Category: brands

How to make the Malaysia Nation Brand strategy successful

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Let’s get something straight. A catchy tagline, symbolic logo, pretty colours that symbolize the ‘personality’ of the brand and a custom designed font are not Nation Branding.

Glossy advertisements that push the creative envelope and consist of content that is impossible for stakeholders to buy into or live up to, is not Nation Branding.

Expensive brochures and other marketing collateral that use light gray colours on white backgrounds and font sizes impossible to read is not Nation Branding.

Hugely expensive billboards that create awareness but do little else and are soon lost in the fog of the tens of thousands of messages consumers are exposed to every day is not Nation Branding.

It might have been possible to use such creative-driven branding to build a Nation Brand in the 1960s – 1990s, when countries and their advertising agencies focused more on getting attention than getting results.

But this is a different era. There are now so many channels to consumers, so many competitors all with a similar offering and so many distractions that it is no longer possible to build a Nation Brand in this way.

Furthermore, too many taglines have made promises the Nation couldn’t possibly keep or their marketing or PR collateral has left potential customers underwhelmed. This may not have been the fault of the Nation or it may be the result of poor internal implementation but it has resulted in a delivery failure that has negatively impacted all efforts till then. A case in point is the Incredible India campaign and the multiple attacks on women over the last year.

Moreover, engaging (not reaching) target markets through traditional channels with traditional tools is virtually impossible today. Especially in the digital age when consumers are more knowledgeable, have more choice and are more demanding.

So how do we make the Malaysia Nation Brand successful?
Reach, awareness etc are all irrelevant. Nation Brands today are defined based on the economic, experiential and emotional value they deliver to all stakeholders.

What will make or break the success of the Malaysia Nation Branding project is the work that has gone into determining what are the key elements of the Malaysia Nation Brand.

Identifying and understanding what we have, what is unique, who are the stakeholders, what are we are going to do to get their buy in, how we identify target segments, the knowledge we learn about them and their requirements for value and deliver value to target segments (all of whom are very different and have very different requirements for value and must therefore be engaged with content that resonates with them), how we build our relationships with them, how we work with them and provide solutions to their problems.

The ability to build lasting relationships with stakeholders, a highly trained team capable of matching country attributes to those stakeholder requirements and the ability to consistently deliver value are required.

External communications battles are not fought on the right hand pages of national newspapers, during commercial breaks on terrestrial TV or on the outside back cover of business publications. They are not even fought on the pages of digital media or on corporate websites.

The battles for the hearts and minds of prospects are fought in the comments sections of blogs, on third party sites through user experience comments, through account manager emails, forums, search engines and ongoing personalized relationships.

If the people responsible for this project can match your Nation Brand to the value customers are looking for, they may have a chance of building a successful Malaysia Nation Brand.

I am reliably informed the Malaysia Nation Brand project has a budget of RM30 million. But it’s not known what that covers. If it is simply for a communications campaign then it will not be money well spent and the project will fail.

However, if it is for a comprehensive brand audit and Nation Brand plan (which will have been developed once the brand audit was completed and will focus on internal and external stakeholders) that outlines how to deliver value as defined above and based on the “Endless Possibilities” tagline, then that will be terrific use of taxpayers money and the country will benefit for many, many years.

Building the Malaysia Nation Brand requires a strategic approach

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The development of a Malaysia nation brand has been discussed for a number of years. As part of the Industrial Master Plan (IMP3), a National Branding Task Force was established and tasked with building the Malaysia Nation Brand. In 2008, through the Malaysian External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) and after extensive research and a nationwide tender, the project was awarded to a brand consultancy.

After a letter of award was issued to the consultancy and the project team was mobilized, the then Prime Minister stepped down and six months later the project was cancelled. Soon after the National Branding Task Force was disbanded.

Since then there hasn’t really been any organization established to develop a Malaysia Nation Brand. Some of you will say that 1 Malaysia was a Nation Brand but it wasn’t.

