While the digitisation era is changing at a breakneck speed, building online brand identity is essential for all small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Online brand identity allows brands to be different from their competitors. This is also a hot topic raised at the workshop on “Building, Developing Brand and Protecting Intellectual Property in International Trade: Trends and Solutions" held by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) in collaboration with Verisign and Mat Bao Joint Stock Company.
Dr Doan Duy Khuong, VCCI Vice President, said, branding has never been discussed as much as now at both national and corporate levels. At the micro-level or at the business level, up to 98 percent of Vietnamese SMEs lack branding strategy although 90 percent agree that brand is more important than financial capacity and they are very clearly aware of the importance of brand, according to a survey by the Business Administration Institute under the Hanoi-based National Economics University. Therefore, SMEs need to pay attention to the value of online brand identity in the context of international market integration. A competitive country also must have brands.
Dr Tran Duy Hai, Head of the Intellectual Property Department, the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said, companies have various options for website domains but .com domain is still a standard one, with 114.9 million domain names registered worldwide by the end of the third quarter of 2014.
Concurring with this point of view, Luong Thi Thanh Huong, Chief Executive of Mat Bao Network Joint Stock Company in Northern Vietnam, said that “International domain name plays an important role in online business and the .com domain is managed by Verisign - the biggest domain name supplier in the world. Verisign has proven its capabilities as a leading expert in managing .com domain infrastructure with accurate and absolute stable performance in the past 15 years. With its availability, reliability and high stability, the .com domain name will bring many benefits to businesses using it.
She added that a .com domain name can be purchased for only a small part of business start-up costs but it is the most worthwhile investment as it helps customers easily find its website at any time, even the company is still operating in the country or has expanded to foreign markets. "With absolutely stable performance in more than a decade, the .com domain name is recommended for use by most international experts,” said Huong.
She also cited an example of branding in Vietnam and referred it to a lesson for local enterprises. In July 2007, Vinakansai Football Club, invested by Vinakansai Cement Group, registered the brand name, Vinakansai, to the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (NOIP) for protection but it was turned down because a steel company in Haiphong Ciy had already registered it in July 2006. Thus, the Football Club and the Group were renamed to The Vissai Ninh Binh Cement.
To avoid problems in branding development and intellectual property protection, companies are recommended to have unique marks, trade names and geographical indications. They should not liken trade names to brand names. And, they need to register for their brand names.
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