Asian visitors to Germany are often surprised to see Mercedes-Benz cars being used as taxicabs. Dell consumers would be equally surprised to know that, in the Asian market where it battles cheap clones, Dell is not the low-cost leader that it is in its home market, the United States. And would U.S. consumers relate to how Campbell soup was being marketed elsewhere? Or would the Dutch recognize Heineken's brand image outside its native country?

The list is a long one, as each brand's experience invites the same question that Buick's experience in China asks: Is there really such a thing as a global brand? Or are brands specific to each market?

The debate is one of the most intense and prolonged ones in the field of marketing. Because if brands are, indeed, market-specific, then whatever happened to the idea of a "global village"?

When managers first began hearing the word "globalization," it described a common world marketplace. Theodore Levitt, in The Marketing Imagination, argued a couple of decades ago that the world is a common marketplace, a global village, in which millions of consumers around the world share the same values, lifestyles, and desires for product quality and modernity. In every modern community, people wear their Polo sports shirts, put on their Nike sport sneakers, and go out to eat McDonald's burgers and drink Coca-Cola. And thus the values they attach to those brands are consistent everywhere.

In support of Levitt, author Kenichi Ohmae coined a catchy phrase for how we need to think about the world market. He said world consumers shared something in common, called "the Californiazation of need." He said, "Whatever their nationality, consumers in North America, Asia, and Europe increasingly receive the same information, seek the same kinds of lifestyles, and desire the same kinds of products." Ohmae's catchphrase underlined the idea is that everyone, therefore, lives in California, figuratively speaking. They all want the same kinds of consumer products: cars, jeans, packaged food, television sets - you name it.

For marketers, the practical implication seemed obvious: Consumers everywhere would benefit from globally consistent and standardized brand messages. The brand could be controlled centrally. Branding itself would become cost-effective. A brand could therefore be managed with robust and uniform processes, just like finance is managed.

Experience shows otherwise

And yet, as subsequent marketing experience showed, the world cannot be simply regarded as one huge, homogenous market, despite the growing similarities in tastes and preferences. Each country - and in many cases, each region within a country - required marketing messages that spoke to its own unique culture, customs, preferences, and buying patterns.

For example, the Pringles brand from Procter & Gamble has appeared in a number of local flavors such as curry in the U.K. (a favorite dish there), and Funky Soy Sauce in Japan. Pepsico's snack brands also have appeared in flavors catering to local tastes. These include seaweed-flavored Lay's potato crisps in Thailand and China, and seaweed-flavored Doritos corn snacks in China.

STAR TV was founded as an English-language broadcaster of mainly Western fare that targeted the top five percent of Asia's socioeconomic pyramid. But by the end of its first decade of operation, STAR had changed into a series of national businesses, largely independent from each other, offering thirty channels of programming in eight languages. Asian consumers showed a greater preference for local programming, even though it costs much more than imported programming.

Summarizing the STAR TV experience, Pankaj Ghemawat, Harvard Business School professor, told HBS Working Knowledge, "The decreasing viability of the standardized model suggests that many of the dynamics that often accompan官网命名y globalization can in fact increase the viability of locally standardized strategies over time."

Meanwhile, in Europe, at the height of the excitement over a common European market, Henkel KGaA conducted a study to determine if there really was a "European consumer." To find out, consumers in six countries were analyzed with regard to their preference and usage of detergent soap. Dr. Hans-Willi Schroiff of the International Market Research outfit of Henkel, in his representative study, relates that in different aspects - from purchasing habits to per capita usage to number of washes per month, to washing temperature - the consumers differed significantly in their behavior.

The conclusion: there was still no such thing as a "Euro-Consumer." The findings seemed to call for localization of brand portfolios. Customizing or localizing had the potential to increase market share by maximizing penetration (reaching as many households as possible) and by tailoring to individual "hot spots."

Two conflicting goals

So, if the evidence points to localization, are global brands going away? Not quite.

First of all, there are problems with not standardizing brands, or going too local. Schroiff pointed out that trade structures were merging across Europe, and trade partners were starting to emphasize lean, global, and profitable brand portfolios. The same trend can be seen in Asia and America.

