In our last entry, we compared the top five luxury brands most mentioned in India and China. Here, we take a look at how India’s and China’s most recognised brands are faring outside their borders.

Two years ago, the Boston Consulting Group released a report that was widely quoted in the press. Named “The New Global Challengers”, it covered 100 top companies from rapidly emerging economies that will change the world. Looking at names the man on the streets of Asia may recognize, here is a random list of Chinese and Indian global challengers:

None of these however, made it to InterBrand’s 100 Best Global Brands for 2007. Not even Lenovo, Haier, Tata and Reliance, despite the fact that they have been spending aggressively on global marketing campaigns or acquisitions.

One would argue that all of them feature characteristics that top global brands have in common. These include:

• The same positioning worldwide
• A focus on a single product category
• A name that is also the brand name
• Access to the global village
• Social responsibility

The Asian brands featured in the 2007 100 Best Global Brands list hail from Japan or Korea and have been ‘in the game’ much longer.

( ) shows their ranking.

Toyota (6)
Honda (19)
Samsung (21)
Sony (25)
Canon (36)
Nintendo (44)
Hyundai (72)
Panasonic (78)
Lexus (92)
LG (97)
Nissan (98)

Taking a look at Interbrand’s methodology, it seems that they evaluate brand value in the same way any other corporate asset is valued; on the basis of how much the brand is likely to earn for the company in the future. Interbrand used a combination of analysts’ projections, company financial documents, and its own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value (NPV) of those earnings.

Perhaps the brand values of Chinese and Indian global challengers do not make the top 100 because of their NPV’s, not because of brand awareness (or the lack of).

We do think however, that the 2006 BCG analysis shows otherwise, as our Chinese and Indian friends would probably strongly agree.

Interbrand’s 2008 list is due out soon. Let’s see if this year’s list will be any different.

For more information, please contact Manifesto.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 11:47 am and is filed under Branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.