Grow My Brand, Please, Taiwan-Style

11/11/2009 - Part of TCBN's Global Brands Series
Okazaki Shigeo has extensive knowledge how Japanese, Chinese, and US brands operate, adapt, and fail in the global marketplace.  As a managing director at Dentsu Advertising, Okazaki advises companies on global brand management.



Okazaki Shigeo straddles three commercial cultures: Japan, China, and the US. Working for Dentsu Advertising, Mr. Okazaki advises companies on global brand management. At the US-China Global Brand Summit held recently in Chicago, Mr. Okazaki shared his perspective on the challenges facing US and Chinese firms when launching in each other’s market place.

First of all, the American brands launching into the Chinese market: what types of challenges are waiting for them? Actually, I call China a “lab” of brand strategies, because in China, not only American brands, but also Japanese brands, Korean brands, European brands are competing against each other, in addition to very, very strong local Chinese brands. So don’t underestimate the power of Chinese local brands besides those multinational brands. For example, Coca Cola is said to be a great success case in China. However, Coca Cola is always threatened by local big brands such as Kang Shi Fu, Wahaha, and all these big guys are competing against Coca Cola. And also in auto market, not only Volkswagen, Audi, Buick, Honda, Toyota, there are hundreds of local Chinese brands. And also mobile phones: Nokia is still strong, Motorola is still strong, but they’re faced with the strong competition against Chinese brands. So the big challenge there is that there are really lots of competitors including Chinese brands. And some Chinese consumers (actually a lot of them) prefer Chinese brands over European, American, Japanese brands because, you know, sentiment. They love China, and sometimes they become very patriotic. So I think that’s the biggest challenge not only for American brands, but also multinational, global brands.

But the Chinese brands launching into the American market, they face tougher situations because first of all, those Chinese brands are very little known. And also it takes a lot of years – decades – to be accepted and trusted by American consumers. It took 2-3 decades for Japanese companies to be accepted by the American market. So I think it’s going to take a longer time for Chinese companies to be trusted in this market. So what they could do is a step by step approach. First: reliability, quality issue. Unless your products are trusted you cannot improve your brand power. So I think the challenges are pretty different, but both American brands and Chinese brands have a pretty tough time launching into those types of markets.

Where can Chinese firms look for good examples of global expansion?

China can learn from within. I mean Taiwan. Politically Taiwan belongs to China. However, Taiwan acts pretty independently, and in Taiwan the Taiwan government helps a lot in promoting Taiwanese brands going to global arena. Look at Acer, ASUS, and Giant. Giant is a very well-known bicycle brand. And they have still others in software industries. The Taiwanese government has a special squad called TAITRA. They help promote the Taiwanese brands into the global arena, and of course Taiwanese brands started as an OEM – so no brand. OEM, and second step is original design manufacturing (ODM) and then onto original brand manufacturing. So I think China has a great showcase within, and that’s Taiwan. But I’m not very sure right now China or Chinese government is learning from those experiences, the Taiwan brands that went into the global arena. But I think they should learn from that.

And of course they can learn from Korea, Japan. Anyway, for Japanese brands Sony, Panasonic, Toyota; Korean brands LG, Samsung, Hyundai – it all took several decades (30 years). If China wishes to accomplish that global branding in ten years – let’s say ten years – then they have to follow the Taiwanese model because that was more efficient and quicker.


To find out more about Okazaki’s perspectives, find him from his current position as Managing Director of Dentsu’s Strategic Resource Center in Beijing.