Firm beats slowdown with rebranding drive

Chantana Sukmanont

A brand not only represents the product but also the product quality and our promise to our customers that we will give them the best," Chantana Sukumanont, deputy chairman of Siam City Cement's executive committee (marketing and sales), said in an interview with The Nation last week.

She said that after the economic crisis, demand for cement dropped with the slowdown in the country's economy. As a result, the cement industry was faced with oversupply. Maintaining its sales and promoting brand loyalty became the biggest challenge for the company' manage¬ment team.

"Promoting brand loyalty through rebranding seemed like the best solu¬tion. After the 1997 economic crisis, our company had to reorganise its business when it partnered with Holcim. That seemed like the ideal time to consolidate our diverse prod¬ucts and brands under one umbrella brand represented by a logo of an eagle. The brand was called 'Insee' in Thai," she said.

When you want to create brand loyalty, you have to develop your brand to represent premium prod¬ucts that are beyond the standard grade, she said.

"We worked to reorganise our company, insideout, including our business strategy, production process as well as our staff, in a bid to create a brand that would match new mar¬ket trends," she said.

Initially, the company designed a new logo with an eagle inside a square but later changed it to just an eagle's head to give it a simple and modern look. The eagle head stood for look¬ing ahead, and moving faster, higher and smarter.

The company's financial results show that it recorded a netprofit margin of 15 per cent in the first half of the year, which was higher than Siam Cement's margin of 8.6 per cent in the same period.

"Although we hold the second position with respect to market share, we enjoy high profits that have been a direct result of our business strategy focused on building a brand," Chantana said.