Opportunity for Branding

 

How to build and support brands in the most efficient and innovative manners? This is the topic of the seminar on “Branding in times of economic slowdown” held by the Vietnam - EU Business Forum (VEUBF) in Hanoi on April 20, 2009.

 

Dr. Doan Duy Khuong, Vice President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said: In a world of continuous evolution with many challenges and opportunities in the globalisation trend, the role of trademark is becoming increasingly important in the value chain of a product and a service. Thus, all countries in the world, including Vietnam, need to develop prestigious and strong trademarks to win the trust of consumers in both domestic and global markets.

 

The seminar’s purpose was to enhance business awareness of brand building in times of economic turbulence through the exchange of knowledge and best practices being adopted by successful companies and professional brand communications companies

 

“We believe that through this seminar, businesses will have an overview of how they should deal with their brands and be able to work out appropriate solutions in order to maintain their brands successfully despite the economic downturn,” Mr Alain Cany, Co-chair of VEUBF, President of European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham) and President of Jardine-Matheson Company, said at the seminar.

This is the third time in the last two years the Vietnam - EU Business Forum discussed the corporate branding. This is the third seminar on the corporate branding seminars that the VEUBF has organised recently. The two driving forces of VEUBF, EuroCham and VCCI, have agreed that branding awareness should be further promoted among local businesses in the coming time

Amid global economic recession, branding plays an important role to stimulate economic development. The branding is very important as it continues asserting the value of producers. Consumers will know more about products and pay for those products and trademarks. This is also an important step of Vietnam when they want to accelerate their international integration and enhance their competitiveness on the world markets.

 

Normally, companies usually cut costs and consider this an urgent measure to weather difficulties. However, cutting costs is not always the best solution. It is very important to determine their long-term business strategy, survey the market, consumer trend, taste and spending habits of consumers, find suitable market segments and take advantage of low costs to launch new products. Then, they can build their business orientations and branding strategy.

An important factor to sustain the production stability and development is the trust of consumers in product quality. Moreover, enterprises need to know to enhance their competitiveness because crisis is also an opportunity to outride its rivals on the market. Despite suffering certain impacts of global economic crisis, Vietnamese enterprises still find opportunity. In the economic downturn, consumers would continue to buy goods but would change their spending habits. Sometimes, they avoid buying too expensive goods but more practical ones. They can also orders on the internet if the spending is lower and the quality is higher. Understanding this tendency, businesses will have more opportunity although the recession is going on.

In today’s environment, good reputation not only helps to sell products but it also enhances a company’s overall value. Studies show that the market value of a company is determined not only by financial results but by non-financial factors but also these non-financial factors have become even more important after the corporate scandals of the past.

 

Although most companies are intimately familiar with their brands and the attributes that define them, few executives have a clear understanding of the elements that define their companies’ reputations – even though a majority of CEOs say it is the most important intangible asset held by a company.

 

Corporate reputation is unique and personal. A company’s reputation is far too complex to be measured by a series of “universal” attributes. Our research shows that there is no pre-defined “recipe” for developing and measuring corporate reputation. Industry sector, history, market, product line, visibility, corporate behaviour, management, competitors and third parties all play a role.

 

On the evening of April 20, 2009 at the Hanoi Opera House, the Vietnam Brands Day and the top 500 Viet Nam Brands Awards Presentation were hosted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). This is aimed to honour, popularise trademarks and images of Vietnam in the context of international economic integration. This is the unique programme using the “consumer awareness measure and awareness quality to define the reputation of trademarks for rating in Vietnam. Polling institutions professionally conducted internationally standardised market surveys to produce most subjective outcomes.

The Well-known Brand Programme is organised in every two years by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). The first was launched in 2006. The Vietnam Well-known Brand 2008 was kicked off in June 2007 with the participation of 1,751 brands of 33 industries and more than 3,000 consumers joining for interview.