in- come group respondents in various coun- tries, appear to be those listed in Table 2 As is often the case in international rela- tions, familiarity breeds contempt: the nearer people are, physically, to Switzerland, the more likely these myths are to be ex- pressed in cynical or chauvinistic ways. Peo- ple often argue with their neighbours over the garden fence. The French, Germans, Austrians and Ital- ians seem most likely to turn these ‘brand attributes’ into insults, but moving further and further away, it is found that although they change remarkably little in substance, they are expressed in more and more re spectful ways. Once in North America, Switzerland seems to embody a very full set of virtues; in Asia, the Swiss ‘brand’ appears to be fainter with distance, but the key val- ues are still there, It is most striking how central the image of the impenetrable Swiss bank is to most people's view of Swissness: it appears to be as durable and widespread an icon as cuckoo clocks, yodelling and fondue, and is perceived as being the principal ‘national produce’ of Switzerland. Switzerland, of all the European countries, certainly enjoys one of the clearest images in other parts of the world, and in the context of selling fi- nancial services, certainly che most appro- priate, as the following informal survey suggests.TABLE 3 AN INFORMAL SURVEY OF PERCEIVED NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 60 ABCI respondents, aged 25-39, 10 each from Hong Kong, Colombo, London, Copenhagen, Sio Paulo and Boston were each e-mailed a list of 14 possible n: to match two of them to each of list of 12 countries Very mixed results or 2 preponderance of ‘Don't Knows’ are marked as ‘Unclear’ in the table; the characteristics listed are those which were selected by at least 30% of the total group, and are in order of preference rional characteristics’ and asked France (Unclear) Germany Arrogance, order Sweden Efficiency, modernity Britain Arrogance, tradition Brazil Style, squalor Iealy Style, laziness Spain Inefficiency, laziness Switzerland Wealth, order Belgium (Unclear) Netherlands" Modernity, arrogance Portugal Poverty, backwardness Denmark Cleanliness, modernity “Arrogance, humility, eiciency, iency, energy, laziness, wealth, poverty, cleanliness, squalor, order, modemity, tradition, style *** Pechaps predictably, clear resules ere only obtainable for the Netherlands when it was Gncorrectly) referred tos Holland’ It should be stressed that Table 3 is a credentials for banking services, that country highly unscientific and informal survey, and it is debatable whether there is any point in doing it more thoroughly, but it does tend to confirm the feeling that if any one coun- try has a clear head start when it comes to is Switzerland, Clearly, however, there is no great chal- lenge in developing ‘national produce’ such as Swiss financial services brands, brands companies — into internation:brands of th tw since the correct brand associations are al- ready in place. Predictably, most of the in- ternational brands from Switzerland come under the category of national produce (chocolate, banking and watches), but there are indications that extensions to the na- tional brand are beginning to develop through the activities of Swatch. Swatch, as a basic watch brand, is not re- ally a country-brand exercise at all, just an update of the national-produce paradigm ‘watches come from Switzerland’; but the company does appear to be starting to blaze a trail for a genuine development of Swiss- ness, through brand extensions such as pagers or the Swatch/Mercedes-Benz "Smart Car’ concept, as well as the global acceptance of Swatch as a credible youth brand coming from Switzerland. A vista of possible Swiss brand extensions opens up, ranging from Swatch-branded snowboarding equipment to Swiss Army-branded world- wide adventure holidays The branding equation runs something like this: Switzerland = watches Swatch —Swatch = youth brand Switzerland = youth brand. BRANDS FROM BRAZIL By contrast to Switzerland and its various successful international brands, Brazil, one of the most ‘strongly branded’ countries in the world, produces no international com- mercial brands whatsoever. This is surpris- ing, not least because the brand print of Brazil is unusually compact: it is associated with a fairly homogeneous and coherent set of values. Brand Brazil is strongly biased to- wards youth markets: samba, carnival, music, dancing, gaiety, ecology, sex, beaches, sport and adventure could be the brand print of almost any successful youth product on the market today. eee Certainly, these clichés may be depress ing, even insulting, to the average Brazilian but they are undeniably a fine platform on which to build a believable global brand. It is one of the tasks of advertising and market ing to manipulate these clichés into some- thing more creative, more substantial, more fait, more true, The fact that there are negative associa- tions — pollution, overpopulation, poverty, drugs, lawlessness — within the brand print of Brazil is not