Powering Commerce. Driving Growth.

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A holding group that serves global brands and is known for its work in the retail space, AdvantageSolutions, a has launched a new ecommerce agency called Advantage Unified Commerce (AUC).

The new agency offers in-store and digital media, multichannel activation, attribution and analytics, and access to AUC’s creative teams and proprietary technology platform. Data underpins the offering, which AUC gleans from mobile app integrations, store-level data gathered by in-store merchandisers, and SKU-level data from third parties.

Learn more about powering commerce.  Driving growth.

Exports to Play a Big Role in India's Economy

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Abhijit Kamra, director, Global Trade, Amazon India, and Dr Avik Sarkar professor, Indian School of Business (ISB), firmly believes that India has all the right ingredients to emerge as a strong export’s hub, ushering in the fourth industrial revolution.

In the 21st century, the power of the internet, combined with rapid digitization levels and use of machine learning and artificial intelligence can lead the nationals and citizens of India to the vision of Exports 2.0.  Exports 2.0 will enable small businesses to reach customers worldwide and create global brands 

This vision can empower millions of MSMEs across India to benefit from global market access, integration with global supply chains and enable them to create global brands. 

Today in Global Small Business: Mid-Market Companies Can Make a Global Impact

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• American Express to offer credit cards to small businesses (about time); it will be co-branded with Amazon.com.
• Big global brands such as Nestle, Qatar Airways, and Microsoft, are recruiting Irish suppliers to win war for talent.
• Seven (7) keys to global e-commerce success.
• Globalization for the little guy -- there is such a thing.
• To accelerate your growth via cloud computing and at the same time find out key growth lessons from more than 50 startup owners using cloud computing, join the WEGGinar™ 7/11 with IBM experts.  It's free of charge and you can register here. 
• Where (and how) mid-market companies can make a global impact.

What It Takes To Build a Global Brand

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How do you craft a universal message that resonates with folks across the planet?  Elizabeth Wasserman, for Inc.com, does a good job examining what it takes to build a global brand.

Forty years ago, there were only a handful of truly "global brands" and they were made up of only the biggest corporations -- Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive, IBM, Shell. Then a rash of upstarts came along, such as Nike, Microsoft, Apple, and Honda, and pushed their brand reputation further than their actual sales footprint. But now that barriers to international trade have come down and the Internet has helped small and mid-sized companies compete on the global stage ...

She covers:

• What a global brand is.
• What you need to expand a brand internationally (steps to take).
• Digging deeper:  trademark, copyright and patent protection.
• How to build international brand awareness.

Read the entire article here.

Is Your Brand a Global Powerhouse?

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A ranking of Swiss brands conducted by Interbrand unveiled that the top five brands were, in order of brand value, Nescafé, UBS, Nestlé, Credit Suisse and Zurich. Other globally recognized brands in the top 20 included Rolex, Omega, Lindt, Swatch and Longines.

How did a tiny country -- with less than 16,000 square miles of land mass and less than 8 million people -- largely known for keeping to itself become such a branding powerhouse? It starts with Switzerland’s view of its own brand.

The inherent value of “Swiss made” brands is so high that the country’s government is currently considering new laws to protect it: “The government wants to replace vague laws with concrete rules to crack down on abuses of ‘made in Switzerland’ and Swiss cross labels” (“Protecting ‘Swiss made’ brand divides opinion,” swissinfo.ch, April 6, 2008). The movement is known in Switzerland as “the legislation project Swissness.”

Discover why Swiss brands have global clout here; start to think about how your brand is perceived by the world; and, take a shot at stimulating your brand here.

Additional resource:

The Trouble With Brands

Why Global Brands Work

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Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing KnowHow, for Harvard Business Online. Join in on the debate on whether Ford will make a comeback on their global brand. The post is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge here.