Excerpts:
Is branding important for countries like Bangladesh? How?

Yes, off course. Bangladesh, along with a number of other Asian countries, has been thrown into a highly globalised market place where competitors are using every trick in the book to lure customers and book a profit. To survive in such a competitive market place, companies from emerging economies must build brands in order to create a strong differentiation in the market, attract customers with a credible value proposition and to constantly engage customers in ways that would endear them to the brand and to the company. As such, branding allows Bangladesh to create a strong corporate structure and to compete in the booming Asian market as well as globally.

Why Asia has lagged behind this trend?
There are many reasons why Asian companies have not fostered many global brands until now. Still a large part of Asia's economic development can be attributed to low-cost advantages that enabled Asian companies to gain market share from other suppliers. But Western companies, by buying some of these Asian firms or aggressively outsourcing some of their operations, are already streamlining their cost structures. Low cost alone no longer provides a significant advantage. Some of the important reasons are diversification of businesses, presence of family-owned businesses and lack of strong intellectual property rights implementation.

The diversification of businesses spanning many industries with limited overlap and synergies has been a major impediment to building brands in Asia. Another important reason for the lack of strong brands can be found in the prevalent business structure within Asia, which consists of many small and often family-owned businesses.

The implications of intellectual property protection in Asia have been a major barrier to building brands. In their own backyards, many Asian companies have faced rampant counterfeiting and infringement of IP rights.

Where would you rate Asia in building world class brands?
Due to many inherent reasons discussed earlier, Asia has been slow in developing world class brands. But the situation is changing very fast. Given the evolving nature of the market place and the relevance and dynamism of branding, Asia is still in the developing stage in the branding chain.

What are the areas a company should focus to build a brand building culture?
A strong brand is characterised by a unique brand promise (the customer focus) and an outstanding brand delivery (the organisational system and performance behind the promise). The brand promise and the brand delivery must be consistently balanced in order to build and sustain strong brand equity. The modern brand-driven organisation is characterised by three distinct characteristics which set it apart from less brand-focused organisations. These characteristics are: right boardroom mindset toward and beliefs about branding, right skill sets to build and manage brands and right allocation of organizational and financial resources to achieve various business objectives and build sustainable brand equity.

Do you feel a company's top management and especially CEO should be directly involved in building a brand? Why?
Branding as discipline has evolved over the last couple of decades from being just an addendum to advertising campaigns, fancy ideas of the marketing department, optional function of the elite few to finally being recognized as a boardroom discipline which contributes to the top and bottom line of the company and aid in enhancing shareholder value by immensely by contributing to the market capitalisation of the company.

It has been proved that over 70 percent of the market capitalisation of companies listed on the NASDAQ is contributed by the intangibles of which brand equity is the important element. Moreover, branding must enable channeling internal communications, aligning internal stakeholders around the brand mission and fueling innovation to stay on the cutting edge.

For branding to play a pivotal role in the company, it has to have a strong support from the CEO and corporate management.

How can companies in Bangladesh, where companies are still largely driven by commodity mindset, evolve to become brand savvy?
Branding is as much a corporate philosophy as it is a strategic, organisation-wide discipline. As such, the involvement of the company's top management in establishing a brand is highly important. Building a brand starts at the boardroom, with a firm commitment from the board and the CEO of the company. Building a brand involves proper and continuous allocation of financial, managerial and marketing resources. Brands evolve from a good blend of integration between the brand strategy and the overall corporate strategy of the company.

The following ten steps can guide companies to effectively build brands that would resonate with customers and other stakeholders alike: (a) The CEO needs to lead the brand strategy work, (b) build your own model as not every model suits all, (c) involve your stakeholders including the customers, (d) advance the corporate vision, (e) exploit new technology, (f) empower people to become brand ambassadors, (g) create the right delivery system, (h) communicate, (i) measure the brand performance and (j) adjust relentlessly and be ready to raise your own bar all the times.

How important brands are for SMEs (small and medium enterprises)?
SMEs are in no way different from large corporations with respect to branding. Branding offers corporations (big and small alike) a definite source of sustainable competitive advantage. Further, branding (when practiced the right way) offers companies multiple avenues to engage customers in order to enhance the ultimate goal of marketing gaining long term customer loyalty. As discussed earlier, branding allows companies a sure way to enhance both the top and bottom lines. Therefore, branding is certainly very important for SMEs.

How important is it from a nation's perspective that its companies have the wherewithal to build enduring brands?
Branding is as much being used by companies as is being used by countries themselves. The country from which a company (product/service/brand) originates, has an effect on the company's perceived quality and likeability in the minds of consumers this is called the country of origin (COO) effect. The COO effect becomes extremely important for companies as they venture beyond their domestic markets. German engineering, French wine, Swiss watches, Japanese electronics, 100 percent pure New Zealand, and Malaysia-truly Asia are few known examples of such COO effect. It has been proven in academic research that COO effect does have an influence on customers' perceptions towards products/services/brands.

What can government do to facilitate in the process?
For branding to thrive, one of the essential requirements is an effective implementation of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws. Given the huge counterfeit market for global brands in many Asian markets (especially in China), brands cannot survive in the absence of strong IPR laws. Government can and should play a fundamental role in ensuring that the IPR laws of the land are strong and are implemented right. Such a role would be instrumental in ensuring that companies invest in building brands.