*Interesting article to read...
Saturday May 9, 2009
Malaysian marketers should consider non-westernised brand names
WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?
By HAFIDZ MAHPAR
RECENTLY a Malaysian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur won an eight-year legal battle against McDonald’s to retain the name McCurry. Newspapers used the analogy of David versus Goliath to describe the triumph.
For me, though, it’s more like a Jerry-versus-Tom battle – as in the cartoon show Tom and Jerry. It’s strange, and it’s not clear-cut “good-versus-evil”.
Jerry the mouse may be the, um, underdog, but in many a case, he is the one initiating the conflict with Tom the cat. And boy, do I find Jerry very irritating! Which is why I tend to root for the long-suffering Tom, who has the knack of getting into “interesting” situations like being electrocuted or sliced in half.
Fast food chain McDonald’s (below) lost a lawsuit after an appeals court overruled a decision that its trademark had been infringed by a local restaurant called McCurry. – Reuters Don’t get me wrong. I wholly agree with the Court of Appeal’s decision to overturn the High Court’s ruling in favour of McDonald’s.
McDonald’s shouldn’t be given the monopoly on the use of the prefix “Mc” in the commercial arena.
There are many reasons I support the ruling, including the fact that there are quite a few people in this world whose name includes a “Mc” and they may want to have a business that bears their name.
I also don’t want to see Yahoo! suing a company that uses “!” in its brand name or Guess? suing a company that also wants to use a “?”
At the same time, it is hard for me to believe that when the McCurry restaurant owner thought of the name “McCurry”, it totally didn’t occur to him that maybe – just maybe – people would see it as riding on the popularity of McDonald’s, another company in basically the same business.
I also don’t understand why, if the “Mc” was meant to be short for “Malaysian Chicken”, that the “c” was written in lower case.
I may not be the most popular guy in Malaysia after writing this, but I don’t really see the court decision as a victory for McCurry.
The restaurant director said he believed in the “Malaysia Boleh” spirit, and in the same newspaper report, he was quoted, perhaps in jest, as saying he was considering to add new items like McTosai and McTarik.
It may not be legally wrong to use “Mc”, but I just find it a bit distasteful.
The real fight, to me, is not against McDonald’s but against a mindset that is in awe of Western brands.
A mindset that wants one’s brand to be, however indirect, a subset of what is considered “international”.
There are companies that choose names for their brands that trick the consumers into thinking the brands are foreign.
Where is the pride in being Malaysian?
If the international fashion world can accept brands like Jimmy Choo and Zang Toi, why can’t biscuits and perfumes carry Asian or Malaysian names?
Sometimes, in order to please everyone and be internationally accepted, you will come up with a name that is hard to remember or a mouthful to pronounce.
Yes, I’m thinking of the A(H1N1) flu. Why can’t we just stick with “swine flu”, for goodness’ sake?
We somehow had to please the Mexicans, North Americans, and pork sellers. So, what’s next? People named Ahini taking to the streets in protest?
I like the “underdog triumphs against all odds” stories like many Malaysians, but I’m not so sure McCurry is going in the right direction as far as branding is concerned. I believe in the Malaysia Boleh spirit, but not McMalaysia Boleh.
Hafidz Mahpar, an associate editor at The Star, is amazed to hear that fast-food chains in Malaysia are aggressively expanding amid the current challenging economic environment.
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