China joint venture
The Challenge
The melamine scandal caused Chinese consumers to lose faith in local producers of milk, yet our non-Chinese client was about to launch a new dairy with Chinese milk but foreign quality control standards.
But how to get Chinese consumers to believe in this new local source? And which consumers to target?
The window of opportunity created by the melamine scandal was short – and the cows would soon be producing milk. So getting it right first time was a priority.
The HMT Approach
First hypothesis: A Strategic Roadmapping workshop was facilitated by HMT, using the FourFactors Brand Analysis System to explore the capabilities of the joint venture and create alternative market-entry scenarios. We mined existing consumer-data to help give us first-hypotheses.
Insight gathering: We continued with a cultural immersion into China – recruiting Chinese consumers in the UK, and checking our findings in China with consumer-research in both high and low-tier cities.
Aligning the partners: Next we held a two-day branding-workshop in China with both the local and the Foreign dairy – we found time to do store-checks and collect competing brands, before we finalized our target brand architecture and position.
Testing our ideas: Finally we tested “rapid-prototypes” of the branded concepts with local consumers, refining our value proposition until it had a clear consumer-target and motivating brand position – both emotional and functional.
The Result
Agreement and launch: In under eight weeks our output was agreement and alignment on the brand strategy, direction and design brief… despite the very different culture and perspectives of the two partners.