Launched in 1998, WGSN is one of the leading online trend-analysis and research services providing creative and business intelligence for apparel, design and retail industries. It now has expanded its operations worldwide with regional offices throughout Europe, Asia, South America and the United States.

In a report by WGSN titled “Luxury Marketing in China: Digital Strategies”, Denise shared her expertise on implementing a strong online branding strategy for the Chinese luxury market. Mrs. Sabet commented that “a clear brand strategy for the Chinese market is essential as a first step. But how it is achieved – be it through the official website, branded microsite, social media community page, or mobile applications – will differ depending on the brand.”
The report also discussed a research Labbrand conducted regarding Chinese brand names online. The research found that Chinese consumers tend to use Mandarin brand names than its English name when searching online. For example, only 11% of all Google searches from Mainland China use the English brand name “Nestle”, whereas 89% of searches use the Chinese name, “雀巢”. Mrs. Sabet also suggested luxury brands to create interactive communications and improve in the delivery of locally relevant content.

Click HERE for the full report by WGSN

SEAT is a member of the Volkswagen group and represents a dynamic and spirited brand constantly seeking to create quality car enjoyment. SEAT intends to further establish its presence in China and positions itself as a sporty alternative for the Chinese consumers.

Labbrand successfully created the Chinese name 西雅特 [xī yă tè] for SEAT. The character西 [xī] is used in 西班牙 [xī ban ya], which is the Chinese word for Spain. 雅 [yă] represents elegance while 特 [tè] portrays the meaning of uniqueness and specialty. Combined together, this name is phonetic similar to SEAT and successfully embodies its Spanish origin and foreign appeal. Also, 西雅特 [xī yă tè] is simple to pronounce and easily associated with the original brand name.
To ensure the suitability of the Chinese brand name, Labbrand and Nombra carried out a thorough process consisting of competitor name analyses, Chinese name creations, smart legal checks, linguistic checks, and quantitative consumer tests. Labbrand believes that this memorable and unique Chinese name will greatly assist SEAT in building up its differentiating brand image in China.  

The New York Times article titled “Picking Brand Names in China Is a Business Itself” explores different naming strategies and examples of western brands in China. It started with a lively example:

“After a hard day’s labor, your average upscale Beijinger likes nothing more than to shuck his dress shoes for a pair of Enduring and Persevering, rev up his Precious Horse and head to the pub for a tall, frosty glass of Happiness Power”, also known as Nike, BMW, and Heineken."

Due to Labbrand’s expertise in Chinese brand naming, they were chosen to be interviewed by the New York Times and also provided several interesting examples for the piece. Vladimir Djurovic, president of Labbrand, was quoted saying that the art of picking a brand name “is only a very, very tiny piece of it”. The overall process requires more thought and testing in terms of trademarks and linguistics. Denise Sabet, vice general manager at Labbrand, suggested that the reason why some Chinese words carry more emotion includes cultural differences and the Chinese reliance on characters for words, rather than a phonetic alphabet. The article also mentioned Marvel’s Chinese brand name, created by Labbrand, as an example of good Chinese name.

A version of the article appeared in print on November 12, 2011, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Picking the Pitch-Perfect Brand Name in China.

The online version is available HERE

For more info regarding Chinese brand naming, please contact info@labbrand.com  

On September 22nd, 2011, Labbrand celebrated the opening of its newly renovated office at Shanghai’s M50 Creative Park with guests, colleagues and friends. The event attracted over 100 attendees and featured a photo exhibition, live entertainment, not to mention delicious hors d’oeuvres, wine, champagne, and other unique elements.
Labbrand’s Office Opening Party was themed “crazy-laboratory”, derived from the company culture emphasizing creativity and innovation. Every staff member was dressed in white laboratory coats, decorated to showcase their individual personalities. Dry ice and ultraviolet lights accentuated the theme. Labbrand also created an exclusive scent as an oflactive identity for the occasion. The scent has a mixture of cinnamon and citrus elements to trigger creativity and inspire innovations. This custom fragrance was packaged in bottles and presented as gifts to guests and friends.
DJ Robin played music throughout the event, with a special performance by contemporary dancer and behavior performer Nunu Kong. Nunu uses symbols and body language to convey messages and interact with audiences. For Labbrand’s Office Opening Party, she utilized a tree branch to symbolize the possibility of a brand and the continuous potential that comes from nature. Her body represented the creative process and highlighted the connection between soul and object. Nunu’s performance was well received. The evening ended with casual visiting between guests and friends.

