A majority of consumers in Asia-Pacific, as elsewhere, believe that brands can make the world a better place, but global brands will have to work significantly harder than local ones to persuade them.
Richard McCabe, regional strategy director/APAC at McCann Worldgroup, addressed this topic at the recent Advertising Week APAC conference, where he noted there has been a sharp increase in preference for local brands in recent years.
McCann Worldgroup’s The Truth about Global Brands study found that the percentage of Asia-Pacific consumers expressing such partiality increased from 40% to 59% between 2015 and 2018
Local brands are perceived as behaving in a more interesting and innovative way compared to global brands, he reported. (For more details, read WARC’s report: What diversity means to consumers around the world – and where brands fit in.)
And he highlighted three core characteristics of local Asian disruptor brands:
• Fast-follower mindset: flexible, agile and brave; following intuition over logic; using a test/learn/iterate approach.
• Catch the wave: identify ever-changing trends and emergent partnerships.
• Hyper-local insights and experience design: local provenance and experience are essential.
“There’s a kind of Asian disruptor filter that takes it even farther, even deeper, and [makes it] even more exciting,” said McCabe.
He pointed to Gojek, an Indonesia-based enterprise, as an example of how a business that came about as a solution to Jakarta’s terrible traffic has expanded to provide a suite of services that includes payments and food delivery.
“There’s even a phrase now about ‘Gojek-ing yourself somewhere,’” he said. “It’s an example of brands that are really thinking about things in a different way.
“So, be it a global brand or local brand, instead of thinking about, ‘Would this work in this country?’, can we think more about, ‘Does it work for this country?’”
Sourced from WARC
Sourced from WARC
