THEME: Sustainable Growth through Brand Leadership: the Nigerian Imperative

Guest Speaker: Dr Prem Shamdasani (Associate Professor of Marketing & Associate Dean, National University of Singapore Business School)

The above is a synopsis of the speech delivered by the speaker

The speaker started by asking, “What is more important: Market Share Leadership or Brand Leadership?” With majority of the response in favor of Brand Leadership, the speaker went on to discuss examples of companies that have focused on brand leadership, and dominated their market. Such company’s include Huawei and ZTE, which are currently dominant players in the global telecom market. However, the major issues are how company’s can build brand leadership, loyalty, and achieve customer retention. Despite an increase in brand awareness, the value customers place on a brand and their loyalty are vital aspects that cannot be overlooked. Therefore, in addition to the drive for market leadership, companies must also strive for brand leadership (which encompasses the loyalty of the customers to the brand).
The drivers of market leadership include;
• Manufacturing Cost
• Supply Chain Management
• Strategic Outsourcing
• Chosen partnerships
On the other hand, the drivers of brand leadership include;
• Product Innovation
• Design leadership
• Dominant Platform
• User friendliness
Obviously, the drivers of market leadership are different from the drivers of brand leadership. Under brand leadership, dominant platform (as a driver) entails leveraging on leading platforms, as part of the drive for continuous innovation. It entails using the platform that will help you attain brand leadership. For instance, within the telecom market, the android is a leading software platform for mobile technology. Building a mobile technology that utilizes this platform will aid the achievement of brand leadership.
Very often, companies think branding is about advertising. However, advertising is only a medium of branding. In the past, Samsung was a typical example of a company that operated with the mentality that branding was all about advertising, making them outspend Sony. Hence, the company’s first attempt at global branding failed to achieve its objectives, which entailed;
1. Showing the Samsung no longer produced analog products but digital products
2. Showing that Samsung’s products were user friendly
To achieve success, a company must view branding as making and keeping its promise to the customer. Then, the company can leverage on Public Relations (PR) and marketing to communicate its promise. Today, with the lessons learnt from past mistakes and corrective efforts made, Samsung has a brand leadership which has been built on communicating the promise and delivering the promise. This has enabled Samsung products to become premium products, while being ahead of the Sony brand.
Among the several benefits of market leadership is scale, while the benefits of brand leadership include trust and quality. For instance, Apple customers (often times) are brand evangelists. Branding helps to transform the organization’s culture, attract and retain organizational talents, as well as loyal customers. Brand leadership also helps to create a high performance environment.
In between market leadership and brand leadership is customer intimacy, which entails emotional bonding, brand continuity, customer service and care, as well as experiential marketing. It also entails co-creation of products and services with customers. For instance, Apple sells experience due to customer intimacy. Without customer intimacy, a company will find it difficult to have market leadership and brand leadership at the same time.
In emerging markets, the obsession has been with market share leadership and brand leadership. This has been due to lack of innovation. Companies in emerging markets must strive to shift their emphasis away from market leadership (only), to a center point where market leadership and brand leadership is built on the back of customer intimacy.
At the country level, market share leadership entails GDP growth. Brand leadership is political leadership and quality institutions. Customer intimacy entails social cohesion. An example of a company that has been able to operate at the center point (where brand leadership and market leadership has been built on customer intimacy) is Singapore. If the glue at the center point is strong, Nigeria will be able to attain market leadership and brand leadership. Otherwise, it would not.
In conclusion, the key take away are;
1. Building brand value and leadership to enable competitive differentiation and trust.
2. Aligning market share leadership (volume growth) with brand leadership (value growth) to pursue sustainable and profitable growth.
3. Strengthening of customer intimacy to ensure successful alignment and long term customer loyalty.

Follow us www.facebook.com/LagosBusinessSchool and http://www.twitter.com/LBSNigeria