Photos by Steven Jong, Jeffrey Xie, and Calvie Zhu

Click HERE for more photos

Since its founding in 2005, Labbrand’s head office has been in the M50 Creative Industries Park in Shanghai, on Moganshan Road. As a result of a growing team and client base, Labbrand initiated an office and expansion project in May of this year that was completed in late July. The office has more than doubled in size and now encompasses the entire second floor of Building 7 in M50.
The core idea of the interior design was to let exterior façade angles inspire the office layout in a dramatic way, extolling the originality of the building itself and providing a greater environmental fit with the creative area. Labbrand’s new office is modern, minimalistic, yet warm, with an open design concept and natural lighting. Plants, photography, large windows, and high ceilings complement the space. The office also features an outdoor terrace, a truly unique feature for a Shanghai office. At the entrance, a large and well lit Labbrand logo welcomes visitors into the contemporary and innovative loft. To support Labbrand research activities, the space is equipped with two focus group rooms with one way mirrors and adjacent observation rooms, with video and audio recording capabilities. The main meeting room is enclosed with full length glass doors, adding to the open and modern feel.
With the upgraded office space, the Labbrand team looks forward to continuing to help brands innovate and build equity in China and abroad.

As one of the foremost brand consultancies in Asia, Labbrand was a natural partner and silver sponsor for the event. In addition, founder and CEO Vladimir Djurovic was a preeminent speaker and shared key insights on the use of semiotics for brand innovation and product development. Mr. Djurovic walked the audience through the subject and illustrated his point with examples drawn from the company’s prior research projects.

This participation strengthened Labbrand’s position as a key actor and thought leader on brand strategy and customer insights in China.

Bernard Controls is a leading manufacturer of electric actuation technology used in nuclear power stations or oil and gas plants. The 50-year-old brand felt the need to rejuvenate its brand strategy and identity, and Labbrand was appointed to re-design the Chinese version of its new brand logo.

The new brand platform focuses on an important technical element firmly associated with the company: industrial control and the control of fluids, flows and energies. As a result, the brand name was adjusted from “L. Bernard” into “BERNARD CONTROLS”. This new name is easily understood around the world, and also reflects its international dimension. The redesigned English logo and graphic charter was developed by a French agency called Comnext. The new English logo can be seen below:

Labbrand then designed the Chinese logo. While several creative routes were explored beforehand, the final chosen logo matches well the English version. It uses a uniquely developed Chinese font which replicates features of the English font, such as strokes with rounded corners. Through its visual consistency with the English logo, both versions work together to convey the brand messages of innovation, high quality and reliability.

Labbrand strongly believes this new Chinese logo, together with a rejuvenated brand identity system, will help lead BERNARD CONTROLS to vigorous growth in both the Chinese and global marketplace.

The brand is positioned as an optical retail store targeting 20-40 year old consumers who appreciate fashion, beauty and uniqueness. Grand Optical wanted to convey brand attributes of France, fashion, beauty, fantasy, originality, romance, and femininity, so a new Chinese brand name was created to help communicate the life style brand effectively in the Chinese market place.
Starting with competitor Chinese naming analysis and followed by the creative brief, Labbrand’s naming team created 12 Chinese name candidates with the client through two rounds of creation. The brief was first fine-tuned semantically, and then the linguistic check was conducted. Finally, through a consumer market test to check the overall pros and cons of the 8 recommended name candidates, the best candidate was chosen for registration.
The chosen Chinese name is 黎视坊 [lí shì fāng]. 黎 [lí] means Paris, evocating romance and elegance in people’s minds, 视 [shì] means vision and sight, highlighting the products of the brand and the chain store. 坊 [fāng] means workshop, representing professionalism, expertise, as well as the friendly accessibility of the brand to the target audience.
The name can be summarized as “an optical workshop from Paris”, containing associations of Paris, optical, and good quality. Also, as a B2C brand this name is easy to read and remember and is a unique combination. 黎视坊 [lí shì fāng] will surely impress its target consumers to build its brand equity in the years to come.

