Islamic Branding From Malaysia

Islamic Branding From Malaysia

Islamic Branding From Malaysia

I was invited by The World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) to be one of the panel speakers in the third WIEF conference "Global Challenges - Innovative Partnerships" in Kuala Lumpur on 27-29 May 2007. I was honored to be the non-Moslem speaker in the conference that was held under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). In this annual conference, the President of Republic of Indonesia, H.E. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was invited as a keynote speaker. I was asked to speak on how Sharia-based companies succeed in a globalised world through strategic positioning and image building. As an impact of globalization, multinational companies are localizing well in our own markets. How do we compete against them? They have the technology; and the deep pockets to campaign their brands. We, as ASEAN companies, must co-exist and collaborate to face the competition.

I believe that Moslem countries will become a great power in the future, besides China. One of the reasons is because of the huge number of population, and in terms of marketing, it will create a large market. Paradoxically, even in the countries which the majority people are Moslem, such as Malaysia or Indonesia, sharia-based companies are less famous compared to conventional companies. In order to increase its competitiveness, companies can’t just offer the Islam brand proposition, but should more focus on its values beyond.

In Islam, there are spiritual values which can be used as business strategies, which is known as Sharia. Sharia marketing’s core values are honesty and transparency. That’s the unique values proposition that should be offered as differentiation. In general, I saw three values within the Sharia concept: religious values, cultural values, and universal values which can become its global strategy. A company shall choose one from these three strategies choice to leverage the business according to the focus. Companies that are very focused in doing business on Moslem rituals, for example offering a traveler planning to go to Mecca, shall focus more on Moslem the religious and cultural values. Meanwhile, companies which are doing business beyond Moslems rituals, such as banking or securities; shall focus more on its universal values.For companies who are doing business beyond Moslem rituals but specially offer religious or cultural values, it will be only in a very niche market. But, when it is offering the universal values, it target bigger market.

Few companies, either local or multinational have seen Sharia-based business as an opportunity. CMIB, one of the biggest banks in Malaysia, has a Sharia business unit division; a multinational company, HSBC has also being localized, and created “HSBC Amanah”; Citibank Berhad offers Sharia-based products in Malaysia; Standard Chartered launch the first global Islamic credit card – the Saadiq (means ‘truthful’) Visa Gold Card in Malaysia. Now we found that most companies, especially multinationals prefer to leverage more on the universal values as they want to target the mass market, both Moslem and Non Moelem. Interestingly, most of these multinational companies enter this market in Malaysia as a starting point, because Malaysia itself is an Islamic country but is not strongly perceived to be an Islamic country in the global market. This is because Malaysia didn’t rely on the religious and cultural values, but its universal values. Moslem’s universal values are spiritual values which can be accepted by people all over the world. Dubai is another successful example of a cosmopolitan Moslem city, but which uses the universal values to attract tourists and investors.

We, as ASEAN companies must be more aware of this opportunity since most of us thought that Sharia-based companies can only serve a specific market. To go regional, Sharia-based companies must create brand leadership and offer universal spiritual values beyond religious-rituals activities. By offering universal values, Sharia-based companies can easily go regional as culture among ASEAN countries are almost similar. It then becomes an advantage for us to go to regional. So, Sharia-based companies can go forth in ASEAN Marketing!