The Danish marketing expert, Martin Lindstrom visited Singapore for a one-day Brandwash Symposium on September 10, 2012.
Martin Lindstrom advice top brands as McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Microsoft, The Walt Disney Company and GlaxoSmithKline on branding. In 2009 he was one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time Magazine.
While in Singapore he gave an interview to Todayonline.com, where he commented on Singapore:
“Singapore has slowly but surely adapted some of the attractive core brand values owned by countries such as Switzerland. The result is an enormous foundation of trust, reliability and stability, which gives Singapore the best possible base to build brands on. Now is a good chance to further fuel this foundation by adapting some of the country branding techniques that Switzerland has become so world famous for.”
Asked to comment on branding and marketing efforts in Singapore, Martin Lindstrom called for fresh blood and new thinking.
“This is the moment where new, innovative, courageous and forward-thinking brands should redefine the brand star-heaven……Singapore’s new and upcoming brands are weak and, thus, highly “woundable” when it comes to international competition.”
According to Martin Lindstrom the new and upcoming brands in the region are mistaken, trying to play safe, when they actually ought to be courageous.
“In short, Singapore is sitting on vastly untapped potential which needs to be utilised now before another country or region moves faster,” says Martin Lindstrom
When asked to predict the future in marketing trends, he said that brands no longer will be owned by companies but by consumers.
“Brands can be created in a matter of months and destroyed in a matter of weeks. “
And the consumers, who will master the brands in the future, buy self-esteem when they buy brands.
“We’ve discovered that there’s a direct correlation between brands and self-esteem. If you have low self-esteem, you’re substantially more likely to buy (and wear) more brands. “
Martin Lindstrom believes that we not only use brands to express who we are, but as much to define who we aren’t. Most importantly, they unite us with like-minded people reflecting the same set of values.
Products that can help us to find and reflect our identity are we more likely to succumb. The more a product or service is able to tell the world who we are, the higher price we’re likely to pay.
