Category: Marketing

MUMBAI: Credit card major Visa, the preferred card of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, has announced an extension of its first-ever global Fifa-themed marketing campaign – Go Fans.

The global campaign, which originally debuted in Latin America in 2009, includes television, print and out-of-home advertisements, usage promotions, experiential offers for cardholders and merchant discounts.
 
Go Fans was developed to connect with football fans worldwide to drive preference for and usage of Visa products, promote Visa‘s association with the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa and reinforce the ways in which Visa enhances the fan‘s Fifa World Cup experience. Today, 78 markets throughout the world are activating Visa Fifa-themed marketing programmes with over 200 clients.

Utilising the flexibility of the ‘More people go with Visa‘ campaign, advertising creative from the Go Fans campaign will be customised and will appear in 30 markets around the world to strengthen the campaign‘s relevance in those regions. In addition to Go Fans, customised advertising extensions of the campaign will utilise Go Football and Go [Country] (e.g. Go Brazil) taglines.
 
Visa CMO Antonio Lucio says, “Football fans are unlike any other sports fans in the world. We‘ve created a campaign that captures these fans‘ inspirational passion for the game, taps into their nationalistic pride and reminds them how Visa can help enhance their experience.”

The Go Fans campaign celebrates the common love that all fans have for football and creative executions featuring the colours of the national flags of each of the 32 qualifying countries. The campaign reinforces the ways that Visa enables fans to express their true colours in support of their teams by offering an easier way to pay, their Visa card.
 
Television Advertising and Customisation:
Localised versions of Visa‘s Anthem commercial, which debuted the week of 1 March 2010 in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, shows footage of fans throughout the world expressing an array of emotions while viewing football matches.

The creative execution is overlaid with the colours of individual national flags and follows the natural progression of anticipation, tension, joy and heartache displayed by football fans during a match. The spot illustrates how fans are divided by their passion for their favorite teams but united in a shared love of football.

The soundtrack to Anthem is an original composition written by South Africans Nonkululeko and Philisiwe Moya called Stand as One, Unite and is performed by the Agape Children‘s Choir.

First documented in the film We Are Together, the Agape Children‘s Choir is made up of children from the Agape Orphanage in Durban, South Africa who find hope in song. In February, Visa made a donation of $150,000 to benefit the Agape Children‘s Choir and assist with the children‘s school fees, education costs and the orphanage‘s administrative costs. Anthem was directed by Jake Scott, the son of Ridley Scott.

Cardholder Experiences and Usage Promotions : A core component of Visa‘s Fifa‘s sponsorship is developing cardholder programmes internationally to enhance the fan‘s football experience through once-in-a-lifetime experiences and usage promotions.

For the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa, Visa has created the Go 2010 Football Experience to provide fans with unique access and once-in-a-lifetime experiences which include a pre-match Stadium Tour, viewing the team warm-up by the pitch, and a half-time pitch-side tour. More than 500 “Go 2010 Football Experiences” have been offered to Visa cardholders worldwide.

Visa has also introduced customisable usage promotions in core markets that provide Visa cardholders with the chance to win tickets to the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa every time they use their Visa cards.

FIFA World Cup Sponsorship Activation :
In the lead up to the Fifa World Cup, Visa provides financial institutions and merchant partners throughout the world with Fifa-themed creative and marketing materials to enhance their card-marketing efforts, help drive business and achieve corporate brand objectives.

Visa is one of six global Fifa partners with exclusive global category rights through 2014, and is the preferred card for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In recognition of Visa‘s sponsorship of the 2010 Fifa World Cup South AfricaTM, Visa credit, debit and prepaid cards are the only payment cards accepted, along with cash, at all Fifa stadiums and the Onsite Stadium Merchandise Booths.

The partnership provides Visa with global rights in the Financial Services product category to all Fifa World Cup activities that may be activated by financial institution clients and merchant partners. Visa‘s Fifa sponsorship includes the rights to the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa, the Fifa Women‘s World Cup Germany 2011 and the 2014 Fifa World Cup Brazil.
 

MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Television (SPT) has announced that it has secured a brand partnership for its global football documentary, How to Win the Fifa World Cup with Castrol.

The announcement was made by SPT chief creative officer and executive VP international production Mike Morley at the television trade event MipTV in Cannes.
 
