Ceylon Tea brand has made Sri Lanka famous across the world
The brand ‘Ceylon Tea’ is a top-end drink in the world and Sri Lanka, the big green island in the Indian Ocean, has been made famous by this brand was the inference made by one of the world’s best known marketing strategists to show Sri Lanka’s economy could be improved by branding.
Prof Al Ries, Chairman Ries & Ries known to be the architect in bringing the concept of a marketing tool known as positioning – replacing a product and its function with a brand name, was addressing the i CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing, Sri Lanka) Annual Conference 2015 held at the BMICH this week.
He spoke on this most important economic issue in the world today – how to build brands, global brands -, and said that a country does not get rich by selling things to each other, but a country gets rich by selling things to people in other countries. Driving home his point, Prof. Ries said, “That is how China, India and Singapore have become economically successful and global brands and global marketing can do the same for Sri Lanka”.
He said the notion that larger the population, richer the countries is not always true when compared to countries like Singapore, a small country with a small population of 5 million people, which is relatively rich as it is doing business worldwide.Free market and sans government interference would make the economy grow, Prof Ries stressed. For example, he said that earlier countries like China and even India had government control in the economy and that was why they did not develop in the same rate as of now. He said that when the state is away from the business, the economy would improve and noted: “Today, China is more of a free market than the United States”.
He said that China’s annual growth rate is the highest in the world at 10.5 per cent while the second highest is India with 7.7 per cent while the US is very low at 1.2 per cent.
Singapore’s GDP is US$375 billion, he said and its exports stand at $436 billion which is 116 per cent of the GDP. But, he pointed out that in Sri Lanka with a population of 22 million and a GDP of $135 billion, exports account for only $10 billion which is only 7 per cent of the GDP. Therefore he suggested that Sri Lanka should focus on improving the exports to the level of countries like Singapore.
He pointed out that Sri Lanka could do well with global brands and marketing like Singapore, China and India and said that it is also important to focus on the most important idea in marketing, positioning – the revolutionary marketing idea created by him and Jack Trout which would create a visual hammer in order to nail the word in the mind, and the positioning strategies work in a crowded consumer mind.