Brand value ought to be a com-pany's most important asset in the struggle to survive and grow in a competitive, thin-margin era, especially for those who want to grow internationally, industry representatives said yesterday at a forum in Taipei.
Both Taiwan and South Korea suffered for years from their image as producers of cheap products for foreign companies, Catherine Cole, Samsung Electronics Co's senior brand manager for global marketing operations, said at the International Brand Strategy Forum.
Now, after years of commitment to branding, Samsung has been recognized as a first-tier trademark, Cole said.
"Everything we do is aimed toward making Samsung a premium brand," she said.
Samsung was ranked 25th on this year's list of "Top 100 Global Brands" unveiled by Business Week early last month. It reportedly has US$10.85 billion in brand value this year, a 31 percent growth over last year's US$8.3 billion.
The South Korean consumer electronics and home appliance maker has allocated about US$400 million this year for global marketing, Cole said, a 10 percent year-on-year increase over last year.
Known as a original-equipment manufacturing (OEM) company in the late 1980s, Samsung started to reposition its image in 1993 and in 1998 it established a global marketing operations unit specializing in branding.
Stereotypes about Asia used to be an obstacle for companies who wanted to move West, Cole said, since the image of Asian manufacturers was that of producers of low-end products who flooded the global market with their goods.
Now as several other Asian companies are starting to demonstrate their information-technology (IT) product design capabilities, she said, "We've already been through that most difficult part."
Some companies have been able to generate great ideas to get their names out, she said.
"One year ago I had only a vague idea about BenQ Corp (明基電通) and didn't know what kind of products it was selling, but its advertisements in the print media were very interesting and easily caught my attention," Cole said.
She was not the only one to praise BenQ's marketing efforts yesterday.
The nation's largest mobile-phone maker and a producer of consumer electronics ranked seventh in the list of 2003 Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands, which was announced last night.
The competition was jointly organized by the China External Trade Development Council (CETRA,
CETRA and the magazine -- in collaboration with London-based brand consulting company Interbrand Pte -- conducted a three-month review of companies which generate at least 20 percent of their sales from overseas markets.
Anti-virus software developer Trend Micro Inc (趨勢科技) placed first, with an estimated NT$25.9 billion (US$763 million) brand value.
It was followed by motherboard maker Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), computer maker Acer, instant-noodle maker Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp (頂益控股), tire company Chen Shin Rub-ber Industry Co (正新橡膠) and Giant Bicycles (捷安特).
Other winners were computer-networking equipment maker Zyxel Communications Co (合勤), information technology distributor Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強) and chip-set maker VIA Technologies Inc (威盛電子).
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