The programme, on sale to broadcasters at MipTV, will include Fifa footage from World Cup tournaments over the past 20 years, exclusively commissioned research into the performances of national sides from a Dutch university, and is backed up by data from Castrol Performance Analysts including the Castrol Index which uses objective analysis of over 2,000 players and games to give deeper insight into winning performances of some of the world‘s best footballers.

In addition to the integration of the Castrol Index into the programme and brand visibility through “bumpers” at the start and end, the documentary will be available for viewing online on Castrol‘s dedicated football site: www.castrolfootball.com 
 
The brand partnership agreement was facilitated by branded entertainment sales agents, Krempelwood, working closely with Castrol‘s media agency, Mindshare, and SPT.

Morley said, “We are delighted to partner with Castrol, one of the world‘s leading brands, as we roll out this programming worldwide. With the Castrol Index, the scientific data and interviews and commentary from football experts, How to Win the Fifa World Cup is the perfect piece of signature programming for a broadcaster in the run up to the World Cup.”

Castrol Global brand director Des Johnson says, “Football is central to our sponsorship strategy alongside motorsport and our partnership with Sony Pictures Television is an exciting new development for our brand. We know that football fans everywhere will be fascinated by the information presented in How to Win the Fifa World Cup. We are thrilled to be associated with a global programming opportunity that uniquely offers a credible insight into the little known facts to winning performances within the ‘beautiful game‘.”

How To Win The Fifa World Cup examines the DMA – Defence, Midfield, Attack – of all 32 nations in the tournament and also produces quirky facts that could help their country win or lose the World Cup – fascinating data like how the colour of a keeper‘s jersey can influence his chance to save a penalty kick, why certain teams are more likely to score in extra time, which sides are most vulnerable at corners and who scores most from free kicks and open play.

With some painful home truths emerging, viewers will learn more about how France intercepts play so successfully, why England misses so many penalties, why Germans can out dribble Brazilians and why Ghana gets so many yellow cards.
 
In addition to the documentary, SPT is also selling the format, How to Win the Fifa World Cup at MipTV. The format is strippable as a series of talk shows before or during the tournament.
 

CAVELOSSIM: While new creativity is the language of future advertising, consumers trust other people‘s recommendations for their future consumptions, believes Mindshare global leader (invention) George Michaelides. 
 
“Thus, the internet that earlier could not compete with the broadcast spectrum, has become the most powerful medium of communication,” Michaelides said. 
 
He further noted that creativity is a heritage and fusion of sheer imagination and culture that needs to be reclaimed in a way that it was before for the contemporary world.

Also, advertisements need to possess a big idea. “It’s not about advertising, its about generating talkability for your brands. That is the approach to adopt for the new creativity,” he said. 
 
Elaborating on this, Ogilvy Digital Vice Chairman Jan Leth said, “Unless your advertisement contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the dark.”

MUMBAI: The successful return of the ZooZoos has earned Ogilvy and Mather and Nirvana one Grand Prix each for the Creative Abby at the Goafest this year in the integrated advertising and filmcraft category respectively.

It was during the second season of the Indian Premier League that Vodafone gave birth to ZooZoo, a special character created specifically to convey value-added service (Vas). 
 
Nirvana topped the honours in gold, bagging four metals for its work on Zoozoo “Stock Alerts” and “Facebook” (filmcraft, combined), Frooti (one each for editing and sound design) and Bajaj XCD 135 DTS-Si (editing).

The second in run for gold was, of course, Ogilvy and Mather, creators of the egg-faced Vodafone icons. O&M bagged three golds for Vodafone Zoozoo in the film single category, The Economist in the direct category and Vodafone Zoozoo again in the integrated advertising category.
 
This year around 4200 entries from 137 companies, including agencies, design studios and production houses, were received as compared to around 4400 entries last year. Though print and outdoor saw drops in entries as compared to those from last year – 840 to 752 entries and from 1148 to 964 respectively – they still made up the largest block of the entries. Printcraft, with 664 entries, had the third largest number of entries.
 
Digital category entries showed almost fivefold increase with 295 entries from 40 companies as opposed to 65 entries received last year. Google has been roped in as the digital awards sponsor. There were 233 entries from 21 production houses from filmcraft.

MUMBAI: On the occasion of Levi‘s completing its 15 years in India, the American jeans and casual wear brand has launched the “Change Your World” campaign which aims to reach out to consumers on several levels such as music, art, or symbols of Americana.
 
