The five Cs of Global Brand Management Online

As much as the Internet empowers, it also overwhelms with information and choice, to confuses and even intimidates. That's why the role of brands in building trust loyalty is so critical to the web experience. It is also why recreating success in the online world is such a challenge.

The competitive edge will go global to global marketers who recognize and embrace what we call "the 5 Cs" global brand management online:

1. Control. Who controls the online channel at the corporate level? How is regional control over local sales marketing balanced against corporate branding imperatives?

Building brands has always been about control - of time and space, frequency and audience, n most of all, the message. In other words, controlling - in its totality- the brand experience. The globalisation of the web is perhaps the most dramatic example of force obliterating control. Globally, these complexities multiply across divisions, product lines, markets and agencies. Multiply that again across language, culture and border-and yet again scores if websites, each using different technologies. Controlling brand identity in this environment demands extraordinary flexibility.

2. Consolidation. How can redundancies be squeezed out of the global marketing process and underlying infrastructure? Can work flow be simplified and unified on a global basis? How can resources and marketing assets be deployed effectively across both online and offline sales channels?

Nowhere is the brand chaos more evident that in this aspect. All too often, numerous campaigns, local executions, one-off production efforts and off-strategy branding slip out into the marketplace without knowledge of the CMO. (Chief Marketing Officer).

Consolidation restores control - unifying budgets and teams is the first step to effecting the organizational and cultural changes necessary for a successful globalization effort. Utilizing the Web as the central hub to consolidate data, assets and processes is the most logical and cost effective solutions.

While the web may traditionally be a technology challenge, CMOs must lead the way to ensure that all decisions solve marketing's business requirements.

3. Communications. How do regional marketing teams around the globe stay informed and participate in the go-to-market process? How do you orchestrate marketing efforts on a global scale? How do you simplify access to crical marketing information and expose ongoing strategic communications? The efficient use of marketing resources and budgets, particularly on a global scale, calls for expanded insight, overview, and communication by all parties in the process. A centralized communications hub eliminates most obstacle to integration.

This orchestration of multiple marketing initiatives and communications efforts requires simple, fast and accurate views of all marketing components and activities across the company, and a shared vision of marketing goals and branding objectives. This level of transparency and open communications will foster creativity and encourage new initiatives across all regions and results in rapid adoption of emergent best practise.

4. Culture : How do you allow for local variances in message, voice, and design without breaking  underlying systems, creating a management night-mare, and fragmenting the brand? The seemingly contradictory forces of unification and centralization of brand processes on the one hand, and almost unlimited flexibility in global marketing processes and supporting technologies. Cultural relevancy exerts a powerful impact on brand perception and loyalty worldwide. The CMO can provide a vital function by demanding strategies that are globally viable from its advertising agency, in order to ease the rapid adoption and execution of these strategies from its regional marketing teams, while also providing a solid foundation for the brand online. The result is a communications platform that reinforces the integrity of the brand, while making it culturally relevant and thus stronger and more competitive, in all key global markets.

5. Creativity : How do you get maximum returns from your marketing resources regionally if the brand team spends all of its time cutting and pasting translations into webpages and recruiting corporate marketing efforts?

Given the pressures of accountability in marketing, it has never been more imperative for CMOs to focus on ROI. More disciplined approaches to global brand management save time and money, and create new levels of marketing efficiency.

Streamlining global brand management liberates time and resources for marketers to be the best marketers they can be. After all, the end game is snot about reducing costs so much as it is about enabling big ideas and igniting creative sparks that drive growth and build business.

TURN YOUR SITE INTO A GLOBAL MARKETING PLATFORM

Marketing vis a content management system is slow, costly and in flexible. Fortunately, a new breed of technology services gives marketers a unique opportunity to manage marketing communications on their Website independently from underlying IT infrastructure. Such service provide a unified environment for :

• Real-Time Analysis : The wealth of data gathered online can be overwhelming. CMOs must assemble the analytical tools and methodology needed to discover key insights, to sort out meaningful trends, and to answer critical questions about online marketing and website performance.
•  Intercept Marketing : Ensures that any online marketing effort is extended throughout the entire online marketing experience, making sure that timely and relevant ad messages are put in front of a user at any point during a web visit.
• Transaction Profiling : It is more critical than ever for corporations online to definet-methods and metrics for calculating ROI in online spending.. Transaction profiling provides a concrete way to track and measure the impact of marketing initiatives online. The ability of tying value to specific site behaviours has long been the Holy Grail for marketers, and has traditionally required huge IT investments to accomplish.
• E Mail marketing : Email marketing solutions must be firmly grounded in the same analytical framework that drives the rest of the online marketing services portfolio. A shared platform provides unprecedented capabilities for engineering a truly personalized online experience - and measuring the impact on user behaviours and the bottomline.