Also, there are real benefits of standardizing brand messages in many markets: Minimizing the variety of portfolios (aiming for the smallest number of brands and SKUs as possible) and applying learnings from one market to another (knowledge transfer).

There is also the compelling objective of controlling costs by maximizing economies of scale, mainly in design and advertising - where it is possible to communicate a single advertising message.

And it is possible to send one advertising message for different countries, as a pilot study conducted by Morris, Bradley, Sutherland, and Wei proved. In the study, two groups of subjects were exposed to twelve commercials. One group was American, the other was Taiwanese. The commercials were aired in both the United Sates and Taiwan, in English and Mandarin, respectively. Only two out of twelve commercials were found to provoke significantly different emotional responses between Taiwanese and Americans. The results of the study indicate that standardized advertising can work effectively around the world.

Still, generalizations do have their exceptions, as it was also proven that culture does indeed have some influence on the emotional response to some commercials. Taiwanese adults were impressed by the Pepsi commercial featuring pop singer Gloria Estefan, but were no impressed - and even offended - by the Chrysler commercial featuring the company chairman. Therefore advertisers have to take cultural difference into consideration before producing global advertisements.

Procter & Gamble learned this the hard way in Europe. The company re-branded several European detergents and dishwashing brands under one name each and standardized branding in several European countries. A short time after, Manager magazine described this experience in terms of "the pitfalls of a strategy that ignores the consumer by centralizing all kinds of decisions and disempowering local management and thus the local consumer." The standardized brands died. As P&G CEO A. Lafley conceded, "We were too rigid and forcing our principles and strategies upon the consumers instead of cooperating with them."

Implications for China marketers

So there are opportunities and risks for both global (or standardized) and local (or customized) branding. The key for China marketers is to skillfully apply the different combinations of branding strategies, whether you're marketing to domestic consumers or to overseas buyers.

It might be confusing to say that on one hand you have to be local, whereas on the other hand you have to be global - but that's what it takes. Leveraging on the dolla上海官网策划公司rs spent on international brand marketing is necessary for local brands to survive. Advises brand expert Martin Lindstrom in ClickZToday, "The purpose of global brand management is to control a brand's global direction, and this is done by defining and communicating the brand's core values. The execution of this communication lies in devising and consistently applying a specific style, tone, and image. At the same time, being local doesn't mean that you should change the logo, the design, or the brand platform."

Remember that a brand is created via communication and not necessarily via the logo, graphics, or design. Remember, too, that ours may be a global village, but everyone prefers local communication. The role of local brand management is to adjust the communication of the brand's core values with the values of each local market. The global marketing group is strategic. The local team is tactical. Both need to work hand in hand.

The Pillsbury Company, for example, has learned to successfully adapt its worldwide brands to local markets in Asia and Europe. Take corn as an example. "Green Giant (a subsidiary of Pillsbury) had to teach Europeans to eat sweet corn," says John Spiers, Pillsbury's senior vice president of strategic business development and president, international. "Corn was seen as animal feed and sweet corn was unknown."

So the company embarked on an program to educate Europeans on the product. Since Europeans tend to eat vegetables in salads, Pillsbury positioned its corn as a salad ingredient. In China and Taiwan, the product is positioned in a different way - for use in the staple, corn soup.

Similarly, an office furniture installation by American furniture company Herman Miller for Apple Japan also illustrates the value of product adaptability. Apple Japan managers wanted furniture that would allow them some degree of privacy, yet also keep employees visible to them. Herman Miller met this local need by specifying systems furniture with removable panel tiles. This took care of the need for privacy and the need for access.

Dr. Schroiff of Henkel has prescriptions for new brands and for existing ones. He says that for new brands, you can "Go for global standardization right from the start - choose identical product, positioning, design, and advertising. For existing brands, you can "Go for global standardization - but in carefully orchestrated steps, starting out with a product standardization and then moving on to a brand standardization (but only if appropriate from a consumer's perspective. But accept that standardization has its limits - accept diversity as an opportunity, not a threat."