Marketing - Branding articles from The McKinsey Quarterly

Marketing to China's consumers

December 2004

Chinese companies have learned a great deal from multinational ones operating in China. Now the foreigners could learn from them.

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Making brand portfolios work

November 2004

Brands are proliferating rapidly. Companies must now bring them under control.

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Branding cars in China

December 2003

For consumers in China, the meaning of a car’s brand can be as important as tangible performance characteristics, if not more so.

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Can Chinese brands make it abroad?

December 2003

The answer is yes, but it won’t be easy.

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Marketers rely too much on intuition. The key to building brands more scientifically is to combine a forward-looking market segmentation with a better understanding of customers and a brand’s identity.

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Branding's new math

November 2003

Growth is back. Achieving it will require a smarter approach both to marketing and to managing risk.

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Branding electrons

February 2002

The retailing of electricity is often considered a business trading solely on price, but a study of consumers in three European countries shows that more profitable offerings have an audience.

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Do retail brands travel?

February 2002

In presenting one face to the world, a company risks presenting the wrong face to entire nations.

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Revving up auto branding

February 2002

Why do two almost identical cars experience radically different fates in the marketplace? Think brand equity.

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Paying a green premium

August 2001

Consumers may distrust their utilities’ green credentials, but effective branding—through alliances with green brands like Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature—may help overcome their skepticism.

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Building retail brands

August 2000

Establishing and communicating a brand may be harder for multibrand retailers than for their single-brand counterparts, but brand building is essential for both.

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Brand leverage

May 1999

A brand can grow quickly if its owner builds on the foundation of performance, personality, and presence to create innovative strategies for expansion through focus or diversification.

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The end of voodoo brand management

May 1998

Little is learned from debates about brand investments. Think about brands as webs of resources. Generating feedback loops that increase rather than deplete those resources.

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Brand consolidation makes a lot of economic sense

November 1997

The explosion in mergers and acquisitions over the past decade and the consequent ballooning of brand portfolios have made brand consolidation an unavoidable strategic challenge. Yet most brand consolidation efforts fail, and fail expensively. To beat the odds, the authors suggest, it is crucial to choose the right branding endgame.

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If Nike can “just do it,” why can’t we?

August 1997

Investing in your brand makes sense. But trying to build a “power” brand, that’s another story. Industries and marketing capabilities play a key role.

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Rolling out the red carpet

November 1996

Prithvi Raj Singh ("Biki") Oberoi, then (1996) the Oberoi Group’s managing director, explains how his family built a global hospitality business.

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Uncovering the value of brands

November 1996

Many marketers believe brands are important because they shape customer decisions and, ultimately, create economic value. Few, however, would be able to back up their beliefs with facts and figures.

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Nestlé: The visions of local managers

May 1996

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, then (1996) Nestlé’s CEO-elect, talks about his long-term views on globalization. And chocolate.

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How profitable are own brand products?

November 1995

European retailers have been working to develop own brand product lines in recent years, but experience suggests that they seldom have the necessary information systems to monitor product profitability in an accurate and timely manner.

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