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By Al Ries

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Your Brand’s Name Might Be a Liability Once You Cross the Border

What’s the biggest change in marketing in the past 50 years?

You could make the case for the Internet. Or Big Data. Or mobile marketing. Or PR. Or celebrities. Or a number of other revolutionary developments.

But in our work as marketing consultants, we find the biggest change is the shift from national marketing to global marketing. Our clients are mostly focused on building global brands.

When brands cross borders
Problems can occur. Take the name of the brand. As long as a brand is a registered trademark in the countries you wish to do business in, you might assume everything is taken care of.

Not so. A name that works well in one country won’t necessarily work well in another country.

Take Kremlyovskaya, the No.1 vodka in Russia. Any vodka that is a leading brand in Russia should be a best seller on the global market. But it’s not. An English-speaking person cannot pronounce or spell a word like “Kremlyovskaya.”

English has become the second language of the world. Any brand designed for the global market needs to use a word English-speaking people can relate to.

Countries have positions, too
Russia is known for vodka. It’s not surprising that Smirnoff was founded in Moscow in the 1860s.

Smirnoff isn’t an English word, but it is a word English-speaking people can easily use and pronounce. Thanks in part to its Russian connection, Smirnoff is the best-selling vodka and the best-selling distilled spirit in the world.

In many ways, a country’s position is even stronger and longer lasting than a brand’s position. When a brand is in sync with its country of origin, the brand has a much better chance of being successful on the global market.

With the right name, of course.

When it comes to names, companies have options. There is no supreme authority that determines what a brand’s name has to be. Companies can always use different names in different countries.

Sometimes they have no choice. Kremlyovskaya is not “Kremlyovskaya” in the Russian language. It’s “Кремлевская,” because the Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet. So for many countries in the global market, every Russian brand name needs to be translated into the Latin alphabet.

And how do you do that? You try to find English letters to replicate the sounds of the Russian name. Hence, Kremlyovskaya.

That might be logical, but that’s not good marketing thinking. Countries like Russia which uses the Cyrillic alphabet and China which uses a picture language have a marketing advantage. Almost nobody will notice if they ignore their phonic names and create new brand names that will work on the global market.

“Red Square” vodka would have been my name for Kremlyovskaya.

Every language has unique sounds
You might not understand a language to understand what a person is trying to say. I don’t speak Spanish, but I can generally understand what a Spanish speaker is trying to say by his or her tone of voice.

Not so in China. In a half dozen visits to China, I still have no idea what a Chinese speaker is trying to say. Is he or she angry? Sad? Argumentative? Agreeable? Who knows? The Chinese language has many sounds no English speaker every uses.

Great Wall Motor, a leading Chinese automobile company, was planning on building a global brand with its SUV vehicle. The brand name in Chinese is 哈弗.

Initially, the sound of the name was translated into “Hover,” but that brand name could not be used globally because of trademark issues connected with the generic word “hovercraft.”

No problem. Instead of “Hover,” the company decided to use “Haval.” Today, Great Wall’s Haval brand is the largest-selling SUV brand in the Chinese market.

Both “Hover” and “Haval” are easy for English-speaking people to pronounce and spell. But these are exceptions. The English translations of most Chinese brand names are not going to work on the global market.

Take Snow beer, the largest-selling Chinese beer brand. The name is easy to pronounce, but its connotations are wrong.

Tsingtao, the second largest-selling Chinese beer, is a difficult brand name to pronounce and spell, one reason its distribution in America is primarily limited to Chinese restaurants.

If they want to be big successes on the global market, both brands could use different names.

Germany is known for beer
The largest-selling beer brand in Germany should be a global best seller. But it’s not.

Warsteiner? How could a German brand name starting with “War” become a best-selling global brand? Unlikely.

Why not give the brand a different name on the global market that it has on the domestic market?

That’s exactly what the country has done. Germany in Germany is “Deutschland.” Germany in Spain is “Alemania.” Germany in Sweden is “Tyskland.”

Many countries follow similar patterns.

Albania in Albania is “Shqipëia.

Austria in Austria is “Österreich.”

Hungary in Hungary is “Magyarország.”

Poland in Poland is “Polska.”

Spain in Spain is “España.”

Sweden in Sweden is “Sverige.”

Turkey in Turkey is “Tükiye.”

Names can be persuasive
Consumers assume names have literal meanings. When a motorist sees a sign that says “Lakeview Drive,” the motorist assumes that somewhere on that road is a view of a lake.

