Insight
How to adapt to local conditions while keeping the core of a brand going overseas?
Martin, Founder of Puro, shared his practice of multinational brand management.
(Abstract Record: Wei Hong-ie / Brand Consultant, Process Pro Brand Taiwan)
Taiwan is a highly export-oriented island, and many enterprises rely on export sales for growth. However, with fluctuating exchange rates and increasing tariff uncertainty, the risk of relying on a single market is rapidly magnifying, so branding a diversified overseas market will be a development direction that enterprises must consider.
Taking the opportunity of Pro Founder Martin's visit to Taipei, we invited him to share his many years of experience in brand consulting and in-house practice. From the perspective of brand management, we hope to help Taiwan brands make sufficient preparations for going overseas and steadily build competitive multinational brands.
(Martin, the founder of Puro, sharing the picture with Puro colleagues: Martin in white sweater)
Talking about "queuing": consistency is never a trivial matter.
At the beginning of the sharing, Martin first shared his observations about Switzerland and Taiwan. He believes that both are export-oriented countries, and their people are quite similar in many character traits: well-educated, orderly, punctual, and hard-working, which is the reason why he believes that Pro can take deep roots in Taiwan and operate the company with the Swissness made in Taiwan. For him, this is the reason why Pro has been able to establish deep roots in Taiwan and run the company with a Swissness made in Taiwan orientation.
He uses the small matter of "queuing" as an example: at the airport, if people can wait in an orderly fashion and reserve space for each other, the overall operation will naturally run smoothly; on the other hand, if everyone rushes to the front, it will seem faster in the short term, but will be more chaotic in the long term. In his view, queuing reflects the fact that things move more smoothly when everyone is willing to follow the same set of rules, which is a key prerequisite for many cross-border collaborations to work in the long term.
In the era of information overload, brands need to reduce the "cost of recognition".
Martin then brought the topic back to the brands in our lives, pointing out that the number of brands we come into contact with every day has far exceeded the load on our brains, and that in the highly overloaded environment of modern information, the brain can only retain a few familiar and trustworthy signals. Therefore, the real competition in brand communication is to reduce the cost of customer identification by enhancing impression and familiarity. When the audience can skip the "who are you" step, they can directly deliver the message they want to communicate, which is a great advantage in the fast-paced, information-explosion era.
He also pointed out through an example that in a fast decision-making situation, what people recognize is not the words, but the shape, color and overall proportion of the logo, which brings him back to the three core principles of brand management:
1. Conciseness: the more concise, the better it is to be understood quickly.
2. Continuity: Repeated use to build long-term memory.
3. Consistency: Consistent performance, cumulative familiarity and trust.
Going overseas is not a matter of will, but of mechanism.
On a practical level, Martin points out a common misunderstanding: many people think that cross-border brand consistency relies on headquarters control or personal will, but in reality, it is impossible to maintain long-term without a mechanism.
The first key is internal branding. Employees are the first line of brand ambassadors, and if you can't effectively get your global members to understand the brand's values, inconsistencies are likely to arise when these people communicate externally.
The second common problem comes from organizational structure: in large organizations, the branding department is often located too low in the organizational hierarchy, and when messages have to be cascaded up the hierarchy, the content can easily be diluted and distorted, resulting in distorted decision-making and implementation.
Seeking Common Ground amidst Differences in Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Contexts
Martin concludes with a couple of examples to wrap up his thoughts on the judgment of cross-border brand management and communication, which actually translates to something close to "seeking common ground amidst differences" in Chinese.
“Vorsprung durch Technik”
Audi has been using the classic German slogan for more than 50 years, since 1972.
These choices are not design preferences but strategic and management judgments. The challenge for brands going global is how to communicate differently to different markets, respond more effectively to the expectations of the customer base, but at the same time, convey a consistent core brand spirit.
