Branding in Hifi

There are many famous brands in Hifi such as the Western Electric, Leak, Marantz, Mcintosh, Fishers, Siemens, Tannoy, Rogers, etc. Many of these great names were gone as a result of the passage of time, changing consumer's taste, technology innovation replacement etc.

However, when one look at the brands and see why are they were so successful and so great, the key success factors can be listed down as the following:

1. Good product that were built to last - examples Leak 12.1; Mcintosh MC225,240,275; Marantz 1,7,9,10b, Fishers 50c, 80C, 400CX, 400CXII, Western Electric 86, 91, 124, 755; Tannoy GRF, York, Canterbury; Rogers LS3/5a etc

2. Good leadership quality and good chief engineer & good -較聲工作: Marantz, Sid Smith, Fisher, etc

3. Good distribution net work

4. Focus on brand building.

There are many talented Sifu in Asia especially in Hong Kong. However, their products could never reach the same level as that of the famous and legendary hifi as many were lacking in its brand building aspect of the business.

Very often, the positioning of the brand is not clearly defined and there is no clear brand strategy involved in their launch of the products. Many would opt for the easy way of buying advertising space as well as advertorial space thinking that these are "marketing" and these actions constitutes brand building.....which of course is over simplifying and is not the case.

It will be naive to think that by having a superior products will naturally led to great sales and the building of brand. Very often, these Sifus would focus their energy on the products and missed out the other elements of marketing mix such as positioning, pricing, placement and promotion.

Being a hifi lovers as well as markerteer, I was so tempted to want help some of the local Sifu in launching their products properly. The success of any big brand requires vision! It also require a team of dedicated professional in order to help create the correct brand vision and positioning and targeting at the right group of consumers.

Hopefully, one of these days, the Asian audiophiles and sifu could look beyong their capablities and learnt to look for profeesional help in their launch of products ......that is if they seriously want to compete Globally and not locally.

They must have the desire to be and dream BIG like the Marantz, Mcintosh, Western Electric, Fisher in the past or like the modern days Audionote..

Otherwise, they would continue to be a "big" fish in a very, very small pond...