Marketing people can take advantage of the consumer’s inherent belief in the truthfulness of a name. “Otherwise, why would they have called it Lakeview Drive?”

But the meaning of a name can change depending on the language involved. So in building global brands, you need to make sure your name works in the language of the countries you plan to do business in.

Many corporate executives have an emotional attachment to the names of their brands and hate changing them. In particular, we have had many discussions with Chinese companies over the need to modify their names to make them more effective on the global market.

But changing a name is a difficult decision for many executives. After one frustrating meeting on this subject, the head of our Shanghai affiliate said to me, “By the way, did you know the name of our country is not China?”

“No, I didn’t. What is the name of your country?”

“Zhong Guo.”

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By Al Ries on Advertising Age

Al Ries is chairman of Ries & Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing strategy firm he runs with his daughter and partner Laura.

There is a human story behind every business, because there is a human story behind every human.

Our story is one of humble beginnings. It all started more than a decade ago in the old garage of my octogenarian granddad-in-law. It was located on a hillside with million dollar views overlooking Brisbane city. My then husband and I did not pay rent, because we did not have money, so we shared granddad’s beautiful little Queenslander while also looking after him.

I was doing translations on an old desk next to a car and I also had a filing cabinet, which was empty. Hesitatingly, I had put my university degrees up on the wall. They looked out of place. But I needed them there, because I did not want to see the sceptical look on a client’s face again, when they came to drop off a document for translation. And so Absolute Translations’ journey began.

Unfortunately, not long after, my life turned upside down and I had to part from my little garage and my dear old granddad. As I had nowhere to go and no money to get there anyway, a French student of mine gave me a room in her home for a couple of months. These were times I will never forget. Sarah. A golden heart. There weren’t any city views, but it was what saved me.

I never returned to a garage, but these humble beginnings have shaped me and have made Absolute Translations to what we are today. We have never taken for granted the business that came our way and the trust that clients placed in us, and we never will. We are very proud of who we are and where we’ve come from, but we will never take you for granted.

Because without you and without your trust we wouldn’t be here today.

Sincerest Thanks.

Veerle

Sub-Saharan Africa has gone through a remarkable decade of economic transformation. The continent is abuzz with talk of new investment, new cities, new airports and new refineries. A new, more confident and self-affirming Africa is taking shape.

The new millennium saw per capita incomes in Africa rise faster than high-income countries for the first time since the 1970s. Poverty and inequality remain, but for a score of countries the income gap has narrowed with wealthier OECD countries. The World Bank expects that most African countries will reach middle income status (defined as at least US$1,000 per person a year) by 2025 if current growth rates continue.

As the growth in Africa has been driven mainly by services and not manufacturing or agriculture, it has been growth without jobs and without reduction in poverty levels. In fact, the food security crisis of 2008 which took place on the heels of the global financial crisis, has pushed back 100 million people into food insecurity. Mining, oil, and gas contribute significantly to Africa’s GDP, but these sectors employ less than 1 per cent of the workforce.

CHALLENGES

For those venturing into Africa for the first time there are several headwinds to confront, not least of which is the great diversity of tongues drawn from several language families. But also education, ICT infrastructure and the ongoing instability across the continent are challenges vital to recognise.

Languages

The first challenge is the great variety of languages spoken across the continent. Estimates vary on the number of tongues spoken, whistled and even drummed in Africa from 2000 to over 3000. Some languages in North East Africa have their own alphabets; in West Africa, scripts now adapted to Latin were originally written in Arabic; other languages have only recently been written down, especially in the southern parts of the continent.
The main languages families are:

• Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel
• Nilo-Saharan centered on Sudan and Chad
• Niger–Congo (Bantu) covering West, Central, and Southeast Africa
• Khoe concentrated in the deserts of Namibia and Botswana
• Austronesian on Madagascar
• Indo-European in the south

Languages spoken by millions of people such as Arabic, Igbo, Somali, Swahili, Hausa, Amharic and Yoruba are used for interethnic communication. Twelve of the more similar languages are spoken by 75% of the people and fifteen of these are spoken by 85% as a first or second language.

While English, French – and to a lesser degree Arabic and Portuguese – are spoken in many of the countries that were colonized in the past, there is a clear need for local languages when selling services or goods in these markets. Angola is the exception as over 60% of the people speak Portuguese and this is increasing among the youth.

