Forward-thinking global brands must look to emerging markets
A special report in this week’s Economist, entitled, ‘The new masters of management’, stresses the fact that the world’s emerging markets are now a hotbed of business innovation. These burgeoning economies are no longer content to be sources of cheap hands and low-cost brains. “Instead,” says the report, they are “producing breakthroughs in everything from telecoms to car-making to healthcare.”
You need only take a few examples to see this point clearly illustrated – and there are many to choose from. Mexico’s CEMEX is now the largest cement company in America and the third largest in the world; Acer of Taiwan is vying to become the world’s second-biggest manufacturer of personal computers; South Korea’s Samsung is one of the world’s best known makers of electronic goods. The list goes on… and on.
These brands are redesigning business processes in order to do things better and faster than their rivals in the West. And this does not mean simply reducing costs, but also employing new technologies.
In marketing terms, too, both Western and emerging-country companies are waking up to the fact that they need to try harder if they are to prosper in these booming markets: “It is not enough to concentrate on the Gucci and Mercedes crowd; they have to learn how to appeal to the billions of people who live outside Shanghai and Bangalore, from the rising middle classes in second-tier cities to the farmers in isolated villages.”
This means rethinking everything from products to distribution systems – and that most certainly includes the implementation of global marketing efforts. This new world order requires smarter ways of designing products and organising processes to reach the billions of consumers who are just entering the global market.
The marketing planning process must take all this into account. Advertising and marketing agencies in the developed nations cannot afford to sit in their ivory towers. The report stresses the need to take inspiration from this wave of frequently low-cost, disruptive innovations from the East, which are likely to shake many industries to their foundations.
The recession-struck West could learn more than a few tricks from its emerging rivals. In fact, by viewing challenges as opportunities, rather than risks, as many in the developing world have been doing for some time, “this great insurrection,” according to The Economist, “will make us all richer.”
Tags: Global Brand