The Role of Online Brands

As Internet usage grows, brands are becoming even more important than they have been in other channels or environments. With more choices from many unknown providers, customers tend to choose a provider that represents a set of Values or attributes that are meaningful, clear and trusted. Breakenridge (2001:323) states that the strength of the brand together with technology has the potential to produce the "optimum brand". Pettis notes that branding has become much more important recently because of the proliferation of choice that's available to customers on the Internet. It is also important to note that branding is a critical component of the building long-term relationship on the Web. Mohammed et al suggest that, rather than viewing branding as a sub component of the product, it must be developed as moderating variable upon the elements of the marketing mix. Mohammed et al  explain that branding plays two roles in marketing activities. Marketing programmes affect how consumers perceive the brand, and hence its value. Second, branding is part of every marketing strategy. That is each marketing activity is enhanced if the brand is strong, or suppressed if the brand is weak. Therefore, branding is unique insofar it is both lever and an outcome of marketing actions.

By putting more information in the hands of consumers, digital technology might be expected to undermine the power of brands. Many said that the Internet would do away with the need for brands. This argument according to Bergstrom (2000:11) suggested that because people could  examine and access any product or services from every possible provider via the Internet, the brand would be irrelevant, since consumers would always choose the one with the lowest price. Whether decisions are solely base on price is questionable? A few years after Bergstrom's research, Rowley (2004b:131)) confirms that the notion of relying less on brands in the online environment still exists. The research further points out that since customers will gather detailed information on products and services and make their own judgment on the suitability of a product, brands can become superfluous. Both Bergstrom (2001:1) and Rowley (2004b:131), however, point out that over time it was proved that brands are even more important in cyberspace than they are in most other channels of environments.  The reason: " With more and more choices from many providers that are relatively unknown, customers tend to choose a provider they know--one that represents a set of values or attributes that are meaningful, clear, and trusted (a brand), especially if they cannot see or confirm that the provider is 'real'. "With many options to choose from and fewer personal relationship online, customers tend to turn to trusted and trustworthy brands that represent more intangible qualities. This was also the observation of Wind & Mahajan (2001: 12) who during the above period pointed out that as digital technology transcends national borders, companies need to pay more attention to the development of global brands. Breakenridge (2001:319) also warned that one must not underestimate the power of a well-known brand combined with a medium that enables it to reach audiences instantaneously, enhance user experience with engaging interaction ( prior to any purchase of a product or service), and increase overall awareness, allowing brands to reach new heights. Online Brands, according to Pettis (1995:209), delves into the depths of brands to a greater degree than most offline methods. Mohr (2001:287) argues that the growth of popular Internet companies shows that a brand  can grow and secure customer loyalty on the Internet. It is also a fact that brands are what people can rely on, and hence become even more important in an environment, such as the Internet, that has a low switching cost (The Economist, 1999:71). For some the idea of customer loyalty may seem outdated in the era of the Internet, where customers have the ability, to search and evaluate competing products at the click of a button (Calrke, 2001:160), However, the very fact that customers can so easily access alternatives, and then just as easily purchasing them, augments the importance of building strong ties of loyalty with online customers.

The Internet seems to be a marketing frontiers, in which tried and true models of advertising and marketing may not work in the same way traditional media.However, the reality is that emotional, fuzzy branding components that can be powerfully conveyed through television are not so easily conveyed in an online environment (Mohr 2001:287). It must be kept in mind that customers in a physical world can touch or feel products, but online customers do not enjoy the same level of sensory intake provided by online brands. Therefore, things such as speed and response time also play an important role. Online branding, for this reason, requires a credible and relevant promise with every interaction (Siegel & Zolli, 1999:50)

The opportunity are enormous for well-positioned brands on the Internet, since the potential audience for a product or service grows daily. it is however, important according Bergstrom (2000:12) to realise that branding on the Internet, if done correctly, can help to determine the difference between the winners and the losers. Despite the obvious advantage, many companies are likely to make some common mistakes in relation to their brands in Cyberland. They may for instance wrongly assume that their brands will have some appeal to Internet users as to traditional channel users, losing sight of the fact that Internet, users do have significant attitudinal differences.