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June 4, 2007
Eroding national brand
According to an article in Advertising Age - Ditch the Flags; Kids Don't Care Where You Come From, national origin is becoming less important as a brand. The article cites a recent study by Anderson Analytics of college students:
"They don't care about country of origin because of the way their world has been defined," said Ted Morris, senior VP-global alliances at BrandIntel. "Being online transcends geography. ... Point of origin is becoming less relevant."
. . .
"For the most part, this next generation of educated American consumers either have no clue where the brands they use come from or simply assume everything comes from the United States, Japan or Germany," said Tom Anderson, managing partner.
For instance, only 4.4% of college students surveyed knew that Nokia is Finnish, while 53.6% guessed the brand was Japanese. Lego, LG, Samsung and Adidas faced similar problems, with fewer than 10% of students knowing the respective countries of origins as Denmark, Korea, Korea, and Germany, instead guessing, also respectively: U.S., U.S., Japan, and U.S. Not surprisingly, retail brand Ikea did well with this crowd -- likely because their stylish but cheap furniture is a college staple -- with 31.2% correctly guessing Sweden. But even then, another 23.6% thought the brand was from the U.S.
However, just because they didn't know or apparently care where something came from doesn't mean that national reputation isn't a factor:
Interestingly, though, the same kids had definite ideas about which countries produce the highest-quality goods overall: Japan was first at 81.8%, followed by the U.S. at 78.5%, Germany at 77.1%, Italy at 3.9% and the U.K. at 66.1%.
Linking to one's home base seems to work better for some products than for others. In the Anderson Analytics study, college students rated tech products like cellphones as roughly of the same quality, whether they knew the correct country of origin or not.
But that was not the case for luxury goods -- or, interestingly, for cars. Hermès scored 23% higher with students who correctly identified it as a French rather than a U.K. brand. Similarly, Lexus got 13% more low ratings from students who thought it was a U.S. brand than it did from those who knew it was Japanese.
So subconsciously, national brands still seem to matter in some cases.
But for other goods, the kids may be right. It is not just that they live online, disconnected from geography. They understand that the products they buy are themselves disconnected from geography. Adidas is German - but is it associated with high-precision German engineering or with American athletes? Does being from Denmark mean anything to the marketing of Lego? At least Ikea, who probably makes very little in Sweden, benefits from the mental association with "Swedish" design.
Country of origin may or may not be losing its importance. But, like any other brand, it relies on the substance behind it. And more and more, that production is less national than global. How soon before some ad agency picks up on this and starts running a “Made on Earth” campaign?
Posted by Ken Jarboe at June 4, 2007 9:45 AM
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