Brand Naming in “Different” Chinas

Do you really know what your company's culture is? Why is employee culture important?

Your company's culture can include:

Do you use that training to make sure that the brand promise and culture of your company is communicated clearly and boldly to those audiences? Does your company recognize employees through awards and exclusive trips? Many companies successfully tie salary planning and bonus allocations to the employee's performance, in addition to the company's performance.

To make this a truly effective tool in influencing employee behavior and aligning performance with your brand promise, you need to ensure that performance objectives, expected outcomes, measurement criteria, appraisal reviews, and the recognized behaviors that are all part of an employee performance management process are all aligned with your brand promise, purpose, mission, and desired employee culture.

Are Your Employees Aligned With Your Brand?

To tap the large Chinese markets, several foreign firms have seized opportunities to develop their Chinese presence through local investment in branding. Of the 5 top automobile manufacturers in the world, 4 of them have at least one brand name with different translation in Hong Kong and mainland China. The reasons for foreign firms to intentionally utilize different Chinese brand names in mainland China and Hong Kong can be classified into three distinct and well-established reasons: 1. The different brand names reflect the difference between a strong affinity toward classical Chinese tradition in Hong Kong and a markedly pro-Western attitude in mainland China. 2. The different brand names consider the pronunciation difference in commonly used Mandarin dialect in mainland China and Cantonese dialect in Hong Kong. 3. The different brand names present a well-considered product differentiation strategy by the firms, maximizing profit in each market by targeting different consumer groups in mainland China and Hong Kong. 1. Cultural identity necessitates product identity Different localities have different cultural attributes. Japanese car brand Lexus is marketed as ling zhi. Car brand names must conspicuously cry out the exalted greatness of the product. For Lexus, the mainland brand is lei ke sa; si . The Hong Kong brand name cannot immediately bestow grandeur upon the product's user, thus the foreign-sounding name is kept.




















2. Local language determines local suitability The sometimes vastly different pronunciation of same Chinese characters in Mandarin and Cantonese has strong influences on how foreign brand names are directly transliterated in the mainland and Hong Kong markets. For example, in the Hong Kong market, Lamborghini, the luxury Italian automobile brand, is transliterated as lin bao jian ni. The enormous size and combined wealth of the mainland market compared to those of Hong Kong gives way for much greater justification for investing in new brand names on the mainland, as the brand investments have much greater probability of yielding higher returns than the brand maintenance costs on the mainland than in Hong Kong. Marketing under different brand attributes in Hong Kong and mainland China have been used to great effects by many business-to-consumer multinationals through use of almost completely mutually unrecognizable brand names. Japanese car maker Mazda uses the name ma zi da in its mainland Chinese market. All in all, the growing trend of foreign firms marketing in both the mainland China and Hong Kong markets has been to create a unique and singular brand image across the Chinese-speaking world. That being said, until the supply chains, culture, and perhaps even the language of Hong Kong and China become more integrated, developing separate brand names for Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese markets is a worthwhile consideration for foreign companies.