necessarily a cause for great concern, at least from the branding point of view. After all, a strong brand is a rich brand ,a the writer of this paper has observed in a previous issue of this journal.2, and richness implies a complex and satisfying mix of many different elements, The brand equity of the USA would appear to contain a sig nificant proportion of negative elements, but this does little to diminish its attraction: es- pecially when one is dealing with younger consumers, the suggestion of risk is highly attractive. These are consumers, after all, who wish to challenge and be challenged. Certainly, there are good reasons why so few Brazilian brands have ventured onto the world marketplace. Until recently, economic problems have meant that merely surviving in the domestic market has been the main concern. Now, the environment is chang- ing, and the Brazilian government is actively encouraging an export mentality in its in- dustries, The global surge in interest in ecology also presents a major opportunity for Brazil at this moment. Brazil, because of its ‘nat- ural’ image, and worldwide awareness of the importance of the Amazon rainforest to global ecology, combined with the world ecology summit being held in Rio de Janeiro, has begun to push Brazil into the ecological limelight. Brazil is widely per- ceived as being a natural ecological centre for planet earth: expressions like "the lungs of the planet’ are commonly used around the world when speaking of the Amazon‘Combine this with the fact that young con- sumers everywhere are ever more attracted by products with a ‘green’ story, and a pic- ture begins to emerge of a growing oppor- tunity for a wide range of Brazilian brands — especially in the food, cosmetics, fashion, music, and even automotive and industrial fields The growing acceptance of ‘Brazilian- style’ attributes within established interna tional brands appears to confirm the point: guarana has all but replaced jojoba and gin- seng as a ‘must-have’ ingredient in ecology- oriented food and cosmetics, and other Brazilian themes and ingredients feature in the Body Shop’s current range, in Ben & Jerry's ice creams, even in video games. It appears, however, that many younger consumers around the world are still unclear about the exact role of the Brazilian govern- ment and population when it comes to ap- portioning blame for the deforestation and pollution which goes on in their country: are they the perpetrators, or are they are simply the exploited victims of first-world greed? This uncettainty spells out an additional opportunity for Brazil’ international public image — pethaps the most urgent one of all. The global brand-owners club is an ex- clusive one, and membership is neither free nor automatic for any country. Quite aside from the major investment which individual companies need to make in creating, distrib- uting and marketing international brands, the country itself needs to make an invest ment in its image as an acceptable producer of ecologically-themed brands. There can be little doubt that Brazil now has a fine opportunity to buy itself a place in the hearts and minds of the world’s con- sumers — and most especially the all-pow- erful younger consumers — simply by taking a visible and effective stance on these pressing ecological issues. If such a gesture was major, real, and lasting (young con- sumers cannot easily be fooled by dogma or thetoric), and properly managed in PR terms, it could pave the way for a real re- naissance of Brazil itself and Brazilian brands around the world, Currently, almost all of Brazil’ export in- come derives from the sale of raw com- modities (such as soya beans, tobacco, iron ore and coffee), semi-processed goods (such as cellulose, steel, soya oil and sugar) and largely unbranded manufactured goods (such as shoes, orange juice, sheet steel and automobile tyres); and many of these ex- ports contribute directly or indirectly to the depletion of the country’s natural resources ‘There is no question that if these bulk exports were to be enhanced or, indeed, re- placed by the sale of branded goods directly to overseas consumers, profits would rise dramatically, and the level of profit gener- ated by the success of these brands might soon overtake the income created by the ex- port of commodities. After all, much of the real wealth of “first-world’ nations comes not from the sale of their natural resources (many first-world countries have precious few to export), but from the export of man- ufactured items developed into brands by the added value of intelligent marketing. An ‘economy which depends on income gener- ated by bulk export is caught in the classic third-world poverty trap, and learning to develop successful domestic brands into global brands is certainly one way out of it. BRAND EXPORT AS A STRATEGY FOR EMERGING ECONOMIES One of the great advantages of brands over commodities is that they are an infinitely sustainable resource (as long as their equity is maintained through careful marketing), because they are made of air, and are thus, at least