The Yellow River and Ding Feng: The new challenges faced by Chinese brands have changed from how to open territory in the past to how to gain the trust of overseas local government, balance domestic and foreign market relations, and even become popular brands.

In 2019, it is about to be over half. If you look at the perspective of reviewing, the past six months may be the half -year challenge in terms of brand globalization since the globalization of the brand.

There are four reasons: First of all, the Huawei Meng Wanzhou incident and the US government continued to suppress Huawei, which caused the global government regulatory agencies to re -examine the Chinese brands, and trust and games have become a problem.Regardless of infrastructure -type enterprises and consumer companies, they need to carry out business in a softer way; third, many Chinese companies have entered a period of performance harvest in the global market. Global consumers' understanding of their brand has begunAfter the improvement, the reputation also urgently needs to be improved; fourth, global populism continues to rise, and the domestic public opinion environment is also divided into left, middle and right, and various uncertainty increases, and it becomes more and more difficult to take care of everyone's emotions.

Driven by these four factors, the new challenges faced by Chinese brands have changed from how to open territory in the past to how to obtain the trust of local government overseas, balance domestic and overseas market relations, and make global consumers like it., Even becoming a sought -after brand MDASH; MDASH; and this is a new issue that Chinese companies have never encountered.

And it is worth noting that, while waving trade sticks in the United States, China has repeatedly expressed his willingness to embrace globalization.State President ... The latest statement is at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia. It emphasizes that China has firmly supported globalization. It is just a wave of globalization and cannot stop the trend of globalization.Under such a new situation in the global economy, the internationalization of Chinese brands is destined to be different from multinational companies from other countries.

We chose Lenovo as the main analysis object to analyze how these Chinese brands cope with such new challenges.

Why is Lenovo

Huawei and Lenovo are the international Gemini constellations of Chinese enterprises.In comparison, Huawei is the most powerful Chinese enterprise on the international stage, but behind its high threshold R & D and innovation, it has a strong uniqueness. At this stage, it is not easy to be copied by other Chinese companies.

Especially in the face of the high pressure of the United States, Huawei's response strategies have been prepared and planned for a long time. Most Chinese companies do not have this patience and vision.Therefore, although Huawei's brand influence has recently improved significantly in the world, becoming one of the representatives of Chinese enterprises' internationalization, it is said that its development path is difficult to copy by Chinese companies in the short term.

The internationalization of Lenovo is the continuous overseas mergers and acquisitions of MDash; MDash; this is actually the choice of most Chinese companies.Data show that in 2016, the total overseas mergers and acquisitions of Chinese -funded enterprises created the highest peak of $ 185.4 billion.Although they have fallen in 2017 and 2018, it is $ 120.8 billion and $ 94.1 billion, but it is still one of the world's largest overseas mergers and acquisitions.

Under such circumstances, as a pioneer and successor, Lenovo can bring a demonstration effect to most Chinese companies going to sea.After all, if the personal computer business of Lenovo acquired IBM in 2004 as the starting point, there is a fifteen years of internationalization history. Overseas shopping carts also include Motorola in the United States, NEC and Fujitsu's PC business in Japan.These are global well -known companies and brands.

On the other hand, as one of the few Chinese brands recognized by the global market, Lenovo does have unique things.

Although Lenovo is in the domestic market, brand word -of -mouth is often misunderstood by domestic consumers, and the remarks of executives are often interpreted by public opinion, and they even have some fame, but globally, it is the global well -known brand evaluation in 2017.The brand in the world's most valuable brands released by the institution Interbrands.This list is the CEO of mature multinational companies such as Coca -Cola, Apple, Samsung, Mercedes -Benz, Siemens. The list that really values the brand field is an important indicator of the degree of internationalization of the brand.

Of course, it is not just the brand itself, but also the entire system operated by the company.Including corporate governance structure, balanced global markets, diversity of material structure, the degree of attention of social responsibility, the innovation of products, and the business model of regional markets in various countries.

In these respects, if you put aside the various interpretations of domestic emotionalization and from a objective perspective, Lenovo is very close to the global mature multinational company system.Judging from the most intuitive feelings, Lenovo's overseas team structure is very diverse. Every meeting is like a small United Nations, with various skin tone and nationality.In the regional management team, in the current four major business areas of Lenovo, the president of the Asia -Pacific region overseas is the Hong Kong people in China, the president of the Americas, the American, the president of the European/Middle East/Africa, and the local team management.

Core foundation

The basis of globalization of all corporate brands is its performance, as is Lenovo.The latest financial report shows that in fiscal 2018/2019, its revenue reached $ 51 billion, which once again became the world's largest PC company, and now it has been working in the to B -end business such as intelligent interconnection.In addition, among the top five personal computer manufacturers, Lenovo ranked first at a rate of nearly 10%year -on -year, ranking more than 200 in the world's top 500.

The most obvious performance of the brand's influence brought by consumers around the world is that in many countries markets, Lenovo is a single champion.For example, in Japan, Lenovo and its NEC and Fujitsu PC brands are the first in the local area; in Denmark, Germany, Poland and other 14 countries, Lenovo PCs are the first;It's first.

As a result, Lenovo's brand influence in many countries has increased significantly.In many countries, there is an interesting phenomenon that consumers regard Lenovo as the same brand as Huawei, that is, recognize the strength behind the brand, not simply just depends on the influence of the country.

Another important foundation of brand globalization is global compliance.Due to the rise of populism, Chinese companies can easily fall into some overseas market irrational emotions. Only by compliance can we effectively integrate into the local area.Otherwise, the negative effects of the brand will be disastrous.

