MARKETING
Diaspora Marketing
Despite the dramatic shift in the world’s economic center of gravity from the developed to the developing world in the past three decades, few corporations from emerging markets have succeeded in creating brands in the West. There are several reasons for this: Emerging giants—globally ambitious companies from high-growth regions—are late to the world market, aren’t perceived as developers of next-generation technologies or products, and are believed to produce only poor quality. The list goes on.
The conventional wisdom is that emerging giants will have to spend huge sums to overcome those obstacles and establish brands in the developed world. Indeed, cynics argue that only a few corporations, such as the largest private companies and state-owned enterprises, will be able to take the global plunge.
That doesn’t mean, however, that other companies from emerging markets have given up their aspirations. Corporations such as Haier, Lenovo, Tata, Mahindra & Mahindra, Embraer, and Natura, which have successfully developed innovative products and services on shoestring budgets, are in like fashion trying to build global brands with relatively few resources. They are learning to outsmart, rather than outspend, bigger and better-entrenched multinational rivals.
We’ve spent the past three years studying emerging giants that are striving to expand around the world, met CEOs who hope to build global brands, and spotted the green shoots of some innovative approaches. One powerful strategy, which we will outline in this article, is to target diasporas.