in theory, the ultimate ecological ex- port. Clearly, the notion of exporting brands rather than produce is a compelling one for many countries other than Brazil. Almostany ‘emerging’ nation could benefit from a movement towards global brand export, and ultimately escape from the third-world poverty cycle in this way. Not all emerging countries have Brazil’s natural advantages: a strong nation-brand, combined with an in- creasingly healthy economy, a government which actively encourages the export men- tality, not to mention considerable domestic experience in brand-building. After all, even though it only emerged from military rule and hyperinflation a few short years ago, Brazil has a democratic tradition, and this has enabled the creation of many highly suc- cessful entrepreneurs, domestic companies and domestic brands (not to mention one of the best advertising industries in the world) Even so, without stretching the imagina- tion too far, one can see how the principle could apply in the case of other countries Russia, China, India, and many African countries have the potential to build strong brand associations, as they are richly embed- ded in global culture and history. David Tang, owner of the Hong Kong department store Shanghai Tang, has re- cently opened a branch in New York, and is quoted as saying, ‘I've always wanted to cre- ate a Chinese brand. In Hong Kong our shopping malls are overrun with more and more Western brands, yet no-one else has applied their minds to evolve the Chinese style’ Pethaps some smaller countries could, with care, be built into valuable ‘niche brands’ — Sri Lanka, Peru, Vietnam, Poland, Tibet — the list is a long one, and matching potential private-domain brands to these public-domain brands is a fascinat- ing and thought-provoking exercise. The key is simply co be relevant yer imaginative, because a too literal-minded approach to the problem will merely result in endless varia~ tions on the theme of national produce. In today's global village, where geography counts for so little, countries become like factories, competing for the same broad reer groups of consumers. Naturally, each factory becomes associated with certain strengths and attributes: in the same way that con sumers would probably not buy Toshiba shampoo or Mercedes soup, they are un- likely to rush out and buy Dutch perfume or a Brazilian CD player. But Brazil might be the perfect provenance for surf gear or football boots or cocktails, and a stylish Russian raincoat, upmarket Chinese sta tionery or Indian accountancy software might one day seem as natural and appropri- ate as a Korean television or a Malaysian car do today — and both of these seemed strange enough twenty years ago. GLOBAL BRANDS AND THE CHANGING CONSUMER During the long years of the American and European domination of global brands, con sumers around the world have become rapidly more discerning, more sophisticated in their tastes, wealthier, better informed and generally exercise more power than ever before over manufacturers. By and large, these brands have not been marketed with any great degree of sensitivity to local cul- tural conditions — in the recent past, their superior quality and glamorous provenance have been sufficient to ensure their instant acceptance over poor-quality domestic equivalents. But those domestic brands which have survived have done so by quickly learning to compete on price, quality and sophistication of marketing, packaging and presentation. Consequently, the playing-field is becoming gradually more and more level. It seems likely then that consumers, espe cially in poorer countries, will begin to look for a mote sophisticated combination of im- port-style quality and domestic-style rele- vance in their imported brands. In some of the emerging markets of Europe, for exam- ple, there is already evidence of a consumer backlash against the insufficiently sensitivemarketing techniques practised by some for~ eign brand-owners: the sight of the Latvian Minister for Culture symbolically tearing up a package of foreign coffee on the n: television news (because of the ‘cultural vandalism’ performed on the Latvian lan- guage by the unhappy company’s advertising campaign) is one of many such indicators. Tt may well turn out that Brazilian and other third world brands have a distinct ad~ vantage over American and European brands when it comes to making friends among consumers in some of the world’s ional key growth markets — Asia, Eastern Eu- rope, Latin America, and one day Central Asia and South Asia — because of their humbler provenance and because of their status as non-imperialist, power. These are ‘colleague countries’, which may well find that their provenance is not merely an important characteristic of their brand personality, but a fandamental preliminary to consumer acceptance. non-colonial BRAND BRITAIN: NO EXCEPTION TO THE RULE There is no question that the longer-estab- lished nation brands will need to modernise themselves to match the new order, and it is no accident that the UK's new government often speaks