IIPM

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Picking brand names in China is a business itself

Western companies choosing a brand name in China now rely on consultants and linguistic analyses to ensure that consumers are attracted rather than amused or even repelled

After a hard day’s labour, your average upscale Beijinger likes nothing more than to shuck his dress shoes for a pair of Enduring and Persevering, rev up his Precious Horse and head to the pub for a tall, frosty glass of Happiness Power.

Or, if he’s a teetotaler, a bottle of Tasty Fun.

To Westerners, that’s Nike, BMW, Heineken and Coca-Cola, respectively. And those who wish to snicker should feel free: The companies behind these names are laughing too – all the way to the bank.

More than many nations, China is a place where names are imbued with deep significance. Western companies looking to bring their products to China face a problem not unlike that of Chinese parents naming a baby boy: little Gang (“strong”) may be regarded quite differently than little Yun (“cloud”). Given that China’s market for consumer goods is growing by better than 13% annually – and luxury-goods sales by 25% – an off-key name could have serious financial consequences.

And so the art of picking a brand name that resonates with Chinese consumers is no longer an art. It has become a sort of science, with consultants, computer programmes and linguistic analyses to ensure that what tickles a Mandarin ear does not grate on a Cantonese one.

Art “is only a very, very tiny piece of it,” said Vladimir Djurovic, President of Labbrand Consulting Co. in Shanghai, which has made a business of finding names for Western companies entering the Chinese market.

Maybe. But there is a lot of artistry in the best of the West.

The paradigm probably is the Chinese name for Coca-Cola, Kekoukele, which not only sounds like Coke’s English name, but conveys its essence of taste and fun in a way that the original name could not hope to match.

There are many others. Consider Tide detergent, Taizi, whose Chinese characters literally mean “gets rid of dirt.” (Characters are important: the same sound written differently could mean “too purple.”)

There is also Reebok, or Rui bu, which means “quick steps.” And Colgate – Gao lu jie – which translates into “revealing superior cleanliness.” And Lay’s snack foods – Le shi – whose name means “happy things.” Nike (Nai ke) and BMW (Bao Ma, echoing the first two sounds of its English and German names) also have worn well on Chinese ears.

Still, finding a good name involves more than coming up with clever homonyms to the original English.

“Do you want to translate your name, or come up with a Chinese brand?” said Monica Lee, the Managing Director of The Brand Union, a Beijing consultant. “If you go for phonetic sounds, everyone knows where you are from – you’re immediately identified as a foreign brand.” For some products, having a foreign-sounding name lends a cachet that a true Chinese name would lack. Many upscale brands like Cadillac (Ka di la ke), or Hilton (Xi er dun), employ phonetic translations that mean nothing in Chinese Rolls-Royce (Laosi-Laisi) includes two Chinese characters for “labour” and “plants” that more or less have become standard usage in foreign names – all to achieve a distinct foreign look and sound.

But on the other hand, a genuine Chinese name can say things about a product that a mere collection of homonyms never could. Take Citibank, Hua qi yinhang, which literally means “star-spangled banner bank,” or Marriott, Wan hao, or “10,000 wealthy elites.” Or Pentium, Ben teng, which means “galloping.” Asked to introduce Marvel comics to China, the Labbrand consultants came up not long ago with “Man wei” – roughly phonetic, foreign-sounding and eminently suited to superheroes with the meaning “comic power.”

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

IIPM Best B School India
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
IIPM in sync with the best of the business world.......
IIPM Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri on Internet Hooliganism
Arindam Chaudhuri: We need Hazare's leadership
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM RANKED NO.1 in MAIL TODAY B-SCHOOL RANKINGS
Planman Technologies
IIPM Contact Info
IIPM History
IIPM Think Tank
IIPM Infrastructure
IIPM Info
IIPM: Selection Process
IIPM: Research and Publications
IIPM MBA Institute India

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

NO CARDS, NO CASH... THE WALLET IS A PHONE [not yet!]

The wallet app from Google holds many promises. But google needs to surpass many big hurdles before it can replace plastic money

Plenty of companies would love to get their hands on our wallets. But Google wants to go one step further – it wants to be our wallets.

Its new phone software, called Google Wallet, is intended to replace the credit cards in our actual wallets. It does sound pretty spectacular, doesn’t it? No fishing plastic cards out of wallets, no paper slips, no signatures. Everything is handled securely, instantly, conveniently, with one tap of your phone at the register. Europeans and Asians already routinely pay for things that way. But there are enough footnotes to fill a podiatry journal.

