Asian trends, creative MR and the myth of global brands: Insights from the ESOMAR Asia Pacific conference

Manfred Mareck Event Reports ESOMAR Asia Pacific, April 2013

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Asian trends, creative MR and the myth of global brands: Insights from the ESOMAR Asia Pacific conference Manfred Mareck Event Reports ESOMAR Asia Pacific, April 2013

Asian trends, creative MR and the myth of global brands: Insights from the ESOMAR Asia Pacific conference
Manfred Mareck In almost every session of the 2013 ESOMAR Asia Pacific conference, held in Ho Chi Minh City, presenters showed that Asian markets are much more culturally diverse than western marketers may think. This in turn suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach to the region is likely going to fail. Of course, in simple terms of distribution we have an increasing number of globally-available brands. But dig a little deeper and the picture becomes more complex. Global Brands Myth or Reality It was 30 years ago that an article by Theodore Levitt was published in the 1983 May/June issue of the Harvard Business Review. The Globalisation of Markets, and, more broadly, Levitt's notion of the Global Village, has led, at least in part, to the widely-held myth about global brands. After Levitt, marketing and advertising budgets, creative development, brand positioning and campaign execution have often been centralised to ensure consistency of the message across the globe. This in turn led to a lazy way of thinking: towards creating one set of commercial brand messages and running the TV spots in every country. All you had to do was change the voiceover to the respective local language; if a brand was aimed at the top end of the market even this minor tweak was not necessary: after all, those luxury buyers who bought Rolex watches, drank Johnny Walker Black Label and invested their money offshore all lived their lives in English. Simple or maybe not. The economic development in Asian markets has led to a dramatic change in the role (and self-image) of Asian women. In their paper, Baring it All, Chris Casenare (Ipsos Singapore) and Bing Natividad (Unilever) show that, while many Asian women are still rooted in their traditional cultures, they are also dealing with the opportunities of the modern and ever changing world. They are now less conservative but not to the same degree across the whole region; for example, Indonesian women are still fairly conformist while their counterparts in South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong are much more empowered. The paper offers detailed summary of the diverse position of women in twelve Asia-Pacific markets, their brand perceptions and the implications for advertising and communications strategies. It advises brand managers to think twice before shifting to a globally, or at least regionally centralised strategy.