Fast fashion is a term used to describe clothing collections based on the most recent fashion trends presented at fashion week in both the spring and the autumn of every year. Clothing lines are designed and manufactured quickly and cheaply to allow the mainstream consumer to take advantage of current styles at lower prices. Popular international fast fashion brands include H&M and ZARA as well as local brands such as ASOBIO and HOTWIND.
After the economic crisis in 2008, companies found consumers in many parts of the world were restricting their retail spending. In China, however, there was still a great deal of untapped consumer buying power. This prompted many retailers to enter the Chinese market in hopes of realizing increased profits. Some fast fashion brands have been very successful thus far, but the CER conference was a timely reminder of the need to revisit brand strategy in a highly competitive market. Amanda Liu’s presentation focused on how brands can actually build their equity in China rather than only focus on short term and expensive promotional tactics. The conference attendees responded very positively to Labbrand’s contribution.
 

As Mr. Djurovic explained, “The launch of NORBIN^TM demonstrated BASF’s commitment to developing customized branded products and solutions for the Chinese market. The presence of the company’s top management from their global headquarters in this event communicates the importance of this strategy. Outstanding quality, innovation and eco-efficiency were emphasized in product development. For Labbrand, this was particularly meaningful as it epitomized the growing importance of local positioning for brands launched for the Chinese market and the promising future available to those that engage on this journey.”
From 2008 to 2009, Labbrand was officially appointed by BASF to create the brand identity of the new paints brand, including its Chinese brand name, English brand name, brand slogan and visual identity system. Labbrand developed the brand name NORBIN 诺缤™ [nuò bīn] to express brand attributes such as reliability, professionalism, high quality and excellent service. The logotype design features green, blue and yellow colored waves to demonstrate NORBIN^TM’s commitment to the environment and a passion for decorative paint colors.
With a memorable and meaningful brand identity system, innovative and quality paint products and excellent service, NORBIN™ has a powerful start in the Chinese marketplace.
 

Labbrand is proud to announce the creation of NUTRIOSE® Chinese name and rejuvenated visual identity.

Labbrand assisted Roquette to develop its sub-brand NUTRIOSE® for the Chinese market. NUTRIOSE® is a soluble dietary fiber extracted from wheat or corn starch and is entirely from natural origins. Thanks to its remarkable technical properties, NUTRIOSE® can easily be incorporated in a large variety of food products to provide health benefits including weight management, prolonged energy release, and prebiotic effects.

NUTRIOSE® brand attributes are natural, preservation of the original taste, well being, and expertise. In the original English name “Nutri” refers to nutrition, health, and prevention, and “ose” is the scientific suffix for carbohydrates. NUTRIOSE® wanted to develop a local Chinese brand name that was easy to say and remember for Chinese consumers and emphasized these four attributes.

The final name chosen was朗纤优, or “lǎngxiānyōu”. “Lǎng” means bright, “xiān” means fiber, and “yōu” means excellent. This name highlights the fiber’s quality as well as its health benefits. “Lǎngxiānyōu” also evokes a sense of functionality, natural origins, and luxury.

In addition, Labbrand assisted NUTRIOSE® to modify their original visual identity for the Chinese market by incorporating the Chinese name and product description into their existing signature. The rejuvenated visual identity will further assist NUTRIOSE® brand to be recognizable and memorable for Chinese consumers. Both the meaningful Chinese name and tailored visual identity will assist NUTRIOSE® in building a successful brand in China.

Labbrand recently assisted Roquette, the world’s leading polyol manufacturer and one of the top starch processors from France, to develop its sub-brand SweetPearl™ in China. Labbrand created SweetPearl’s Chinese name, adapted its Chinese slogan from the English version, and rejuvenated the brand’s visual identity system.

