Vinaconex urged to build up its brand name

Vinaconex urged to build up its brand name

QĐND – Saturday, October 31, 2009, 20:31 (GMT+7)

State President Nguyen Minh Triet has praised the Vietnam Construction and Import-Export Joint Stock Corporation (Vinaconex) for its efforts to overcome difficulties and make outstanding achievements over the past 21 years.

At a working session with the corporation, Mr Triet noted that since its establishment in September 1988, Vinaconex has developed into a leading corporation working in various areas, mainly construction and real estate. It has more than 70 affiliated companies and over 42,000 skilled and experienced engineers, experts and workers in 63 provinces and cities across the country, as well as overseas.

He said that with its reputable brand name, Vinaconex has made a significant contribution to local socio-economic development through its infrastructure construction projects, giving a facelift to many provinces and cities.

The State President acknowledged the active role that leading economic groups, including Vinaconex, have played in helping Vietnam overcome the global financial and economic woes and maintain steady growth.

He asked Vinaconex to learn lessons from the global financial crisis and stand firm to meet new challenges ahead.

He made a fact-finding tour of the Da River Water Supply Company – an affiliate of Vinaconex – in Hoa Binh province, about 65km from Hanoi.

The company is assigned to supply safe water from the Da River to Hanoi City and Hoa Binh province. After five years of construction at a total cost of VND1.5 trillion, the first phase of the project has been completed and is now capable of supplying safe water to people living in the south-western part of Hanoi.

Source: VOV

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Experts discuss brand building to beef up competitive edge

HCM CITY — Viet Nam needs to build strong brands that can compete in the increasingly competitive domestic and international markets to fuel sustainable growth, according to experts.

“A product serves functional benefits, and is interchangeable. But a brand can generate preference and loyalty from customers, and is a much stronger and more enduring base upon which to build one’s business,” said Katryna Mojica, managing director for Olgilvy&Mather Viet Nam at a seminar on branding on Saturday.

“It’s no longer enough to have a brand positioning,” said Stephen Mangham, chairman of O&M Singapore.

Brands needed to have a unique belief system and a point of view that drives everything that a brand does and helps it attract widespred support, he said.

“Over the last two years we have developed a concept called the ‘Big Ideal,’ and found it incredibly useful in strengthening our clients’ brands,” said Mangham.

He explained a Big Ideal was not the same as a brand positioning, which could be based on a purely functional benefit. An ideal contains an inherent point of view, a conception of something in its perfection, to create stronger consumer appeal.

On how to capture big ideals, Mangham said that in this collaborative environment, with various departments, units, even countries, working on a brand, it was helpful to capture what the brand stands for in a short phrase that can be remembered – simple but rich enough to avoid being simplistic. Furthermore, big ideals exist at the intersection between a brand’s core identity and local sociocultural conditions.

Prof. Ho Duc Hung, director of the Institute of Economic Development Research at the HCM City University of Economics, stressed that marketers should understand thoroughly local environmental, cultural, demographic and psychological features, and “use the information to explore opportunities, identify potentials, make forcasts, be creative and transform potentials into reality.”

Hung said recent research on 500 outstanding businesses nationwide showed that up to 25 per cent did not invest in brand building, 70 per cent made insufficient investments, while only 5 per cent were fully committed to the work.

The Government has selected 30 businesses for a national brand programme called “Building Viet Nam’s Brands,” which aims to create a competitive advantage for brands here and overseas. —