At the moment, the free Google Wallet app runs on only a single cellphone model: Sprint’s Google Nexus S, which runs Google’s Android software. That’s because Google Wallet requires a special NFC chip (near-field communications), and the Nexus S is one of the few phones so equipped.

Someday, Google says, many more phones will have NFC chips. The company says that it is in talks with every major Android phone maker.

The next question: Where can you use Wallet to pay for things? Google had the inspired idea of teaming up with MasterCard, which has already installed NFC readers at 150,000 merchants in the US and 230,000 overseas. You can see the black MasterCard PayPass terminals all over the place.

That’s 150,000 companies; the total number of physical stores is far higher. Someday, Google says, the readers will be installed at cash registers all across this great land. Think of Wallet as a copy of your actual credit card. Wherever you might swipe a credit card, you can tap your phone instead. At the moment, though, the only credit card Wallet can impersonate is a Citibank MasterCard.

Someday, Google says, all kinds of credit cards from all kinds of banks will work with Wallet.

If you don’t have a Citibank MasterCard, you can still use Wallet. On the screen where you select which credit card you want to use, you’ll find an imaginary one called Google Prepaid Card. It comes with $10 of credit – Google’s gift to you, O Early Adopter – but right there on the phone, you can preload it with more money from another credit card.

All right. So you’re in a drugstore, and the cashier announces the total, “$31.24”. At the exact moment when you would ordinarily swipe your credit card, you simply turn on the phone. (You don’t have to fire up the Wallet app first.) You hold it against the PayPass terminal and enter your four-digit password. The screen says “Sent,” and the terminal’s screen says “Authorising ... Approved ... Balance $0. Thank you!”

Security, Google says, is baked into the system from the beginning. The phone’s NFC chip is completely deactivated when the screen is off. That’s to prevent sneaky evildoers from “skimming” (reading) your credit card information.

A shame, really; Google says that the NFC chip could work even when the phone was off, meaning you could keep using it to buy things. But Google chose to emphasise security over convenience; as a result, the phone is useless as a wallet once its battery is dead.

The pass code requirement is intended to prevent people from buying stuff with your phone if it’s lost or stolen, since they won’t know the code. (And if they guess wrong five times in a row, the whole Wallet becomes unusable. You have to contact Google and explain yourself.)

Of course, the four-digit pass code requirement also sucks most of the fun and convenience out of the whole phone-as-wallet concept. Tapping out the pass code on small keys on a not-always-responsive touch screen is a hassle, and not demonstrably faster than signing a regular credit card slip. Why can’t we disable that requirement according to our own paranoia levels?

You can’t even pick an easy-to-type pass code to save yourself effort; Wallet won’t accept codes like 1234 or 1111.

(Besides, the stolen-phone defense doesn’t hold water. Trust me: If you lose your phone, you’ll know it. You’ll be on your bank’s customer service hotline to freeze your account before you can say, “my stomach is in knots.”)

So if Wallet isn’t vastly more convenient than swiping a credit card, what’s the point?

Google has an answer for that: SingleTap.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

IIPM Best B School India
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
IIPM in sync with the best of the business world.......
IIPM Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri on Internet Hooliganism
Arindam Chaudhuri: We need Hazare's leadership
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM RANKED NO.1 in MAIL TODAY B-SCHOOL RANKINGS
Planman Technologies

Friday, December 23, 2011

“We are reaching out”

As Rameet reveals, McDonald’s is up to some interesting new product and service innovations, even as it looks to better leverage the web as a medium

The much-touted ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ experience and customer satisfaction is at the core of everything that McDonald’s does. As times have evolved, the company has also re-invigorated itself and consolidated its position. Rameet Arora, who has taken charge of driving growth for the brand and the business last year when he moved on from Colors, talks to mona mehta about the new initiatives and the use of the online medium:

How has the “Breakfast Menu” strategy taken off in terms of generating targeted revenues?
The breakfast menu added a new day part to McDonald’s as the outlets serving breakfast had to open at 7 am as opposed to 9 or 10 am. The campaign to promote the new breakfast menu was based on the research done that showed that at least 60% of the working population has breakfast on the move at least once a week. The creatives show breakfast items such as a hot cup of coffee and a muffin or pancakes, with an antonymic play on words like ‘Rise - Shine’, ‘Wake up - Get up’, ‘Grumpy - Chirpy’, ‘Skip work - Skip to work’, and ‘Morning - Good morning’. The copy also read ‘Good morning. Great breakfast’. This helped establish McDonald’s as an all day dining destination catering to all meal times.

