Brand Management in the Wired Era

Written by Tangos on September 12, 2008
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In last two months, online brand and reputation management has been a hot topic on China’s Internet, esp. the stories of some online PR companies to manipulated BBS posts. How to management brands is a challenge to marketers in this Internet era. It is also one of the key topic covered by the Fifth China Branding Roundtable, held by the Economist Conferences on September 18th–19th 2008 in Beijing.

We recently have a short interview with Professor Sun Baohong, who is an associate professor of marketing from Carnegie Mellon University, and also one of the chairperson of the event.

CWR:The discussion of the Internet and new media play an important part on the agenda of the Roundtable, do you think the web 2.0 has changed brands strategy and practice online a lot? what’s the main challenge of using new media for brand management and promotion in this wired era?

Professor Sun: Definitely. Internet and related technologies provides consumers abundant information and allow consumers to make highly informed and rational purchase decisions. Consumers may no longer be willing to pay the brand premium to resolve uncertainty about the product quality. This creates opportunities for new brands to quickly establish themselves if indeed they offer the best products.

The wired era provides highly customized and highly interactive marketing environment for the companies. One opportunity for companies to take is to fully take advantage of customer information and tailor their marketing effort to each individual consumer. This is the customer-centric marketing which can help companies to improve both effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing campaigns.

CWR: Is there any difference between utilizing new media for marketers in China and in the US and Europe? Anything special in China’s online market which brands should pay attention to?

Sun: In China, more new medias and new ways can be explored as marketing media in China. For example, cell phone is widely accepted by Chinese consumers as a promotion tool, comparing to the US or Europe. Viral marketing and social network also plays important role among Chinese consumers.

CWR:Many surveys show that Internet users tend to spend less time on portal sites, but more on social networking sites, how will this change of online behavior affects the brands?

Sun:This means customer experience and word of mouth become more and more important. It implies that company should focus more on delivering consistent product quality to maintain a consistent brand image over time and across users. It should also learn to identify opinion leaders in the social network and recruit them to help the company build brand image. In the meanwhile, the company should learn to manage crisis and mitigate damage when negative word-of-mouth is going around.

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Besides online brand management, the Roundtable will cover broader topics about branding, such as

If are interested in it, please register in the event’s website and reserve your seats.

3 Responses to “Brand Management in the Wired Era”

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