As part of the campaign, Levi‘s will identify 15 youngsters who will embody the brand‘s personality, and will bring about change in their own way, in their own worlds.

Levi‘s will then support them with grants of Rs 1 lakh each to help turn their Change Your World dream into reality. 
 
Additionally, as part of this initiative, is a parallel effort to bolster the young rock scene in India. The brand plans to identify one promising band who will get a shot at fame and glory, by getting them a Levi‘s produced music video featuring Priyanka Chopra, and a chance to perform a three-city tour. 
 
Said The Levi‘s Brand – India marketing director Shyam Sukhramani, “The ‘Change Your World‘ campaign is truly a marvelous way to mark this milestone in the company‘s history. We owe our success to the army of Levi‘s wearers who choose and wear the brand with a great sense of passion. ‘The Change Your World‘ movement seems like the most appropriate way to give back to them.”

CAVELOSSIM: While creating online buzz for brands could lead to only generating noise for consumers, the right management of brand conversation across the platform could have a huge co-relation to the future success of the brand, stated Publicis Worldwide CEO Richard Pinder. 
 
While addressing the audience in a session at Goafest 2010, Pinder said, “Conversations about a brand happen everywhere. The conversations could be both negative as well as positive. Controlling or censoring negative conversations does not generally work as has been evident in some cases where negative online conversations were taken down. This resulted in more negative conversations and further control of these conversations resulted in even more damage for the brand.”

Pinder, thus, noted that the role of agencies should be to manage the online conversations so that there were many people speaking positively about a brand and fewer people speaking negatively about it. 
 
Pinder cited a study by the London School of Economics which showed that brands most recommended in categories grew four times faster than the category average and another study by Bain Consulting showed that increasing recommendations of a brand by 12 per cent doubled the sales growth of the brand.
 
However, ending on a cautious note about the use of a judicious mix of media, Pinder said, “Obama did not win the US presidential elections because he knew how to use facebook. He did a brilliant job on facebook, but he spent just 4 per cent of his money on the web and an enormous amount of money on TV, more than any other president has spent so far.”

CAVELOSSIM: The refreshing words came from Naked Communications partner Will Collin who was speaking at the ‘Knowledge and Learning’ seminar on day 2 of Goafest 2010. “Freshness is not about doing different things, it’s about doing things differently,” he said.

Freshness in communications means truly embracing integration and changing the way things are done. It means asking what you are actually planning for. True freshness in communications means challenging anything including the way things are done. Freshness is not about finding newer ways to get to the same place or chasing shiny new things. The integrated strategy should be built around the needs of the consumer rather than the desires of the client.
 
Freshness in communications comes in lifting your head up and recognising the core problem, not jumping to defining a solution. “We are all of us carrying a legacy of irritation,” said Collin. Freshness in communications means avoiding irritation which is a legacy that still rules the thought processes in advertising.

Everything that a brand does is a communication. Agencies are obsessive about details of the content and text and forgetting style.
 
Collin gave an example of a large UK bank campaign with the tagline ‘You first’. This was a bank that spent millions in brand communication but did not integrate the message within itself, at one of the very first contact points with the customer – the telephone response system. The bank failed to keep up to the communication, because the telephone operators were not trained to respond to even the most basic questions from a prospective customer–“How do your bank put me first?”

Freshness means not living in silos that exist on both the client’s and the agency’s sides without being connected, because each of the disciplines in an organisation has its own bottom line to meet.

Freshness means never being compromised. There was a need to think objectively about what was needed. Each specialist in the ad industry is an expert in its own discipline and is commercially sensitised to optimizing its own self. Further, agencies are like supermarkets that often offer a diverse range of services. Advice needs to come from an objective place, a strategic censor who sits outside a communications strategy agency which can see the whole picture.

Freshness is not about chasing shiny new things. He cited a case of a client which needed to reduce its online exposure and was so advised. “Don’t do the cool thing, do the right thing,” says Collin.
 
“Freshness in communication doesn’t mean that you have to be sexy,” cautions Collin. “In brand communication, unsexy can be the new sexy if it is a holistic process to deliver profitability to the brand.” Collin highlighted this with an example of a European pharmacy Boots which went back to the basics by placing a message at the first contact point, the retailer, for filling a medical prescription. Boots managed to reduce its ad spends by 68 per cent and yet achieved a 104 per cent increment in revenues by adopting an unsexy strategy – placing its message on a signboard at the retailer and training and incentivizing the clerk who filled in the prescription to sign on more clients for online prescriptions.