What new delivery touchpoints are you planning for the Indian market?
Customer convenience and service are highly critical factors in driving growth in any industry and key impetus is on product and service innovation and customer orientation. McDonald’s today has evolved from just attracting customers to their restaurants. McDonald’s is increasingly reaching out to customers leveraging a range of innovative retail formats ranging from Kiosk, drive through’s and MYF. McDonald’s also has outlets at various petrol pumps for which we have formed an alliance with the leading oil companies of India like HPCL, BPCL and most recently IOC. In addition, McDonald’s India has also given consumers the convenience of formats such as home delivery and web delivery through which they can enjoy their favourite McDonald’s products.

Keeping in mind where the customer is and the fast reach of the web, McDonald’s has successfully explored the medium of technology to reach out to the consumers. McDonald’s was one of the very few food brands to extend reach to customer through QR code technology.

What is your take on promoting/launching new McDonald’s products through the internet? What are the challenges?
The advancement of technology and the widespread reach that the internet provides a brand is unquestionable in today’s tech savvy scenario. However because internet is such a dynamic field, we are just as good as our last idea and innovation in this medium is of key importance. For the launch of the McSpicy range, McDonald’s launched its first ever viral campaign. A video uploaded on Facebook and YouTube showed the other products at McDonald’s anticipating the arrival of new competition in the form of the spicy products. This viral campaign was supported by the microsite, specially created for McSpicy. We used QR codes for this campaign, which allowed customers easy, on the move access on their cell phones. With the McFlurry launch, we have taken a step ahead with QR technology and are working with Image recognition technology, where anyone clicking on a picture of McFlurry will be directed to the McDonald’s website/McFlurry microsite.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Just update us on your M&A budgets please!

The security industry is desperately looking for ideas to cope with increasing threats to companies in cyber space, & most ideas are coming from start ups. So how do the leaders cope?

At times, the manner in which we relentlessly surf the web and exchange critical and non-critical information over the web so nonchalantly does cause a lot of surprise. We aren’t really thinking of our vulnerability to cyber attacks in those moments, are we? And that’s after the spate of attacks & breaches on companies like Sony, Bank of America, Wipro, et al & even on national networks that have made headlines. The recent one affected top defence contractors to the Japanese government like Mitsubhishi Heavy Industries and shocked the world. If they are vulnerable, where are smaller companies, or even average consumers headed?

For security companies, of course, this is a sign of business opportunity as well as a challenge to match the dynamically changing security needs of the organisations of today. As per Gartner estimates, the global security software market aggreagated a turnover of $16.5 billion in 2010, a rise by 12% yoy. The market is led by Symantec with a revenue of $3.12 billion in 2010 (market share of 18.9%) followed by McAfee with revenues of $1.71 billion (market share of 10.4%) and TrendMicro with a revenue of $1.04 billion and market share of 6.3%. It’s still a highly fragmented market, considering that the top five vendors account for 44.3% of the global market. The battle for market share between these top five in particular is only going to intensify in the coming months, and there is a lot of inorganic activity expected, since a number of the new innovations in this increasingly complex arena lie to a large extent with smaller companies and start ups. “Products within the security market are undergoing rapid evolution, in terms of both new delivery models – with security as a service showing increasing popularity – and new technologies being introduced, often by startup companies,” asserts Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner.

At the top is the bitter rivalry between Symantec, McAfee & TrendMicro. Symantec continues to be especially aggressive on acquisitions and has acquired 25 companies since 2005. Its recent deals include Clearwell Systems for their eDiscovery Solution this year, and acquired Verisign’s Security Services (for their online identity protection portfolio), RuleSpace (URL filtering functionality), PGP Corporation & GuardianEdge (e-mail & data encryption) and Gideon Technologies (standards-based information security solutions) in 2010. McAfee has become a unique case. Its CEO had promised at least 3-4 acquisitions every year in early 2010, but the company was itself acquired by microprocessor giant Intel for a whopping $7.7 billion last year. Intel’s sudden diversification to this space has surprised many. The company hopes to bundle hardware security capability with McAfee’s software credentials to be able to undo some of the disadvantages it has of not being there in the mobile space and facing increasing competition from rivals. The number 3 player TrendMicro acquired mobile encryption player Mobile Armor last year to boost its capabilities in the mobile space. The acquisition of TrendMicro expands its portfolio to serve the growing cloud space. As remote management of infrastructure becomes a reality with increasing cloud adoption (globally a $1.6 billion market as per IDC), it is becoming a huge opportunity for security firms.