Brand Strategy & Development Agency Bangkok

Brand strategy is essentially your strategy for entering, and then conquering your market segment. It firstly defines your brand identity, your market positioning and the marketing efforts that will target and entice your target audience. It is, fundamentally, the means for building lifetime connections with people, connections that will turn them into loyal customers and, ultimately, sponsors your products.

We understand that few businesses have the budgets of a Nike or McDonalds and that brand building often needs to be done on a tight budget. There are ways, though, that we can help you generate excellent returns for a small investment in brand strategy:

Consistent Social Media Presence: Essentially free to use (or perhaps with a minimal financial investment), social media’s ability to reach a large number of people in just a matter of seconds has given new meaning to the information era.

Content Marketing: A constant presence on the Internet will keep you relevant, and once you build a following, it is essential to keep the attention of your customers. Videos, photos, blogs are all ways of boosting your presence through new content.

Email Marketing: Virtually everyone has an email address and this is the perfect avenue f to send out information to your customers. Blogs, new product launches, promotions can all be communicated via eye-catching, attractive email marketing.

Our diverse and well-varied experience both in Bangkok, Thailand and international market has acquainted us with most of industries. We will liaise closely with you to gain a comprehensive understanding of your business and will work side by side with you to develop a comprehensive plan of action for your brand strategy long term success.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and the time frame in which a brand strategy can be developed from birth to release can vary, but some experts say a successful brand can take up to 5 years to become established in the market place. The inherent strengths of your brand strategy, uniqueness of product offering, compelling visual identity, and strong marketing plans all help with the process.

Trademarks fall under the broad umbrella of “intellectual property,” along with copyrights and patents and in general apply to logos, symbols, and branding. Some business owners assume that trademarking is just for global brands, but protecting your hard work and your brand identity is just as important for small businesses, and we do recommend you protect your unique identity. Costs vary depending on what you are trademarking but it is not as expensive as you might think, and we can recommend highly professional and trustworthy lawyers to assist the process.

Many companies who attempt to manage global brands in a standardized way find themselves stymied by differences across markets. Brand strategy C-D maps offer a way to visualize differences in consumer perceptions and performance across markets.

Many companies who attempt to manage global brands in a standardized way find themselves stymied by differences across markets. There is an ongoing dilemma at play – on one side of the coin, companies want their brands to be “central” in their category, to be the representative and yardstick of its sector (think, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s) but also to be distinctive in a way that makes it stand out from the rest of the market. Indeed, highly successful brands are those that embrace a balance between the two. Brands such as Apple and Porsche are excellent examples of such success.

There are numerous theories and papers that propose different numbers of brand types, but we agree with the views of many brand strategists who suggest there are 4 main classifications:

– Unconventional Brands
Very distinctive, niche brands that tend to achieve profitability through high prices rather than sales volume.

– Aspirational Brands
Probably the most profitable brand type, aspirational brands command premium prices whilst also enjoying high sales volumes, primarily because they are highly regarded by their consumers. Owners of these brands need to walk a bit of a tightrope in order to maintain their position and appeal, to ensure they remain popular without becoming mundanely middle-of-the-road. This invariably means high marketing and advertising investment to fight off competitive challenges.

– Peripheral Brands
Neither held in high regard, nor selling in particularly high volumes, peripheral brands are often positioned as low priced alternatives to more mainstream brands. Profitability can still be enjoyed though, due to the need for little investment in marketing and innovation.

– Mainstream Brands
The mainstream category consists of solid, worthy, mature brands that have been around seemingly for ever, but lack a distinctiveness, a “wow” factor. Nevertheless, brand loyalty and competitive pricing generate high sales volumes, and resultant good profitability.

At Asia Media, Bangkok, we truly believe that a complete long term brand strategy goes through a four-stage process ( those steps needs to be followed in this specific order):

1. Brand Positioning: clear and consistent positioning is imperative to attract and convert the target audience. This positioning may be based on one of three levels – physical product attributes, product benefits or beliefs, and values. The most successful brands will have developed a positioning based on beliefs and values as this engages customers on a deep, emotional level that creates surprise and excitement. The brand positioning process also involves establishing a mission for the brand and a simple and honest vision of what the brand should be.
2. Naming and Branding Decisions; the brand’s name is the first fundamental of the brand, and not a decision to take lightly – it will define the brand for years to come. Ideally, it should: imply the brand’s qualities and benefits; be recognizable and memorable; be distinctive; be capable of extending into new markets; be registrable and legally protectable.
3. Brand Sponsorship: the brand owner needs to determine the route to market he wishes to pursue – manufacturer’s brand, retailer’s label; co-branding; licensed branding.
4. Brand Development: the one thing that is certain in the world of business is that you cannot see standstill. Competition in most, if not all, markets are intense, and your success will depend on your ability to stay ahead of others in the market. Options include line extensions – more pack sizes, more varieties; brand extension – taking your brand into new markets where the brand’s positioning fits well; new brand development – deciding your existing brand portfolio has matured, and you require a new brand.

Brand migration is really a pretty extreme form of brand extension, whereby the brand’s name and values are transferred into totally new and unrelated categories. To do so successfully requires a stringent assessment to determine whether or not the proposed migration is a good match with your brand values, and often requires more than just the power and awareness of the brand on its own. The “plus factor” could only be by implication, by using, say, country-of-origin as a branding statement –  for example, a company moving into the watch market may endorse its product with “Made in Switzerland,” bringing all that country’s renowned watch- and clock-making tradition to the table. Alternatively, two well-known brands can link – for example, when Ferrari launched its laptop, it teamed up with Acer.

In our view, brand migration is a high-risk and expensive strategy and one that should only be considered when all other options have been exploited and exhausted.

Not all all. Our client portfolio includes clients from Europe, America, and Southeast Asia, and we have never encountered problems. Modern technology makes the transfer of information instantaneous, and we find email and video communication is always more than sufficient to progress a project to a successful conclusion. Of course, if you are ever in Thailand, you are still very welcome to visit us in our conveniently located downtown Bangkok offices…!

A complete “top to bottom” branding project covers a multiple of disciplines, and our knowledgeable in-house specialists will be involved at each of the different stages. You will be assigned a Senior Account Executive who will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the project, and he or she will involve brand experts, marketing personnel, designers, and developers as the project progresses.