Freshness means understanding your audience. “People are your partners and not target audiences,” he warns. The industry has been using warlike terms such as campaign, target, carpet bombing, conquer, guerilla tactics etc., “Why not think of the journey that a consumer makes from being an uninterested person to building an interest and making him a consumer through the relevant and effective channels and touch points?”, he queries.

Communication means overcoming memory muscles. It is not just about trying to add a few extra things around the edges. “You can’t change things to fit the way you work, you have to change the way you work,” he said.

CAVELOSSIM: Lodestar Universal and Mudra Max have been awarded with three golds each for Media Abby at Goafest 2010, the maximum catch for any agency this year.

Tata Nano, the cheapest car in the world, blessed Lodestar Universal with three golds – for mix media strategy, print and radio.

For Mudra Max, the golds came for their work on Big Pictures’ Paa (television) and Aircel (which won one each for outdoor & ambient media and special event & stunts/live advertising).

Meanwhile, Maxus took home the maximum metals, aggregating to 11.
 
The agency won one gold for its work on Vodafone (radio) and five silvers for Vodafone (television), Tata Sumo Victa (cinema), Nokia 5800 Xpress Music (radio), Nokia Music store (Internet & Digital Media) and Nokia Xpress Music 5130 (sponsorship).

Additionally, Maxus won five bronze metals for its work on Nokia N97 (cinema), Nokia 6700 Classic (branded content), Red Bull (special event & stunts/live advertising), Nokia 5800 Xpress Music (radio) and Nokia 6700 Classic (branded content). 
 
This year’s Media Abby received 484 entries against last years’ 415, a 15 per cent increase. The jury of 65 members, headed by Lodestar Universal CEO Sashi Sinha, pared this number down to 81 and finally 39 metals were awarded. Of the 14 categories, awards were given for 13, with no award for the best use of vertical category.
 
The handing over of the awards came with a twist, or an additional delight – the winners of metals had to ring a UTV Bindaas gong either on or after receiving the award.

“Quality wise, entries from mixed media and internet were quite good, while those from television were of middling to average quality,” revealed Sinha during a media interaction. “There is no Grand Prix for the media awards at Goafest,” he added.

A peep into the detailed winners list:

MEDIA Abby AWARDS – 2010 Best Use of Television
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Mudra Max	The film god speaks on India‘s biggest religion	Big pictures-Paa movie	GOLD
Maxus	Zoo Zoo Marathon- World‘s First Advertisement	Vodafone	SILVER
Mediacom	Gillette Mach 3 Shave India Movement	Gillette Mach 3	BRONZE

Best Use of Cinema
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Maxus	India‘s first Lyricode	Tata Sumo Victa	SILVER
Maxus	Live Cinema template of advertising N97 Cinema Widget	Nokia N97	BRONZE

Best Use of Newspaper & Magazine
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Lodestar Universal	How we said it uncommonly	Tata nano	GOLD
Mindshare	Surf Excel – Nanhe Patrakaar	Surf Excel	SILVER
Mediacom	The day Volkswagen took India by Storm	Volkswagen	BRONZE

Best Use of Outdoor & Ambient Media
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Mudra Max	Aircel – History in the making	Aircel	GOLD
Loadstar Universal	The power of Nano Innovation	Tata Nano	SILVER
Mindshare	To do not to do is this question	Domex	BRONZE

Best Use of Special Event & Stunts/Live Advertising
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Mudra Max	Aircel – History of making	Aircel	GOLD
Lintas Media Group	“Beep of Biking”	Bajaj Pulsar	SILVER
Mudra Max	The Lemon Pattalam (Army)	7 UP	SILVER
Maxus	Empty Tin-cans make 10,000 heads turn	Red Bull	BRONZE

Best Use of Radio
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Maxus	From Awarness to conversions in 30 sec	Vodafone	GOLD
Lodestar Universal	Creating a Nano Parlance	Tata Nano	GOLD
Maxus	Nokia 5800 – Midas touch	Nokia 5800 Xpress Music	SILVER
Maxus	Nokia Music Xpress	Nokia 5800 Xpress Music	BRONZE

