For a company that runs its business globally, it takes special methods to manage its brands. Sunil Taldar, the President Director of Mondelez Indonesia, said that global brands need a very well-crafted development model.

“Global brands must be able to adapt to penetrate the global market,” said Sunil Taldar, during a BINUS BUSINESS SCHOOL CMO Chat at the BINUS JWC Campus, Senayan, Jakarta (7 October). He also added that the goal of brand development and management is to share similar experiences among consumers.

Using Cadbury Dairy Milk as a case, Sunil Taldar explained how Mondelez develops and manages its brands in the global market. He revealed that the variables that influence the market must be considered. Those variables are culture, income, occupation, demographics, among others.

Cadbury Dairy Milk markets around the globe are at different levels of category and brand development. Mondelez needs to recognize the differences and define the impact of their strategy and execution in their quest to deliver Best in Class Communication through a single communication strategy.

The approach is a brand development model where Cadbury Dairy Milk markets can be clustered by similar levels of category and brand development. The aims are to help guide their communication strategies and leverage similarities between markets in the same cluster.

By combining the Category Development (Discoverers, Adolescents, Transitionals, Snackers, Chocolate is Worthy, and Chocoholics) and Brand Development (Very Low, Low, Medium, and High), the markets can be clustered into four quadrants. Each quadrant shows market maturity and consumer behavior, and the quadrants determine the strategy to be taken as well.

For the High Category and High Brand Development quadrant, the desired consumer behaviors are high frequency and high quantity of consumption. Therefore, the communication task is to drive the brand love.

In the Low Category and High Brand Development quadrant, such as India, the communication task is to create occasions for new consumption. The communication task aims to increase the consumption frequency and penetration in rural India.

A different strategy is needed in a Low Category and Low Brand Development quadrant like Indonesia. The communication tasks are to drive penetration and brand share. The desired consumer behavior is trials among new users.

There are some things that must stay the same, and other things that must change, in developing and managing global brands. The aspects that must stay the same are core brand values, brand identity, core message, and creative construct. Meanwhile, there are some aspects to change like local culture insights and creative devices (such as music and cast).

Sunil Taldar also explained that Mondelez uses a consistent play-book to operate the strategies in each market by using the Three Laws of Growth, Six Drivers of Growth, and Brand Health Dashboard. “Global brands need a development that looks at both category and brand development in an individual market,” he added.

(ERON)