The world’s most valuable new brand? No, not a sign of a recent Saffron ‘road to Damascus’ conversion to the pseudo-science of brand valuation but an observation that through brand BRIC, Brasil’s economy has been boosted beyond measure.
As I sat sharing Caipirinhas and discussing the economic situation with clients over dinner in Sao Paulo recently I realised what an amazing impact the very term BRIC was having right now.
What’s in a name? Yes of course Brasil was already on a trajectory of growth and increasing prosperity as an ‘emerging economy’ before some bright spark at Goldman Sachs coined the term BRIC but what has happened since is that Brasil has been given a significant boost simply because it is now one of those markets, like China and India that any self respecting CEO of any international business needs to have a strategy for. Not Mexico or Indonesia or Turkey – the next biggest emerging markets where it’s entirely optional to have a plan. Their loss is Brasil’s gain in the power of the BRIC brand.
Even tougher for those economies, Brand BRIC can’t easily be ‘enlarged’ as the G7 became the G8 or even the EU can aspire to embrace technically Asian geography – BRICMTI won’t catch on easily.
Perhaps the point about it is that, just as brands help us navigate between coffees on the supermarket shelf, simply all that is going on is that faced with too much choice even titans of commerce need a little help narrowing down the options and human nature being what it is, welcome constructs that help manage the complexity.
Now let’s see if someone with a shiny Brandvaluationometer machine can turn the handle and attach a precise dollar amount to it – rounded up to 3 decimal places – even Wally might find that convincing.