Best Use of Internet & Digital Media
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Mindshare	Shock to life with a code	Nike	GOLD
Maxus	Shock “em but pleasantly at their moment of truth	Nokia Music store	SILVER
Mediacom	Gillette Mach 3 Shave India Movement	Gillette Mach 3	BRONZE
Mindshare	Television‘s moment of truth on social media	Star Plus	BRONZE

Best Use of Sponsorship
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Maxus	No TVC Approach	Nokia Xpress Music 5130	SILVER
Mindshare	Sunsilk – Blue Carper	Sunsilk	BRONZE
Media Edge : CIA	Wild card Princesses	Nivea Visage	BRONZE

Best Use of Branded Content
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Mudra Max	The film god speaks on India‘s biggest religion	Big pictures-Paa movie	BRONZE
Loadstar Universal	Station Docomo	Tata Docomo	BRONZE
Maxus	Nokia meets kaminey	Nokia 6700 Classic	BRONZE

Best Use of Mix Media
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Loadstar Universal	The power of Nano Innovation	Tata Nano	GOLD
Loadstar Universal	Do the new	Tata Docomo	SILVER
Madison Media Infinity	Pehali Tareekh – A Must on the First	Cadbury Dairy Milk	BRONZE

Best Use of Never Before Media
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Mindshare	Coming to life with a code	Nike	GOLD
Lodestar Universe	Nanovatrions	Tata Nano	SILVER
Lodestar Universe	Don‘t throw away your used cinema ticket, its valuable	Van Heusen	BRONZE

Best Use of Youth Marketing
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Mindshare	AXE – “Call me”	AXE	SILVER
Maxus	Is your media worth conversation	Red Bull	BRONZE

Best Use of Pro bono Marketing
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
Lodestar Universe	Sache ko chune, Ache ko chune	National Election Watch & Association for Democratic Reforms	SILVER
Mudra Max	May i help you	National Association for Blind	SILVER

Best Use of Vertical marketing
Company Name	Caption	Brand Name	Award
No Award

CAVELOSSIM: The first panel discussion of The Business Conclave session of the fifth edition of Goafest 2010 on Time to Grow – Brand and Creativity was moderated by Mudra Group managing director and chief executive officer Madhukar Kamath.

Answers were sought for pertinent questions such as – For a developing market like India, are our brands growing fast enough? Is creativity rising to the occasion to drive and grow brands? Given the increasing noise and clutter in Indian Media, has creativity risen far enough to make brands stand out and make an impact?

If one were to go by awards, then it has. But what do the figures from markets and brand tracks reveal? And what do advertisers say based on what is happening in the market place?
 
The panel members were Nielsen Asia’s managing director Piyush Mathur (The story of brand growth); Millward Brown’s chief creative officer & director Global Solutions Board Shiv Moulee who spoke on the emerging story on brand tracks; HUL’s VP (Haircare and Lame event) Rajaram Narayan; O&M’s Piyush Pandey (What we need to do make advertising sell better?); and Yahoo’s CEO Arun Tadanki ( Digital- the missing link in Advertiser’s armoury).

Mathur who has returned recently from abroad after more than a decade, kicked off the discussion lauding Indian creativity saying that it was world class. He spoke of ‘Indovation’ (Indian innovations’ such as the Nano, thumbprint banking for the uneducated, etc.), a term coined by a Cambridge university pundit.

Mathur spoke of the clutter in the television space with the number of channels growing from 340 in 2006 to 430-plus in 2009 in India and the drop in share of leading channels by 40 per cent though ad spends had dropped by 10 per cent.

Though media expenses headed south due to the global meltdown, FMCG and durables ad spends had shown double-digit growth in that period, informed Mathur. He said that rural was a great opportunity for brands, since people were moving from commodities to brands in these segments.
 
Moulee said that in a large market like India, the GDP of a state surpassed those of some nations. He cited the cases of Maharashtra and Punjab whose GDP exceeded that of New Zealand and Kenya respectively. He informed that company sales were mostly in sync with the state GDP’s in each state in India.

Emphasizing the importance of creativity for brands, Moulee cautioned: “Fragmented categories are a new reality today, the level of branding engagement has declined. The nature of engagements has also changed since people bond with brands. Challenge for advertising begins at the starting point – cutting through the clutter.”

Narayan agreed with Moulee but said that Indian advertising is being held back by lack of creativity or media support. He also observed that the spends have come down, though India continued to be ahead in terms of growth compared to the rest of the world. “Advertisers are recalibrating after the slow down. The recovery for advertising will not keep pace with growth in India’s GDP, ” he cautioned.