Education
A second challenge is the fact that education in most countries has lagged, with only a small percentage of the more affluent sectors of society achieving university status during the 20th century, thus creating a lack of suitably trained persons.

Although literacy rates have greatly improved over the last few decades, approximately 40% of Africans over the age of 15 and 50% of women above the age of 25 remain illiterate. Thus many sub-Saharan African countries have low rates of participation in formal education. Schools lack basic facilities and universities often suffer from overcrowding. Universities have difficulties retaining qualified staff attracted by higher pay and better conditions overseas. According to a report published by Friedrich Huebler in March 2008, 36.9% of school-aged children in Africa do not attend primary school.

ICT infrastructure
A third challenge is the lack of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in many African countries. Internet connectivity is frequently not of good quality, making it difficult to work online, or the costs are extremely high. Ongoing electricity outages compound the situation in too many of the countries. One bright spot is East Africa, with the development of the new undersea optical fibre cable in 2009.

Innovation in ICT is a vital component of an economy’s dynamism and competitiveness. While Africa lags behind in terms of fixed-line telephony, new technologies and business models are circumventing market inefficiencies and institutional bottlenecks. The number of applications is rising, with e-banking setting the pace and other services such as e-health, e-education, and e-government following closely.

So the outlook for ICT in Africa is immense; there are many opportunities for enterprising overseas companies to tap into vibrant sectors such as the mobile money industry, which has taken East Africa by storm. Africa could easily transform ICT development around the world because there is a lot to learn from hard to reach regions, which leapfrog past their Western counterparts due to local factors forcing them to think outside the box.

Instability
The fourth challenge is the ongoing conflicts and coups that affect a number of the countries in West and Central Africa, and more recently Sudan and South Sudan.

Most African countries have enjoyed more than a decade of economic growth at rates the West can only dream about. At the same time Congo has suffered the most murderous conflict since World War II. Next door in Uganda, the capital Kampala has boomed, while less than 200 miles to the north, the Lord’s Resistance Army has abducted children and committed appalling atrocities. Africa is so big and so diverse that it contains both horrendous disasters and extraordinary successes.

OPPORTUNITIES

Africa has gone through a remarkable decade of economic transformation. Africa’s economy—with expanding trade, English language skills, improving literacy and education, availability of splendid resources and cheaper labour force—is expected to continue to perform better into the future.

End of post-colonial era
Before the talk was in dollars. Now leaders speak equally of Chinese renminbi, Indian rupees and Brazilian reals. Are the last shackles of colonialism finally being broken? Or is another form of dependence taking over, this time based on commodity-hungry emerging markets?

According to the African Economic Outlook, trade between Africa and its new partners is now worth USD 673.4 billion a year. Africa is benefiting from investment, trade and aid, but also from the macroeconomic, political and strategic advantages that the rise of emerging countries has produced. Africa’s top five emerging partners are China, India and Brazil — along with Korea and Turkey.

The shift in global wealth has ended post-colonialism and the broadening of Africa’s partnerships reflects the normalisation of its international relations. Pessimists say the emerging economic giants are plundering Africa. Optimists see Africa already belonging to the emerging powers club.

Demographic shift
Africa will experience a “demographic dividend” by 2035, when its young and growing labour force will have fewer children and retired people as dependents as a proportion of the population, making it more demographically comparable to the US and Europe. It is becoming a more educated labour force, with nearly half expected to have some secondary-level education by 2020.

A consumer class is also emerging in Africa and is expected to keep booming. Africa has around 90 million people with household incomes exceeding $5,000, meaning that they can direct more than half of their income towards discretionary spending rather than necessities. This number could reach a projected 128 million by 2020.

Jobs
To reap the benefits of its positive demographics and advancements in education, Africa needs to quickly create more and stable jobs that are the route to lasting prosperity and an expanding consuming class. Africa needs a jobs strategy, not just a growth strategy. Four sectors have a proven capacity to create jobs and can do so in the future: agriculture, manufacturing, retail and hospitality.

Africa’s employment challenge is daunting, but it is not unique. Many other emerging markets have transformed their employment landscapes and made sweeping gains in economic growth, and with the right policies in place, Africa has the right ingredients to produce similar success. Businesses and investors are beginning to take note of the continent’s potential – not only its wealth of natural resources but its human capital. Africa may prove to be one of the next great global stories.