HOW to identify or develop top 100 name brands in Pakistan? How to streamline a process to create such unique identities at fraction of cost while western brands are yawning to go to sleep? While the challenges of building a finer image of Pakistan is on the forefront, the first question is, can a nation be branded? A country can pick and choose certain dynamic activities and commercial projects and products to create world class brands. The best would uniquely be associated with Pakistan and deliver a message of quality. This remedy is readily available as a lot of corporations are ready to take off.
Critical issue: All key corporations irrespective of industry have an opportunity to properly introduce existing or new brands with new images and new global name identities, letting the world to interact with them at a very high quality of design and packaging.
Using cyber-branding at a fraction of cost and using the name identity as a marketing weapon. Naming, branding and packaging are something that most emerging and developing countries have not yet done successfully. The question is not how, it’s rather why.
Wrong impressions: East was branded by the West as a no-good-land full of not-so-good people and over a century it did work. However in reality, today West is stacked up with top quality merchandise from the East. While here in the East the manufacturing barons are comfortably producing the world’s best merchandise and are fully content with a minuscule margin.
The lack of knowledge or understanding of creating image, name identities and branding has become a big problem. But in reality, producing merchandise is ten times more complex and far more difficult than the branding process itself.
Wrong approach: The entrepreneurs who tried to beat the trends and went straight after building big brands, took some beating. Their approach was very simple and very pragmatic. Pick a name out of a hat, pick a logo and some colours and this was making of a global branding solution. This is a wrong approach.
In the fifties, this is how it was done in the West too, and this is how General Motors or IBM was created. Not today. Creation of a master branding strategy, a proper corporate image, a powerful logo and finally the most important part of the entire exercise, creating a unique global name identity, all put together is a science.
Opportunity: While the pundits are working hard to figure out the reasons the fact remains that the world trade has come to a major cross road of the century. There will be new winners and new losers.
The IT sector in Pakistan plus the quota free textile exporters are just some sectors offering new frontiers where they can quickly capitalize on the shift in the blowing trade winds.
ABC Namebank, is trying to identify top 100 Pakistani name brands from various sectors. The study is designed to show case to the world the top corporate and consumer brand names, and to demonstrate which ones are poised to go outward and reach the farthest shores.
“ With better understanding, Pakistan can surely build solid brand name identities” say Mr. Khalid Awan, Chairman TCS, a courier company in Pakistan. “We had a vision to build a name and have done so and we are expanding into other markets”, says Mr. Awan.
The government’s position is very clear: “we are at a serious crossroads and global branding of our technology will boost not only our over all image but help other industries in a big way” says Awais Leghari, federal minister of IT and Telecommunications.
The name identity of a business will now be the only measure on how a name works in a micro-multi-national-formation in a maze of countries and cultures. Economical powers are now being defined by their accumulative name brand powers and cyber-presence with simultaneous accessibilities in targeted countries. Here, big cumbersome graphic visuals are replaced by fluid URL’s, thus creating a new name-economy accessible only through global cyber branding of name identities.
When organized these outward bound brands will act as ambassadors of Pakistan enhancing the image of the country. Further benefits would be the national awareness and the appreciation towards creating image and name identity value among the young and emerging enterprises. This could set the stage for a branding revolution in the country.
Grass root branding: A good revolution requires three things: an idea, a massive application and an inexpensive distribution of the idea. In Pakistan, every businessman is vying for achieving a celebrity status and is begging for attention for his products and services. A right desire indeed.
In this case, all it takes is a mass education over an extremely short period of time for the revolutionary fires to start. This is how IT revolutions and consumer branding was started in the West.
The cost of training 5000-10,000 executives and businessmen about the fine art of global corporate name identity management is so small and so doable in this prime and ready market. The contents, ideas, technologies and the support services are in place for years and all is needed is the top leaderships to create a simple platform and a sponsor to go ahead.
The message is very clear for the government bodies to offer venues where large groups of corporations could interact and learn about global branding crafts and also for the large enterprises to conduct internal branding clinics for their key teams to fully understand the new marketing and global name identities issues in a formal way.
The current technologies applied in global cyber-branding are at fraction of the cost compared to the old fashioned adverting budgets and sooner the bigger companies understand the better. This is also a blessing for medium and smaller companies in getting on the right footing right from the start. Branding of a nation via top 100 name brands is the way. A grass root branding revolution awaits.