SweetPearl is a bulk sweetener produced from naturally-occurring compounds in wheat and corn which improves nutritional value and intensifies flavour. SweetPearl has a variety of applications, such as chocolate, bakery, and chewing gum, to name a few.

SweetPearl’s Chinese name 享怡甜 (xiǎngyítián) effectively communicates its brand message in the Chinese marketplace. This name highlights the product category and at the same time arouses auspicious evocations in the consumers’ minds— not only sweetness, but also enjoyment, happiness, and creativity. The Chinese slogan 创意之甘, 灵感之甜(chuàngyìzhīgān, línggǎnzhītián), adapted from the original English slogan “The Sweetness of Inspiration”, echoes the Chinese name, further emphasizing the concepts of inspired creativity and sweetness. Coupled together, the Chinese name and slogan establish a bridge between the product itself and consumer’s emotions.

In addition to the Chinese verbal identity creation, Labbrand also helped develop a customized brand visual identity for SweetPearl. The updated visual identity system included the creation of the Chinese brand logo as well as a logo integrating both the English and Chinese brand names.

By being easily recognizable and communicable for Chinese consumers through its new Chinese name, slogan, and the rejuvenated logo, SweetPearl will be able to successfully build its brand in China.

Labbrand recently completed a project with Baoli, the forklift manufacturing company. Labbrand assisted Baoli to rejuvenate their brand by formulating their brand strategy and creating a corporate visual identity system.

Baoli joined KION Group in January 2009. As a new member of the Group, Baoli faced the key issue of how to differentiate from the other three forklift brands in the Group: Linde, STILL, and OM. Through brand strategy workshops with Labbrand and Baoli’s major stakeholders in China, Baoli decided to focus on brand differentiation by positioning themselves as an economy forklift company. Baoli aims to become a leader in the economy forklift market segment. In addition to a brand positioning statement, Labbrand created Baoli’s new brand slogan “Lifting the World” (宝骊叉车 搬天下 in Chinese).

Labbrand also developed a new corporate visual identity for Baoli. The visual identity included a rejuvenation of the present logo without the Chinese name using new corporate colours and fonts. The new logo is more modern and professional, blending simplicity with an international feel. Corporate applications of the logo included stationary, document templates, print media, signage, employee uniforms, and more.
In the image below, the top logo is the rejuvenated version, the bottom one is Baoli's previous logo.
 
As you can see, Labbrand treated the Baoli brand rejuvenation holistically and applied Labbrand methodologies for brand strategy and visual identity creation to achieve the desired results. By strategically re-building their brand, Baoli is confident they will achieve success both in China and international markets.

The benefit of adopting a sole Chinese brand name came straight from the status quo of Bureau Veritas Chinese naming system. As Bureau Veritas had many different company brand names, internal and external stakeholders did not fully appreciate the Bureau Veritas brand value, identity and activities. The name creation was based on one simple necessity: express the united strength of Bureau Veritas’ four business units under a sole brand identity representative of the company expertise and reflecting the image of a prestigious international group in Greater China area. In order to convey these attributes, Labbrand assisted Bureau Veritas to create a simple, memorable, and engaging name that communicated back to the stakeholders. 必维 [bì wéi] seamlessly combines the concepts of competence (必), security (必) and protection (维) in a prestigious and phonetically pleasant Chinese brand name that resembles closely the original one. On one hand, 必维increases cohesiveness among employees. On the other hand, the name builds a consistent brand image among different stakeholders and ultimately strengthens the equity of the brand on the Chinese market. 

The benefit of adopting a sole Chinese brand name came straight from the status quo of Bureau Veritas Chinese naming system. As Bureau Veritas had many different company brand names, internal and external stakeholders did not fully appreciate the Bureau Veritas brand value, identity and activities. The name creation was based on one simple necessity: express the united strength of Bureau Veritas’ four business units under a sole brand identity representative of the company expertise and reflecting the image of a prestigious international group in Greater China area. In order to convey these attributes, Labbrand assisted Bureau Veritas to create a simple, memorable, and engaging name that communicated back to the stakeholders. 必维 [bì wéi] seamlessly combines the concepts of competence (必), security (必) and protection (维) in a prestigious and phonetically pleasant Chinese brand name that resembles closely the original one. On one hand, 必维increases cohesiveness among employees. On the other hand, the name builds a consistent brand image among different stakeholders and ultimately strengthens the equity of the brand on the Chinese market.