At the end of 2011, some firms were invited to “submit slogans for a new Nation Branding project”. Of course a slogan isn’t a Nation Branding project but it was considered a start.

The slogan chosen was probably “Endless Possibilities” because this was used during the World Economic Forum in Davos to promote Malaysia as a South East Asia location for investment and tourism.

Without any warning, a sixty second TV commercial aired on CNN in March 2013. If you have a weak stomach, I don’t recommend you read any of the reader/viewer comments below the video.

It’s hard to identify who posted the video but there is reference to a brief with the comment, “The brief from the Prime Minister’s Office of Malaysia was to promote Malaysia as a dynamic country with well developed infrastructure and an aggressive economic growth plan for the future.”

More recently, the Prime Minister was spotted wearing a badge with a design that has been described as “a starburst in red, yellow and white against a blue background.” Malaysia, in a custom font is underneath the logo.

The new Malaysia logo (thanks to thestar.com.my)
The new Malaysia logo (thanks to thestar.com.my)

In late August 2013, a local news portal reported that Prime Minister Najib Razak will launch a new national branding effort and that the national branding effort comes with the slogan or tagline, “Endless Possibilities”.

This is exciting news, so what should we expect from the Malaysia Nation Branding project?

It is important that Malaysia doesn’t fall into the trap many other countries fall into – jumping head first into a well produced communications campaign in a misguided attempt to build a brand.

India is famous for its ‘Incredible India’ advertising campaign launched in 2002. By 2009, India was spending US$200 million advertising the country. In November 2012 India announced that a new advertising campaign headlined, “Find what you seek” would be launched to build on the Incredible India efforts.

The new Indian minister of tourism announced that the new campaign highlighted to consumers that ‘they will find whatever they are looking for from a holiday in India.’

The goal of the new campaign was to increase international arrivals by 12% annually till 2016. Unfortunately, little more than a month later, a woman in Delhi was brutally gang raped and left for dead on a public bus. The story made headlines around the world.

Four months later, a Swiss woman was gang raped whilst on a cycling tour of Madhya Pradesh and soon after, a British woman was attacked in Delhi and only avoided potential death after jumping from a hotel window to escape.

Within a matter of weeks, instead of announcing increased interest, tour operators were reporting a 35% cancellation rate from women and a 25% drop in all arrivals with multiple cancellations from the lucrative markets of Australia, the UK, Canada and the United States.

Meanwhile, FDI dropped 29% in 2012 despite the ongoing advertising campaign. An advertising campaign, however good, isn’t going to change perceptions caused by crime or reverse FDI declines caused by the global economic situation. So years of the Incredible India campaign, if remembered at all will now be replaced with harrowing tales of the treatment of women in India and depressing economic data.

What nation brands have to understand is that today, not only are constituents in target markets more segmented and more knowledgeable, they also live their lives very differently, source their information more socially and in many countries, no longer believe corporate driven messages anyway.

But most important of all, in today’s dynamic, fluid social, Internet fuelled world the corporate driven message, created after months of brain storming by consultants and the like and communicated to all and sundry at enormous expense repeatedly can be undone in a moment and replaced with harrowing tales of criminality and economic woe.

Building a Nation Brand is a strategic initiative not a tactical one. A communications campaign is a tactical activity and it is not possible to build a Nation Brand with a communications campaign, especially one that is created to convince both internal and external stakeholders of something that is hard to prove.

Today, building a Nation Brand requires multiple elements that are critical to the success of any such project. However there are two in particular that will make or break the Malaysia Nation Branding project.

The first is that the community must be involved in the development of the Nation Brand and agreed values must be clearly defined and understood by all stakeholders and integrated into their lives and applied to every touch point.

Sure there must be a CEO with the knowledge, strength and unbiased objective viewpoint to drive the project but without this early stage buy in from stakeholders, the chance of success are very low.

And the second critical element is that promises made must be kept. It is simply not good enough anymore to say you are something or you are going to do something without delivering on that promise at every touchpoint.