of the need to ‘rebrand Britain’. The associations of Brand Britain are by no means entirely negative, but since they appear to be intimately and almost ex- clusively associated with the country’s past, they are decidedly limiting for British brands which wish to be perceived as mould-breaking, forward-looking, techno- logically competent. This is at least part of the reason why both British Airways and the British Tourist Authority (BTA) have re- cently replaced the national flag with logos of their own — to the disgust of many. However, the good intention must be married to actual knowledge and under- standing of the cultures to which the new face is to be presented: in branding terms, the consumer must be understood before considering how to rebrand. There is noth- ing wrong with the new logo chosen for the BTA — except, of course, that it is based on the word Britain, spelt out in Roman let- ters, which, of course, is 2 meaningless squiggle to the vast majority of visitors from countries who do not use the same writing system as us. It would be precisely the same thing if the Japanese Tourist Authority de- cided to rebrand itself as — hardly nationali The need to present Britain as being mote European, more global, is certainly a primary need. There is undoubtedly a lin- gering acceptance of the British as interna tionalists, but it can only derive from our long history of determined, if not brutal colonisation of large portions of the globe ‘What is now necessary is for that interna- tionalness to be underpinned by a more modern value-set: wisdom, open-minded- ness, cultural sensitivity, and willingness to listen and to learn from other countries Indeed, what appears to many to be a mere production detail — speaking other languages — may well prove to be a funda- mental first stage in the rebranding of Britain. One of the aspects which best char- acterised our aggressive internationalism in past centuries was our refusal or inability to che action ofa determined mulei-speak other people's languages, which is why Tony Blair’s recent address to the French Chamber of Deputies in French was received with far more delight and surprise than his moderate A-level French would lead one to expect: he saw the need to make the effort. The writer has commented the remarkable fact that ‘ethnic’ marketing has never been seriously practised in the UK, despite the evidence of decades of ex- perience in the USA and Australia to prove that it contributes significantly to brand loy- alty, and despite the fact that a good ten per cent of the UK population does not speak English as its first language: this is further evidence of the lack of importance which the British, as a nation, have tended to place on language as a culturally significant tool and behavioural motivator. The immense good fortune of having a lsewhere on global lingua franca as our native language can make the British dangerously indolent. Of course, many people around the world speak English, but when trying to interest them in products, the key issue is hardly whether they can understand what the British are saying or not. The more impor- tant question is: should they be making the effort to understand the British, ot should the British making the effort to make them- selves understood by other nationalities? As with any brand print, the solution will never be simple or pure. Successful brands, especially successful international brands, are often characterised by their richness and complexity, and provenance, just like any other brand characteristic, can exist in de- grees, and can appear to be multiple. British Airways noted that Britishness is a valuable attribute for certain aspects of an airline brand — those parts connected with service and re~ liability — but an airline needs many more attributes for which Britishness can never be adequate shorthand. Retaining the word British in the brand name is enough; for the rest, airlines need to be global travel brands rather than national carriers, so the graphic elements celebrate the company’s multicul- tural rather chan monocultural aspects. In other words, the brand becomes the best kind of British: a Briton who has travelled It is becoming increasingly apparent that the global brands of the twenty-first century need to acquire a new talent: sensitivity to culture. For decades, high product quality, competitive pricing, 2 glamorous prove- nance and effective distribution have been sufficient to ensure international marketing success — but this is export marketing, not global brand-building. More than ever be- fore, brand management must be informed by deep understanding of the culture of the marketplace as much as by understanding of the culture of the brand itself; and success will be determined by the ability to exploit, skilfully and intelligently, such complex cul- tural mysteries as provenance in the service of brand image. REFERENCES (1) (1997) D&AD Course Tutors’ Seminar, London, September. 2) Anhole, Simon (1996) ‘Making a Travel’, The Journal of Brand Mangement, Volume 3, Number 6, pp. 357-364.