[Photo: courtesy of Julian Bedel]

I recently stumbled upon an interesting older article from a site called JapanInc., discussing the power of foreign brands in Japan throughout history.  The article begins detailing the success of US ice cream producer Häagen-Dazs, probably the most famous example of a “constructed” brand. The Häagen-Dazs founders chose the Nordic-sounding name (which is, in fact, gibberish in all languages) in the 80’s when they started the brand — the name was chosen to give the expensive ice cream an ‘imported’ appeal.  The article develops this idea in relation to Japan, and discusses how Japanese brands with invented foreign names dominate the market.* This article got me thinking about the power of foreign brands in Argentina, and how Argentine consumers perceive imported goods.

In Argentina the pull of foreign branding is undeniable, especially accounting for the incredibly high, government-imposed import tax placed on most foreign goods.  A certain class of Argentines seem to buy the majority of their clothes in bi or tri-yearly trips to the states, and foreign brands are nearly always valued over Argentine ones.  Brands like Lacoste, North Face, Ralph Lauren, Barbour, Patagonia and Tommy Hilfiger remain popular, despite being sold at double or triple mark-up in an economy where the peso is four to one to the US dollar.  Following the trend perhaps first begun in Japan so many years ago (the JapanInc article cites “fake” foreign branding as far back as the beginning of the 20th century), some more savvy Argentine brands have begun to American and European-ize their products to appeal to trendy Argentine consumers. Their aim is similar to those of brands like Japanese “fake French” brand FrancFranc: to tempt Argentine consumers to buy local by drawing them in with a foreign name and cheaper price tag.

Have they succeeded? How convincing are these “constructed” brands? Would they cut it on the London high street or the shopping districts of New York and Paris? My answer is probably not. Everybody, from foreign visitors to the Argentine audience they target can spot the difference between a Class Life and a Banana Republic. The problem is these brands don’t go all the way: their identity lands somewhere between the Argentine and European (and maybe New York) aesthetic and ends up convincing no one. Brands such as Stork: New York and Class Life sport English names but the fake European/American branding ends there: the style, the price, and even the models are all obviously home-grown.  Hägen-daaz is successful because hardly anybody, to this day, knows that it isn’t actually a luxury, imported Swedish ice cream.  My advice to the “foreign” brands of Buenos Aires is to step it up a bit:  Ralph Lauren and North Face deserve a better fight.

*Perhaps the most interesting comment in the article was the author’s allusion to the fact that English has become so common in Japanese branding that brands like FrancFranc (a Japanese furniture store) have resorted to using French and German on their labels to maintain the “foreign” illusion.