Asia’s Star Brands
By Paul Temporal. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Singapore, 2006. 301 pages. $30.95 (pb). ISBN 0 47082156 5.
As someone who is interested in international marketing and constantly on the lookout for examples of marketing in practice, I was really looking forward to reading this book. However, I found it somewhat disappointing because it did not help my knowledge of Asian markets, people or companies.
The ‘star brands’ identified were not always Asian, either. For example, a German goes to Thailand, adopts their idea for a ‘tonic drink’ and starts selling as a joint venture in Europe. This is the Red Bull Story and, yes, it was successful, but … what I want to know is where is ‘ Asia’ in this story? Would a uniquely Asian approach be as successful?
This question arose because many of the cases are not Asian at all. For example, last time I looked, Jim Thompson came from the United States, Sir Stamford Raffles was ‘old British empire’ and Emirates is located in the Middle East.
The lessons learned from this book might be that to be successful you should be anything but Asian. I don’t think this message is an accurate portrayal of the potential of Asia in a globalising world.
The book tries to cover the branding aspects of success and attempts to be a text book set of cases. However, it does not quite meet either of those objectives. First, if you knew anything about branding (which most of us in marketing do), this book does not tell you anything new or different.
In Reis and Trout parlance, it fails the differentiation test and does not claim a unique position in the marketplace (in this case the mind of the reader). If you knew nothing at all about branding it would be equally as problematic because it is so filled with marketing jargon that an outsider would have difficulty interpreting it.
Second, while I feel sorry for case study writers in this day and age of real-time Internet updating, much of the information provided is already out of date and/or is readily accessible from websites – in which case justifying the book’s price tag is an issue.
However, what it does do is summarise a lot of material. This function has value if you are time poor and need a refresher course in branding strategy.
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