One of the key areas of Chinese enterprise compliance or not is intellectual property rights.In this regard, Huawei walked ahead through research and development innovation, and avoided this problem very well.Lenovo has obtained a large number of patents through mergers and acquisitions, attracting the integration of international talent teams, and improving the global governance structure to avoid possible traps.

For example, Lenovo appointed executives who had worked with Kodak and Alkattown as their senior vice president and chief legal officer.The executive also served as the global president during the Kodak.In addition, she has also served as the first chief intellectual property officer in Kodak's history.This brings Lenovo's rich experience.

Another example is that the responsibility of the Lenovo market is a local executive. These executives know that local legal regulations can avoid passive to Lenovo.The best proof is actually. In the state of high pressure on the Chinese communications company in the U.S. government, mobile operator Verizon opened the first commercial 5G network in the United States. Users in Chicago and Minne Plus have alreadyYou can take the lead in accessing the world's fastest mobile phone network, and the equipment in their hands is all smartphone Z3 designed and manufactured by Lenovo's Motorola.

New challenge

According to various actual situations, there are reason to treat Lenovo as the most successful global market in ChinaOne of the brands, but this is just the side of the coin.

Under the new situation since 2019, Lenovo still faces new brand challenges brought by internationalization.From the perspective of these challenges, it is actually a new problem that most Chinese companies may also encounter.Mainly concentrated in the following three aspects:

One of the challenges: How to faces the complex public opinion emotions at different levels in the hometown market, that is, the Chinese market.A few years ago, the success of Chinese companies overseas was a great glory for Chinese people, but now, such glory needs to be decomposed to look at it.

In the eyes of the right and right elites in the middle, Chinese companies go out and must choose to become world citizens, which means that we need to look at the business models and development paths of Chinese companies with a global perspective;From the perspective of the left consumers, Chinese companies need to strengthen the brand of national enterprises in both domestic or overseas, representing the commercial forces of Chinese freshmen on the world stage.

In the context of these two emotions, there is no problem, but for enterprises, it is necessary to have a narrative capability that has also become a two -line two -line citizen and ethnic enterprise.Once one of the lines is lacking, or the dual -line relationship is not handled well, it may be deviated by public opinion.

Not long ago, after Lenovo's financial report launch conference, its CFO's remarks on the global production and supply chain were magnified by some media.CFO had to apologize to clarify.From a global perspective, such remarks are logical, and even proofs that Chinese companies have scheduled global resource capabilities after going out, but from a nationalist perspective, this is disrespect and patriotism.

Therefore, Lenovo scored a lot on the image of the world's citizens on the one hand. Therefore, while being attacked by the network water army, the right and right elites did not have much objection to Lenovo.But on the other hand, in order to obtain the recognition of leftist and network emotions, it is necessary to do a lot of practical work.In particular, Lenovo did do a lot of work at the business level but did not spread well.The Motorola Z3 mentioned earlier has become a mobile phone for commercial 5G networks in the United States, which can be regarded as a case of Chinese companies entering the US 5G market.

Similarly, other Chinese -funded enterprises who go to sea also need to master the mood of these complex left middle and right in China to avoid unnecessary passiveness.

Challenge: How to effectively handle the relationship between multi -brand and main brands.After the acquisition is completed, many companies often retain overseas brands, which will form multiple brand matrix.

Such a multi -brand strategy may not be a problem in the past ten years, but the new situation is now that as China becomes the second largest economy in the world, some management departments hope that Chinese companies will go out.At least the main brand claims that it is China's own.This is a matter of importance to Chinese companies with several overseas brands.

For example, Haier, after buying the GE's home appliance department in the United States, in the European and American markets, the brand of GE home appliances so far, but its own Haier brand has weakened.In the long run, this is not conducive to Haier's local and even global development.

And Lenovo, although it has been implemented for many years, it is more used in internal management and integration.Overseas, Lenovo has at least four major sub -brands: ThinkPad, Motorola, NEC and Fujitsu.In some national markets, such as Japan, Lenovo is a weak brand, and NEC and Fujitsu are stronger.In the long run, this is a shortcoming that needs to be improved.

Of course, the unity of the brand involves the ability to control overseas brands by Chinese companies, as well as the ability to coordinate the resource coordination of strong European and American markets.In this regard, Chinese companies still have a lot of homework to make up.

Challenge III: How to pull influence from well -known brands and recommended brands to desirable brands or sought after brands.This means that not only must we be trusted by consumers and regulators around the world, but also to make the brand become consumers' active choices and proud.

According to data, as a whole of the sought after corporate brands, its performance in the global stock market has been 17%higher than the S & P index since 2000.And such companies are all recognized successful multinational companies, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Starbucks, Nike, etc.

This is actually a high stage of brand development.Seeking truth from facts, Chinese enterprises can reach the number at this stage, and there are very few.This also naturally becomes the core goal of all Chinese companies after going to sea.

To achieve this goal, there are some specific seemingly boring but quantified indicators to complete one by one.For example, at the consumer level, the brand can focus on focusing on safety, freshness, sense of belonging and quality.The corresponding brand strategy is to focus on quality stability, development cutting -edge technology, innovation and excellent design for consumers.

This brings more vast imagination for consumers and users.If you use the brand, it can bring me a sense of experience that makes me feel good, very successful, better life, and fulfilling.These specific work, Chinese companies can realize their global brand managers and implement a whole set of global brand strategies through hiring global brand managers, and they can be realized in time.

(Author introduction: The Yellow River Department of Media CEO; Dingfeng Department Webranding brand global consultant company CEO, former Vice President of Samsung Electronics Greater China.)