I don’t know the full extent of this project and how the community was involved but in the video aired on CNN, the Prime Minister says, “Malaysia is the unique place where the best of Asia comes alive.” That’s a bold statement that will require buy in from all Malaysians and will be tough to deliver to all stakeholders.

So let’s hope the Prime Minister and his team pulls it off because in the current economic climate, a well defined brand that has the buy in of key constituents, resonates with target markets and delivers on promises made will give Malaysia a significant edge over competitors in an increasingly competitive environment.

Further proof that you need Twitter to build your brand

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The talented team at Brandwatch in the UK have produced a very useful report on Twitter usage by global brands. This report should be read by marketing departments and CEOs. You can read the full report here but some of the findings are listed below:

1) 253 companies, primarily from the US and UK were analysed for the report.
2) Only 2.4% of the companies surveyed did not use Twitter at all
3) 97% of major brands used Twitter in 2013, up from 62% in 2011.
4) It was noted that Apple does not use Twitter or any other social media. Interestingly, Apple’s share price has tumbled to as low as US$400 earlier this year, down from US$700 in September 2012. Of course I’m not blaming that on the fact they don’t use Twitter however it does mean there will be some distance between the brand and customers.
5) Brands use Twitter for both broadcast and engagement purposes but most of them acknowledge that Twitter is best utilized as a two-way channel.
6) 145 brands surveyed (over half) tweet a minimum of 30 times per week.
7) 25% of Brands use Twitter solely as a broadcast channel.
8) 63% of Brands have multiple accounts. Using one for company news and another for customer service was a common example of multiple accounts.
9) Dell has 44 Twitter accounts.
10) Weekends are the best time to reach customers on Twitter. (I don’t think that applies to Asia). However a little research into what your audience prefers goes a long way to successful engagement.
11) Tweets with media (a photo/video) get 3 to 4 times more engagement than those without.
12) The average size of a UK and US Twitter team is 4 people.
13) The maximum number of tweets in a week for the US was 2,500 tweets, compared with 113 tweets in the UK.
14) The Twitter web interface is the most popular platform for tweeting.
15) 20% of the top 100 global brands use HootSuite.

What can Asian firms learn from this data?

For a start, if your firm is not on Twitter, it needs to be. Twitter won’t go away! British and American firms have an average of 4 people on their Twitter team. Most Asian firms don’t even have a community manager, let alone a social team. This needs to change.

Asian firms can use Twitter to engage customers more effectively, deal with issues and retain customers. It is far more effective and less expensive than attempting to use acquisition marketing across traditional channels to retain existing, unhappy or vulnerable customers.

Twitter can be an effective and inexpensive way to drive sales. Low cost airlines in the US generally tweet special offers to their followers before making them available. The cost for the tweet is minimal and its effectiveness can be easily measured.

Asian firms can be notoriously opaque and secretive. Twitter forces firms to become more open and transparent, encouraging trust.

In Asia we tend to follow the US and Europe in many things, especially in marketing. This report gives Asian firms the data needed to support their marketing strategy going forward.

What is the greatest brand ever? – updated

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My learned friends at truly madly deeply in Australia have written about an article about a chapter in a book on advertising entitled “Hegarty on advertising: Turning intelligence into magic”.

The article refers to a discussion on the world’s greatest brand that the author, a creative director at an advertising agency had at a conference.

He opined that the greatest brand of all time was the Catholic Church. It’s an interesting thought although the key is your metric for measurement. If longevity and awareness are key to brand success then the Catholic church must be right up there.

However, as we all know the Catholic Church has some issues. According to this article in the National Journal, in the face of sex scandals and dwindling membership, Catholicism is struggling to stay relevent.

Following sex abuse cases, cover ups and other scandals, attendences are dwindling. In Australia in the mid 1950s, 74% of Catholics attended Mass regularly. By 2011 that figure was down to 12.5%.

So sure, most of the planet has heard of the Catholic church. But they’ve also all heard of PanAm, DeLorean, Betamax, The Edsel and of course new Coke.

