Tasked with promoting international trade, IES has introduced online access to brand resources and a diagnostic test of brands under the BrandNetwork banner to its (www.iesingapore.com/brandnetwork) website.
It is one of IES' five key initiatives to help more than 3,000 companies build their brands in the next three years.
Other initiatives include the launch of brand consultancy services. IES will pay half the cost of a company's effort to access and build brands.
It has budgeted to help 60 companies in the next three years. "In the first four months, we already had close to 10 companies, which exceeded our target," said Yew Sung Pei, IES' director of international operation.
The agency is also aiming to provide brand training to 500 executives in the next three years, organise an annual brand awards to recognise Singapore enterprises' effort in building brands, and conduct branding research such as its Singapore Brand Survey.
The survey, conducted by Ogilvy & Mather, found that 41 per cent of the 100 companies that responded to the survey take branding very seriously, an increase of 11 per cent over findings of a 1999 internal survey. However, 50 per cent still considered branding as being related to logo creation, sales and marketing or advertising. "Branding moves beyond these to involve strategy, alignment, auditing and understanding customers' perception of the brand," said IES'chief executive officer Lee Yi Shyan.
According to O&M's group strategy director Kathik Siva, the study found that half of the large companies with more than 100 employees that responded have an established brand strategy, while more than 60 per cent of the small companies have a vague or no brand strategy.
The number one block was that the brand was perceived as physical things like logos, products, promotions and events, when in reality the true power of the brand lies in the intangible and customer's perception, he said.