Brands and Marketing were traditionally dominated by the US, Germany and Japan. In Interbrand’s global brand scorecard, 14 of the top 20 global brands are US brands (HP is #12 by the way). Consulting firms, advertising agencies and market intelligence companies were primarily based in these countries. Product marketers worked in those three countries; they catered to the local customer needs and created products for those markets that would be then exported with little differentiation to the rest of the world.

I was in Bangalore, India recently and I was struck by how much this could become the model of the past. I recommend reading Goldman Sachs’ excellent economic paper –Dreaming With BRICs: The Path to 2050. The report predicted in 2003 that “in less than 40 years, the BRICs economies (Brazil, India, China, Russia) together could be larger than the G6 (top 6 economies in the world) in US dollar terms. By 2025, they could account for over half the size of the G6. Of the current G6, only the US and Japan may be among the six largest economies in US dollar terms in 2050”. The recent trends and stats from the BRIC countries indicate that this prediction is accelerating and things may happen sooner. Products will need to be developed specifically for the customer needs in those countries, campaigns will be tailored to local tastes and Marketing will happen increasingly first in those markets and then get exported to the rest of the world, even for US brands.

Nokia, which is the only company in the top 20 brands that is not based in any of the three countries, is a great example of this trend (Nokia is based in Finland):

Nokia started operations in India in 1995. In 2005, India is among the top 5 markets for Nokia worldwide! Nokia has developed major efforts in adapting its products and advertising to the specificities and tastes of the Indian market:

- 1998- 1^st Indian ringtone

- 2000- First Hindi User Interface

- 2002 -First Hindi text input

- 2003- First Made for India phone (Nokia 1100)

- 2004 -Hindi SMS campaign

- 2005 –Local User interface in additional local languages

I was also very impressed by my visit of the HP Labs India that showcased some of the cool technologies we are developing to adapt to the Indian market requirements, for example the gesture keyboard. Traditional keyboards, based on the Roman alphabet, don’t work for many of the Indian local languages. HP Labs India researchers created a stylus-and-tablet solution that’s easy for people to learn and use, yet affords all the advantages of electronic data processing and storage.

If you consider the forecasts of the Goldman Sachs report, India and China will represent soon 2 of the top 3 markets for most technology products. This will have significant consequences on marketing resource strategies as these markets evolve from low cost offshoring tactics to local strategic marketing talent hiring.  This clearly highlights the imperative to re-think the core competencies of US-based Marketing and evolve marketers’ skills accordingly.