The Malaysian Business Times has an article today where local branding expert Peter Pek says the nation is 10–15 years behind South Korea in the profession:

He said Malaysia has not been strong in branding and has not placed much importance in it until now. People are starting to realise that they need something else and that the product alone cannot survive.
   “The Government knows that we have to move away from being an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) service type of country to become brand owners. I feel that they are aware of this and it is in line with our economic policy.
   “We need to become owners of intellectual property like brands, and we need to build these brands,” Pek said.

   When I travelled to Malaysia in 2002 to inform business owners of the same, I recall that many folks did not take kindly to it. Oddly, and if I may generalize, the Chinese were the sceptics, while the native Malays accepted the suggestions. The overriding criticism was that I did not give them a how-to on how to get rich. But there is no formula to branding: I could only give general guidelines, and that wasn’t good enough.
   Now:

Under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, the Government announced an extra RM100 million to the RM100 million branding and promotion grant available to small and medium enterprises here.

   Grouping branding and promotion together indicates that the government considers the two to be closer than they really are.
   But branding is for the long term—a generation or more—a promotion often less so. To me, branding has more in common with the aims of the RM600 million in the country’s Strategic Investment Fund. (Nevertheless, I applaud Malaysia for at least identifying an issue and trying to do something about it.)
   Branding is about deep, internally directed research, and a clear vision. It’s about interaction with consumers, and making use of every single channel available. We, as brand consultants, can only do so much: perhaps akin to a doctor, we can only help a patient that wants to get better. The organizational will has to be there, too.
   Pek has a better idea than most, from what I can tell—he is certainly making the right noises. Hopefully, he will be more successful than I was in waking businesses up to the notion that there are no hard and fast rules to branding, and any useful solution must be unique to the organization.

Del.icio.us tags: branding Malaysia brands government national plan Posted by Jack Yan, 13:31  permalink

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