From the lesson of ST25 rice brand to the story of reputation and brand differentiation

The news that ST25 rice has been registered as a trademark by some businesses in a faraway country – the US – is causing a stir in public opinion. There have been many articles discussing and analyzing the story of brand protection, the consequences worth “hundreds of thousands of US dollars” for Trung Nguyen or the consequences that took “more than half a decade” to process for Phu Quoc fish sauce. Today we want to discuss another aspect of this story. The aspect of brand building, the lesson of credibility and the difference of a brand.

Any brand that wants to win the hearts of customers needs two factors: credibility and difference.

The first thing a brand needs to develop strongly is reputation, and it is reputation that creates the value of the brand. Whether a business has loyal customers or not also depends on whether the business can maintain its reputation for quality or not. This customer loyalty can only come after positive experiences, leading to the creation of a long-term relationship of trust between customers and the brand. In the race for quality reputation, engineer Ho Quang Cua’s ST25 rice is temporarily leading, because his rice brand is loved and enthusiastically supported by many people at home and abroad for its delicious, sweet, and sticky taste, as well as its reputation for stable rice quality.

However, there is a sad but in the story of brand building of engineer Ho Quang Cua’s rice, which is the difference. Both theory and practice value the role of difference. No one can deny the importance of this factor in business.

In a consumer market that is considered “easy-going” like Vietnam, when a type of rice is accepted by consumers, it immediately leads to the appearance of a series of other products with similar names and even similar packaging designs, which are widely sold on the market.

In a world of billions of people, to stand out and be remembered, you need to have outstanding looks, talent or a unique personality. The same is true in the business market, among hundreds of direct competitors competing every second, in order for the brand to impress consumers, businesses need to have a difference in their brand building strategy. What is the difference here? Brand differentiation is Creating or Showing the uniqueness of the brand based on reference to competitors.

In the case of ST25 rice, after harvesting and milling into commercial rice, the name “ST25 rice” must be used. Enterprises that purchase paddy, which is a product harvested from rice grown from ST25 rice seeds for milling and then selling rice to the market, must also call it ST25 rice. That means ST25 is the name of a type of rice that is a product processed from paddy harvested from the ST25 rice variety. Because it is the common name of a product, anyone who sells this product (rice) must use that name correctly. So in the case of many businesses bringing ST25 rice to the market, what basis do consumers have to be able to buy and use the original ST25 rice of engineer Ho Quang Cua? Let’s ask a question from another angle, what basis does engineer Ho Quang Cua’s family’s ST25 rice have to compete with businesses that also sell this rice product? And what basis does engineer Ho Quang Cua’s family have to protect the brand of this specialty rice for engineer Ho Quang Cua’s family?

In marketing, there is a very popular saying that marketing is all about perception – marketing is a battle of perceptions. Whoever nails a valuable perception association – that brand wins in the hearts of customers. Instead of releasing a generic rice brand “ST25 – Soc Trang Specialty” to the market, perhaps engineer Ho Quang Cua should create a difference, say “ST25 Ho Quang Cua rice” and register it for protection in any market that the business unit is targeting, perhaps we would not have had heated debates in recent days.

Jack Trout said be different or die. Not being different still won’t kill you right away. But if there is no difference, there will be no regular purchases, no loyal customers and poor sales market share, how long will the business survive?

Building a brand is also synonymous with building intangible assets that create value for the business. When businesses are aware of and quantify the brand with monetary value, they will value and preserve their assets. Otherwise, businesses will only know how to tell the story of “losing the cow and not having time to build a barn”.

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