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Similar diversity can be seen in the growing group of people often described simply as expatriates. Often ignored by mainstream MR, this group accounts for almost 30% of the population in Singapore. In her paper, The Modern Nomad in Asia, Stephanie Herold of Clear (Singapore) took a closer look at Acculturation: the process of adjustment when moving to a new country. She found significant differences in the level of acculturation within the expat community again, there is little homogeneity to be found in a group that might be seen as a single bloc by marketers. Elsewhere, Shivkumar Moulee (Millward Brown, Singapore) presented his finding of Advertising Clusters in Asia, a project that empirically isolated markets that react similarly to a message. Moulee used a measure of ad transference similar performance in two markets and demonstrated that Asia as a region is significantly more diverse than others. For example, the rate of ad transference is 58% in Europe and only 40% in Asia. Even within countries there are differences: in Vietnam, Hanoi is similar to Southern China, whereas Ho Chi Minh City has a higher ad transference rate to South East Asia; in India, Moulee also found significant differences in transference values between northern and southern regions. These values also change over time: in Indonesia, where national identity is getting stronger due to impressive economic growth, today's ads transfer less well to other South East Asian markets than in the past. Again, the point here is that executing a common regional ad strategy may often result in failure. Meanwhile, James Parsons (Flamingo, Singapore) in his amusing style questioned the western view of brands in Asia in a paper named The Myth of the Brand in Asia. For good measure, he poked fun at the at the way western marketers in general see brands as a creator of loyalty and desire and the resulting concepts like engagement, brand philosophy and personality. Haier, Lenovo and others are successful because they manufature good products, not because they tried to developed intellectual or emotional relationships between brand and consumers. Underneath lie the main differences in Western (primarily individualistic) and Eastern (more collective) philosophy that still today shape our perceptions and result in different meanings of branding. Further regional differences were evident in Anjali Puri's (TNS India) paper There's no such place as Chindia, which showed that universal concepts like motherhood, beauty, achievement or power used, of course, by many advertisers to promote their brand can mean very different things across cultures. In this case, it is not simply the creative execution that needs to be tailored to specific markets, but the whole underlying concept. As an example, Puri showed TV commercial based on the 'hero' concept, which can be deployed aggressively and for a wide range of products in India but needs to be toned down in China and should only be used for more upmarket brands. Creative Research Methods The first morning session treated delegates to some interesting examples of creative approaches to solve research issues. Han Zantingh and Tom Ewing of BrainJuicer opened with a presentation on researchers' war on rationality, the by now familiar issues of emotional vs. rational responses, implicit versus explicit memory, System 1 versus System 2, and so on. Ewing's paper, Fun, Fast and Easy took a more general view of the issues at hand being less Asia-specific than most other presentations giving examples of how the use of mobile or game-related research techniques can offer new routes to shed light on System 1 judgements. In Game On, Evette Cordy and Penny Darbyshire (Raspberry Innovation Research + Strategy, Australia) urged market researchers to use more creative methods in combination with traditional science-based research approaches to compete more successfully with the services offered by management consultants, design companies and user experience agencies.
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The use of online communities for research purposes was the focus of two papers. In Research Communities in Asia Pacific Ray Poynter (Vision Critical, UK) provided a detailed overview how MROCs and Community Panels are currently being used, the different approaches taken, cost implications, and what factors are driving the growing popularity of research communities. Meanwhile, a practical example how MROCs can be used was given by Dangjaithawin Anantachai and colleagues from INTAGE Thailand in their paper 24/7 Diginography. Their work investigated the meaning of colours and how these meanings vary from country to country, as well as by age group. For marketers, they argued, it is crucial to understand these differences and the impact colour connotations and symbolism can have brand perception, the presenters argued. Co-creation as a tool was described by presenter Andrew Ho (Face, USA) in Brands without Borders. Ho presented the use of a three-week online community followed by a series of co-creation workshops with consumers and representatives from the client to draw deeper insights via stories. Meanwhile, using loyal customers as Superpromoters was the theme of a team from Philips Netherlands (Arne van de Wijddeven) and Blauw Research (Rijn Vogelaar). Their research into these superpromoters studied the flow of enthusiasm that these most loyal customers often share with their social circle and how these core customers can be used to enhance brands and help in marketing and new product development. Another more people-centric, rather than brand-centric, approach for brand equity research was proposed by Sue Philips and Shivani Kapoor (Ipsos) in their paper on Growing brands by connecting with deeper human motivations. In order to be successful, brands need to resonate with deeper human motivations. Brand choices are largely based on functional characteristics of the brand, the social identity of the consumer, the perceived emotional benefits and a brand's personality. What do clients want? The final panel discussion on customer-centric research offered some clients of the MR industry (including AIA Insurance Group, Unilever, Tesco Bank, and Amway) the opportunity to voice their concerns about the research industry and what they would like to see more of. Leaving aside the plea for a reduction of fees and faster turn-around of projects, the discussion gave some useful pointers to the research providers how they might be able to improve their services. In many ways there were few surprises what clients wanted more of included:
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More creative interpretation of data and 'finding the nuggets if insight' rather than simply collecting data More efforts to identify client's problems and offer solutions rather than simply asking 'what's the brief?' Acting more like a business partner than merely as a provider MR agencies should not be afraid to challenge their client and inspire them with innovative ideas.

The themes of the conference were largely familiar ones, but AIG's Maryan Broadbent, who chaired the programme committee, reminded delegates in her summing up that the MR industry and their clients should not forget to ensure that we get robust data and reliable data and maintain the trust of the public by respecting data privacy . Final thoughts For me, there were two key issues that came out loud and clear from the conference.
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Firstly, just because Asian consumers buy similar products as we do in the West does not mean that 'emerging (markets)'
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will eventually become like western countries

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The one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work in Asia - this market place is characterised by enormous cultural diversity. But given that over half the world's population live in Asia, this finding really should not be all that surprising.

About the author Manfred Mareck is managing director of Research Marketing Ltd.

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