FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Cameron Tew

Phone 919-767-9246

Product Branding: Companies Lean Toward a Global Approach

CHAPEL HILL -- April 19, 2005 — Coke, McDonald’s, Nike. Around the world, anyone who sees the Golden Arches or the Swoosh knows what they mean.

But how do other companies achieve such a consistent brand identity?

Research conducted by the Business Excellence Board, a service of Best Practices, LLC, examines how marketing managers choose between a global or more regional approach for their products.

Among the reasons cited by marketing and brand experts to be more global-centric:

• The need to drive down marketing costs by creating a single message instead of researching what would work best in each country.
• A global branding approach forces a company to find its most vital, impacting and universal themes to promote about a brand.
• The ability to achieve a rapid and unified product launch.

Companies that choose to market regionally or locally cited the following reasons for this tact:

·        The need to respond to local market needs and address cultural and language differences.

·        Must comply with specific regulatory/legal standards.

·        An intention to encourage local autonomy and innovation among its marketing and branding groups

A white paper detailing “Global Branding: Achieving Consistent Brand Identity & Positioning” can be found at. http://www.best-in-class.com/br53.htm .

Research conducted for Business Excellence Board members revealed many new insights about how companies decide how to position their brands on the market. In the pharmaceutical and consumer product fields, more companies choose a global branding approach than in years past. Of the pharmaceutical executives interviewed, 88 percent said that they have increased their global governance. Sixty percent of consumer product executives said they would choose a global approach as well.

The Business Excellence Board is a research and advisory service that provides an array of services from access to industry analysts, to best practices research and focused benchmarking.

Member companies can tap into the Board’s knowledge resources of benchmarking data and insights for smarter evaluation of strategic options, more effective resource allocation and better informed decision-making.

ABOUT BEST PRACTICES, LLC

Best Practices, LLC is a research and consulting firm that conducts work based on the principle that organizations can chart a course to superior economic performance by studying the best business practices, operating tactics and winning strategies of world-class organizations. Visit the corporate website at http://www.best-in-class.com/ .