Does Size Matter to Become a Brand Leader?

Many people have talked about the need for Canada to have a lager population to not only be relevant on the world stage but to remain a competitive one with their iconic brands.

I vehemently disagree.

A small country such as Swtizerland (around 10 million) has dozens of highly visible brand names suchs as Nestle, Swatch, Rolex, ABB, Hoffman LaRoche, Bauer etc. Over in Sweden (population: 5 million) Volvo, Saab, Electrolux, Ericsson, Sandvik among others have shown how a supposedly little country can play on the world stage.

Interestingly, large countries like Russia, India, China, and Brazil have few global brands that we can name.

In the old mass marketing model country size may have been important. Not today. The only thing preventing Canada (3 times the size of Switzerland, and 7 times bigger than Sweden) from creating more iconic brands is creativity, holistic philosophical thinking, and the risk to take chances that may end up in failure....or a huge global success.

The Weakness of Marketing Communication

Most people when they think of Marketing, they think of promotion (the fourth P) and message communication. While this is still important today, the product/service experience is much more important in creating a strong brand.

Brands provide the bulk of defense against price competition, thus allowing the market to pay a premium for that brand. But this is not because an organization spends more money on advertising or puts out more press releases or even creates a compelling story that goes viral.

The ultimate strength of the brand is based on its performance, not its' promotion - the remark-ability or how purple a product/service is.

While a brand may be initially be launched by its publicity (storytelling) the only sustainable advantage it has is determined by its performance.

In a hyper competitive marketplace companies are realizing that brands are their only hope of gaining attention and respect in an saturated uncaring marketplace. Therefore it is extremely important to see a brand as a promise of value, becoming the organizing concept for all the organization's activities that surround the brand (not the other way around).

If all it took was excellent marketing communication then the dot com boom would still be a boom instead of a big bust in many people's pride and wallets.

The Biggest Misconception of Marketing

Marketing is a terribly misunderstood subject in all circles of life especially when it comes to business and the public's mind.

Companies think that marketing exists to support manufacturing, to get rid of the company's products. The truth is the reverse: manufacturing exists to support marketing. The company can always outsource its manufacturing, but what makes a company is its marketing offers and ideas which is difficult to permanently outsource (although a consultant can help from time to time) as said company would no longer exist. All the functional areas of business: purchasing, finance, R&D, HR exist to help the company achieves its goals in the customer marketplace

Marketing is also often too confused with selling. Selling is only the tip of the marketing ice berg. What is unseen is the extensive market research, development of product/services, the challenge of pricing them right, finding the right distribution, letting the market know about their product, and measuring it's success. It is thus a more comprehensive process than selling.

Selling starts only when you have a product (downstream), whereas marketing starts way before that (upstream) and is a long term investment effort (this may be way CMO's in public companies are often short lived0

When marketing is done well, it occurs before the company makes any product or enter any market; and continues long after the sale.