He noted that as brands grew, the battle rules were changing and advertising had to compete with other levers for growth. Development of the right kind of capabilities were needed to push brand growth forward.
 
Pandey posed the question to the advertising fraternity – “Are we serious about advertising or do we need to sell more?” He said that the clients were busy throughout the year researching advertisements and then playing it safe by not allowing agencies to be creative, while agencies were busy spending money for stuff that did not make sense to win awards.

“One side wants to see advertising as a science while the other sees it as an art. Advertising is not a science; everybody would be doing it otherwise. It is a commercial art,” he said.

Tadanki said that advertisers had inaccurate perceptions and impressions about the digital medium. He cited the example of Indian Englsh newspaper advertising with a reach of 16.7 million attracting Rs 68 billion of ad spends as opposed to the internet with almost three times the reach at 49.6 million garnering only Rs 6.5 billion. He said that the reach of the internet was more than just Sec A as 34 per cent of the internet came from the top 8 metros, 33 per cent were from Sec. A, and 22 million users came from the 25+ years segments. He said that the reach of the internet was comparable to English television.

“Consumers have moved online, advertisers haven’t kept pace,” he bemoaned, while citing the case of a leading automobile brand which had 80 per cent of its prospective buyers as internet users. The brand spent just 3 per cent of its ad budget on online advertising.

“Sub optimal allocation will not get the results for any medium. Try radio advertisement with just Rs 500,000 or place just two billboards ads in Delhi – will that show that radio or outdoor advertising is working?”, he queried.

Tadanki said that unlearning of measures such as clicks was required since this was an inaccurate method. “What of the 99.5 per cent of the users that saw the ad but never clicked?”

Internet could be used for brand building, and was a means to communicate the brand message with measurable impact on brand health. Attention, however, needed to be paid to creative output since most agencies delegated the creative work to an inexperienced person or a trainee.

CAVELOSSIM: India is on the right side of history and the time has come for the advertising industry to grow, experts said.

The size of the Indian advertising industry is just 0.4 per cent of the country’s GDP, as against almost one per cent in the case of the US, indicating a latent potential for faster growth to drive consumption.
 
“After growing at such a rapid pace for the last five years, the advertising market dipped by 10 per cent in 2009. It is now time to grow, to develop brands, markets, research and creativity,” said Madison World CEO Sam Balsara, while speaking at the fifth edition of Goafest 2010.

The advertising market is underdeveloped in India compared to many developed and developing countries. India contributes to 17 per cent of the world population but is only 0.7 per cent of the global advertising market, prompting a need for agencies to look for new business models. 
 
Delivering the keynote address for the session ‘Time to grow’, JWT China CEO Tom Doctoroff shared insights into the growth of the advertising industry and its future in China.

Doctoroff pegged the Chinese market at about $30-35 billion with around 500 million consumers. “China could learn a lot from India,” he said. “China is a market which has tremendous growth potential. I see it as one of the largest markets for advertising the world over,” he added.

Explaining the Chinese psyche, Doctoroff said that Chinese like order and the industry was moving from chaos to order with big brands ruling the roost there.

Explaining the nuances of the Chinese mind, he said that the Chinese consumer felt that brands projected stability, sanity and identity status. Chinese believed that stability was a platform for forward movement for the clan rather than the individual. Nationalism in China is a powerful motivator, he revealed.

The Chinese mind perceived brands as badges of success, as status projectors. “China is a market where scale counts, big brands count, being present in every corner of every retail store counts,” Doctoroff said. “The future is bright for local branding in China.”
 
He informed that with 625-plus TV channels there was a 250 per cent supply of colour TV which has resulted in a 47 per cent drop in prices over the last three years. Though local branding, which was a new phenomenon here, had risen from just 2 per cent a few years ago to around 45 per cent in the case of JWT China, it was chaotic rather than organised. The local brand message was manufacturing jargon – as if by official state dictates and announcements rather than by consumer driven insights.

Doctoroff presented a case study of one of the local brands, Anta Shoes, handled by JWT China and how it had grown to compete with well known international brands in China from just a $100 million company to a $ 1 billion company in 2009 with projections of $1.5 billion for 2010.

JWT used every possible branding opportunity to convey Anta’s oneness with the Chinese, he informed.