A better question today might be, not what is the greatest brand ever, but how does a great brand stay relevant?

Infographic: The history of marketing

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HubSpot, the inbound marketing gurus have come up with an impressive infographic that outlines the history of marketing from the first one dimensional ads of 1450 to the digital, more interactive model of today.

The history of marketing
The history of marketing

It’s a massive infographic that features all the key moments in the evolution of marketing such as the print era that lasted 300 or so years to the introduction of new channels including TV and radio advertising and then onto the digital era of video, search marketing, inbound marketing, email and more before coming to the present era of social media and mobile.

Brilliant ads don’t improve Toyota sales in Australia

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It’s not easy creating an original ad these days. Especially when you are trying to sell a car or pick up truck. Some of the best ads tell a story. Some of the really, really good ads tell a story and then take that story even further whilst creating little vignettes within the original story.

The very best do all of that whilst creating humour that resonates with everyone and not just the target market. This commercial, released a couple of years back for Toyota in Australia is one of the latter and probably goes some way to explaining why the Toyota Hilux is the most popular vehicle in the country.

Unfortunately, despite such brilliant commercials, Toyota pick up sales are down 21% year-on-year.

Storytelling must be part of your brand strategy

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Telling a story has always been an important element of brand building but sadly too many CEOs have left it to advertising agencies and creative campaigns to try and tell their story.

This model is flawed because it nearly always focuses more on creativity than content. It is also flawed because few brands have the deep pockets required to sustain such a creative campaign. And the limitations of traditional media mean that it is extremely expensive to try and build a brand this way. And, if the truth be told, too many advertising agencies are often more interested in the next design award than they are on delivering good quality content.

Social Media gives brands the platform and reach they have always wanted, without the costs. Moreover, the increasing importance and influence of social media means that the ability to tell a story and share that story and encourage the sharing of that story further across the ecosystem is now so critically important to an organisation that it no longer needs to be left in the hands of advertising agencies.

This infographic from NCM Fathom maps out nicely what you need to include, what channels to use, why you need to develop stories and the benefits of doing so.

Build stories into your branding

Malaysia Airlines won’t return to profitability with bland, boring TV commercials

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I don’t like to kick a man (or an airline) when he’s (or it’s) down, and despite a couple of good quarters, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) is certainly down.

The good quarters (following six straight quarters of losses) are a result of increased revenues thanks to better load factors and higher RASK (Revenue per available seat kilometer).

Just to recap, to avoid bankruptcy, MAS embarked on a massive restructuring plan towards the end of 2011 that included cutting unprofitable routes and reducing costs with the goal being to return to full year profitability in 2013.

Although the airline has done quite well, that’s unlikely to happen even though it is focusing on Asia and has stopped flying to costly destinations such as Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Cape Town and oddly, Dubai. Giving up Dubai and Dammam suggests the carrier is surrendering to the aggressive carriers from the Middle East.

The most recent business strategy announced two key strategic elements – one to focus on the premium sector and the other to focus on the competitive Asian market. The announcement that the airline would go after the premium sector came at the same time as the partnership deal with AirAsia that has now been scrapped.

I’ve seen nothing to suggest the airline is courting premium customers and although it is good to see the airline understands the importance of segmentation, I doubt their ability to execute such a strategy.

Especially as the airline seems to be going the same old predictable route of using an advertising campaign featuring an irritating tagline (more on that later) to magically increase demand. And I’ve seen nothing else to suggest the airline is doing anything other than the usual advertising, print and PR tactics with a nod to social media.

And what an advertising campaign it is! I think this is the TV commercial.

I’m sorry but this has to be the worst commercial or video I’ve ever seen. It features people of various ages walking, cycling, swimming, jogging, directing traffic (I’m serious), reading newspapers, skateboarding, going to a meeting, graduating, bowling, clubbing and all with one thing in common – they are all carrying at least one suitcase! Yes, even the traffic policeman!! This really is rock bottom.

