Haier's brand-name boldness sets pace for recognition overseas

Ask the average American to name a single Chinese brand and you will be lucky to get an answer, this despite the mainland exporting US$33 billion of goods to the United States last year.

It was to create Chinese brands that might one day be as familiar as Sony and McDonald's that representatives from 100 domestic firms gathered at a Beijing hotel last week for a three-day seminar on 'China International Brand Strategy'.

'It is just a matter of time,' one US participant said. 'Chinese companies have the capital and the ability to create such brands. Look at what has happened in China. Ten years ago, there were no brands and now there are hundreds. They are fast learners.

'What China is doing is leveraging its own market to get the access and finance to create global brands. Everyone wants to come and sell here. China is playing this very well.' That forecast was too optimistic for most mainlanders at the seminar, who said they still had a long way to go, after four decades in a planned economy in which everything that went out of the factory was sold and there was no need for marketing, advertising or brands.

Within China, firms have had to learn quickly, with the transformation from a deficit to a surplus economy and the arrival of large foreign companies, which have marketed their brands so aggressively that many are more famous in the mainland than the local companies with which they compete.

Sales and advertising have become essential. Advertising revenue has been growing by 20 per cent a year and reached $6.48 billion in 1997.