Firstly the “Beijing 2008 Branding in China” organized by the China Economic Review was a very interesting, interactive, and case study-oriented conference. The event featured the brightest minds among advertising, branding, and marketing professionals working in the country to discuss the branding innovations and challenges unique to the China market. Vladimir Djurovic, Labbrand Managing Director, shared his insights on brand identity creation in China with a presentation on “Brand Verbal Identity - The Delicate Art of Naming Brands and Products, and Why It Matters.” More academic-oriented and focused on the growth of emerging Chinese MNCs, the conference “Emerging Economies' Multinationals: Global Challengers?” was organized in Beijing by the CEFC (French Centre for Research on Contemporary China) with the support of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. On this occasion, Vladimir has been invited to discuss the impact brand-led strategies have had, and are having, on Chinese MNCs in terms of growth and global expansion.

In fact, this month, Labbrand has organized, in cooperation with The Executive Centre, a branding workshop titled “How to build a strong brand in China? Understand the market, seize the opportunity, design a long term strategy to keep your brand on the edge”. As the name suggests, we have focused on the aspects of branding that are more closely related to market research and have engaged attendees in asking, discussing,and eventually understanding how research is the foundation to building their own brand. Also this month, Vladimir Djurovic, Managing Director and founder of Labbrand, attended the “Fifth China Branding Roundtable” organized by The Economist in Beijing.

The French CPA aims to provide management and leadership training through a variety of programs, one of which is the two-week training tour in China. By illustrating the Chinese environment for Brand Strategies and examining case studies, Mr. Djurovic has given the attending managers an insightful look at the emergent model of brand building in the Chinese market.

To go a step further in strategic marketing and meet today’s sensorial interest, Labbrand offers a brand new research & consulting service through its Sensorial Marketing Lab. The Labbrand Sensorial Marketing Lab helps brands to integrate an emotional and sensorial dimension to their global marketing strategy The what’s and why’s of Sensorial Branding A well-defined and directed sensorial marketing strategy can achieve various objectives: Boost brand capital and build more powerful brands An appropriate sensorial identity will strengthen the brand’s capital and equity. It can help the brand values to be better remembered, understood and recognized, leading the brand to be differentiated from the competitors and gain competitive assets. It can even “emotionalize” the brand to establish more effective interactions with consumers. From the evaluation of the brand’s sensorial assets and opportunities to the design and creation of a sensorial identity (for example, the olfactory logo), the Labbrand Sensorial Marketing Lab (LSML) helps the brand to find the right path in this new marketing sphere. Give a distinctive added-value to your products & packaging No matter how useful a product may be, its functional values alone will not guarantee success and customer loyalty. The emotional and sensorial assets of a product are now key determining factors in the purchasing decision. Through prospective research, design consulting, and up to project management, the Labbrand Sensorial Marketing Lab (LSML) “dresses up” products to add a sensorial “plus” that will make the difference in the consumer’s perception. Sensualize your point of sales environment Sensorial marketing proves to be of great help when it comes to boosting and retaining traffic, and creating the right conditions for an enjoyable and memorable “brand experience”. Furthermore, it can echo the brand’s values and contribute to reaffirming or updating its image and positioning. The Labbrand Sensorial Marketing Lab (LSML) audits points of sales and offers services in the design of sensorial and emotional added-value environments. Add emotional impact to communications & events To attract more awareness and attention to your institutional advertising campaigns or product launches, sensorial exploration and innovative marketing can significantly amplify your impact and put you ahead of your competitors. The Labbrand Sensorial Marketing Lab (LSML) finds the innovative sensorial media that will drive the brand closer to its target and add and element of surprise and delight to its communications or events. Look out for more news and updates on Sensorial Marketing in 2008!