'Our brands can conquer the world'

'Our brands can conquer the world'


Hear it from the horse?s mouth! Majority of the Chinese and Japanese think their brands are not up to the mark, advertising lacks the cutting edge and marketers are not doing enough to create buzz in their minds.

Compared to the low esteem of the teeming population of the dragon land, Indians feel their brands can conquer the world.

A new Asia-Pac consumer survey conducted by Grey Global and research firm Millward Brown shows that Indians are confident of their brands? equity.

An interesting aspect of the survey is that consumers in countries like Korea (home to brands like Samsung, LG and Hyundai) and Japan (Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi, Toyota, Honda), showed lower confidence in their local brands compared to Indians.

The survey reveals that 81per cent of the Indians felt that brands in their country were world class, which was above the Asia-Pac average of 68per cent.

In fact, Indians were behind only the Kiwis and the Aussies in their confidence on local brands compared to the global standard. In China and Japan, less than 50per cent of those surveyed, believed that brands in their respective countries matched global standards.

This shows that consumerism in India has come a long way from the time when anything with an international tag was deemed to have a better image. That?s not all. A majority (71per cent) of Indian consumers also believed that advertising in their country is world class as compared to the average of just 53per cent in the Asia Pac region.

The Chinese and Japanese ad men need to shape up, as just about 21per cent of the consumers in China and 43per cent of those in Japan felt that advertising in their homeland was world class.

While Indians in particular believed that marketers are doing a good job, less than half of their counterparts in Taiwan, Japan and China concurred. In the region, Indian marketers were only a step behind their counterparts in the Philippines as more Filipinos (87per cent) felt marketers were doing a good job compared to the Indians (86per cent). However, more Indians (96per cent) think that their country needs to be more innovative compared to the regional average of 93per cent.Chinese were on the top of table, 99per cent of those surveyed felt that their country needed to be more inventive.