Building Your Global Brand

Making your brand stand out in the market can be a long process but once you achieve it your brand must be able to create brand memorability and sustain itself. Great brands have established this through the realisation of the right branding. So, why is the right branding important? Right branding helps to instill brand knowledge and brand value in the brand through brand culture, people, systems, training, brand distribution and brand alignment for a brand to go further. This will lead to the company growing brands that people can learn to trust and play the role of the mother brand with a very strong foundation and good vision.

A good example of a company with strong branding will be the French fashion house Hermès (pronounced as ‘air-may’). It started off in 1837 by Thierry Hermès who set up a harness workshop catering for European noblemen and responsible for creating one of the highly sought after harnesses and bridles for the carriage trade. Hermès became the new leader in saddlery as it began to conduct retail sales that captured worldwide elite attention from countries like Europe, North Africa, Russia, Asia and the Americas. As the years went on this brand continued to build its reputation and gain recognition, for instance Hermès was the first to obtain exclusive rights to introduce zippers for leather goods and clothing. Hermès also introduced original handbags, jewellery, accessories and silk scarves into their product line. The brand was quick to reach its renowned status as products like the leather zippered golfing jacket, Kelly bag and silk scarves that were a favourite among royalties such as the Prince of Wales, Princess of Monaco and Queen Elizabeth II.

Hermès is a successful brand today because it has a classic brand culture of strong preservation of heritage practised over the generations. The brand culture is to concentrate on high quality materials, craftsmanship and customisation – their trademark over the years. Their signature silk scarves are woven from the silk of 250 mulberry moth cocoons, hand-printed using multiple silk screens and hand-stitched hems. In most of their scarves, their prominent brand element of equestrian motifs are displayed. Visionary leaders in the brand played their part as well, like Émile-Maurice the creator of Hermès custom-made handbags in various colours, sizes and styles. Louis Dumas-Hermès was another visionary leader who gave the brand a new look by bringing in modern and unusual ideas that became an instant hit in accordance to the changing fashion times of the 80’s and 90’s.

Controlling the brand distribution of their products also adds strength to the global branding of Hermès, as they release only two new scarf collections per year. Strategic brand alignment using vertical integration is a stronghold of Hermès as they oversee the complete production of their scarves. The company is involved right from when they purchase raw Chinese silk to spinning it into yarn, before weaving into fabric that is twice as strong and heavy as the average scarf in the market
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herm%C3%A8s).

As a prominent global brand, Hermès continues to implement traditional techniques into their creations that make the brand distinctive. Custom-made and hand-sewn Hermès items are one of the reasons their brand is going forward globally. Its branding is so strong that you could recognise any Hermès product through these fine yet important details. This approach that is valued by Hermès is in contrast to another successful French brand, Groupe Danone.

Groupe Danone has a very interesting history on how it was formed - it started off in 1919 as a small yogurt producing factory named Danone in Spain by Isaac Carasso. Ten years later the son Daniel Carasso, built Danone’s first factory in France but during World War II he moved the company to New York for his own safety. There, he formed a partnership with Swiss-born Joe Metzger to make the brand name sound more American, changing it to Dannon. Soon afterwards Daniel returned to France to run the family trade while selling off the American shares. From here Danone grew and went on to merge with Gervais, the leading fresh cheese producer in France, becoming Gervais Danone. Another branch of Groupe Danone, the industrial glassmaker Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel (BSN), was founded by the family of Antoine Riboud and merged with Gervais Danone as well in 1973. The brand then went on to mergers and acquisitions over the years among which are Evian mineral water, General Biscuit and Nabisco biscuit manufacturers before changing its name to a more internationally known name, Groupe Danone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupe_Danone).

Group Danone is recognised worldwide for its health governance as health has always been closely bound up with its history and sub brands. Their Danone yogurt, a product created by Nobel medicine laureate Elie Metchnikoff, was sold primarily in pharmacies in the 1920s. Today, Groupe Danone relies on their Research and Development team made up of 1,200 staff focusing on their four key lines – fresh dairy products, mineral water, baby and medical nutrition. In 2008, they had 61 clinical studies ongoing around the world.

The name Franck Riboud is also a key factor for Groupe Danone to be one of the outstanding leaders in its industry. Under his guidance the company continues to pursue its focus on the 3 product groups - dairy, beverages and cereals. The aggressive leader admits their dairy products are one of their powerhouse drivers, contributing €400 million to their growth. He has also impressively created brand diversification strategies throught the company by having a board of directors from countries like France, Belgium and Japan and various sub brands. Their sub brands, to name a few, are Evian, Volvic, Aqua, Blédina, Gallia, Nutricia, Cow & Gate, Nutricia, Nutrini, Nutrison and Fortimel.

Meanwhile, Groupe Danone’s global presence can be found throughout Africa, Middle East, Latin America, Asia Pacific and European countries. They also pay close attention to their brand’s sustainable development brand alignment by believing that it is an on-going process and involves more than just the management level. They have opened a dialogue through their blog ‘down to Earth’ that encourages sustainable solutions from their web community (http://www.danone.com/en).

Leaders in companies need to set the vision of their brands, ensure consistency in quality and brand alignment in their brands to be able to create brand trust. For Hermès, their achievement lies in the traditional line of methods used over generations, while Groupe Danone focused on health governance. With the right visions and systems established, it shows that branding can provide proper and complete support for the brands to flourish, and create a stronger brand establishment for itself in the process.

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