The print advertisement (which I’ve also seen on a billboard) features two men sitting on a wooden dock. They are both holding suitcases and the younger man has his arm around the older man and is looking into his eyes.

Sitting on the dock of the bay, suitcase in my hand
Sitting on the dock of the bay, suitcase in my hand

Does this image make anyone else uncomfortable? Here’s a close up to help you decide.

Does this make you uneasy?
Does this make you uneasy?

MAS also has a corporate video that starts off with a series of stock scenes featuring babies taking their first steps, dad playing with son, climbers etc and then cuts to old shots of MAS in the early days. Meanwhile the voice over tells us that life is made up of countless journeys. Getit?.

Then we get shots of computer generated imagery of the various planes used by the airline from past to present (didn’t BA do something similar?) before going back to the people shots – nice, smiling, friendly air hostess with kid – cut to boys jumping into lake – then back to nice, smiling people, tender, caring hostess and then, out of the blue we’re told the strangers we meet on our journeys give us courage – cut to skydivers – then back to lovers on beach, cultural harmony, pregnant couple and so on. I stopped at this point, unable to continue. Have a look instead.

One of the videos (I can’t remember which one and I have no intention of watching them again) features the Malaysia Airlines app that I really like but isn’t integrated with the website (or if it is I can’t figure out how to find my bookings made online on the app).

So if MAS is serious about increasing market share, what should the company do? Here are 5 things they need to start doing today.

1) Forget about the big idea. Focus instead on consistent, onging, personalised engagement with each of your very diverse audiences.
2) You probably have one of the most comprehensive databases in South East Asia. Start to use it properly.
3) Focus. These ‘one-size-fits-all’ advertising campaigns are an expensive exercise in naïve futility. Put an end to them now.
4) Don’t do social, be social.
5) Integrate all your solutions to make it easier for consumers to use them. Otherwise they defeat the object of developing them in the first place!

I’ve been flying MAS for over 20 years and I think it is a great product but it needs work. A lot of work. This traditional approach to brand building is not going to help steer the airline to full year profitability. They’d be better off throwing the money down a black hole.

Can you afford to turn away business?

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Yesterday was a watershed day for me.

I asked my secretary to find a new supplier. So she did what everyone does and turned to the Internet. After narrowing down the right search terms, she carried out a search and came up with three websites.

The first one we emailed replied within a couple of hours and asked us to come to their factory to see how they work. The contact made an appointment and followed up with an email with directions to the factory. Excellent.

The second company we called hasn’t replied yet.

We asked the third company we called to come to the office and show us some samples. The contact replied, “We’re very busy for the next two weeks.”

Now I don’t know about you guys but I thought the whole point of a website is to generate leads which are then turned into prospects who are eventually turned into customers.

This company is obviously doing so well they don’t need any new business. I suggest they also take down their website as well as it must be annoying answering the phone to potential customers who don’t simply give them business.

Turbulence helps Singapore Airlines strengthen its brand

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Singapore Airlines only recently reported its group operating profit fell 19.8% to S$229 million (RM564 million). SIA Engineering and SilkAir also reported lower profits while losses for SIA Cargo dived more than 40% from S$119 million to S$167 million.

And then a recent Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to London made it into the global headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Air turbulence caused the flight to lose altitude just as breakfast was being served. Much of the food and drinks were left all over the cabin and passengers and a potential Public Relations nightmare could have resulted with irate passengers complaining across social media.

Milk and sugar?
Milk and sugar?

However, an event that the airline has little control over turned into a PR success thanks not to the Singapore Airlines corporate PR department but due to the professionalism of the crew and the community approach of the passengers.

As soon as it was safe to do so, the cabin crew checked every passenger and then, with the help of passengers did their best to clean up the mess. When the flight arrived in London, paramedics were waiting to treat the few slightly injured passengers & crew.

As passengers disembarked, the crew handed out an apology, chocolates and of course a big Singapore Airlines smile. A potential disaster averted with good training, responsibility and a customer centric mentality.

Read the full story here