A Brand Construction Strategy of Digital Cultural and Creative Empowerment in Local Cultural Industries

The local industries of Taiwan are taken as examples. Taiwan, with an area of 35,980 km², features different geographical landscapes, distinct crops and strong local favors, all of which benefit the development of the country’s cultural creative industry. The well-developed international tourism industry provides a perfect opportunity with which to develop local industries. As local tourism is promoted, creative tourism should be advanced along with local software and hardware, including compound management and experience marketing. Governments at all levels have promoted industrial transformation from the local industries to a tourism factory or mini-industry, allowing preservation and popularization of local culture and activation of local assets. Therefore, instead of creating a pick-and-mix design to destroy the whole picture, cultural resources can be combined with the concept of integrated brand-to-market service design to create enjoyable experience. In addition, it can also lead to the application of digital technology to create new values and experiences that, in turn, can help maintain awareness among the local people. The study introduces digital technology into local industry development, thus building a brand model and creating cultural experimental value to build cross-border brand equity and reduce time expense for design and marketing. The company will benefit in the form of value-added benefits and international business opportunities. Subsequently, the upgrading and transformation of the traditional industry is promoted, driving industry value, the cultural tourism industry, and local brand development.

In the development of local tourism, and the arousal of sense of natives caused by globalization, the people, culture, geography, property and scenery with local feature will be a key factor of developing local economy, while culture and creativity could create business opportunity through the added value and service of digital technology, providing real estate with different strategic thinking. Thus, based on culture and economy, this study tries to explore the local property development and strategic approach of brand management.

2.1 Local Characteristic Culture and Creative Economy

Culture plays an irreplaceable role in brand and local industry, the elements such as emotional resonance and story possessed by culture have created infinite possibility of economic value, providing the best counter to highlight national feature. Localized life culture has gradually become a development direction of Taiwan’s cultural creation; local feature is also the thinking point of local cultural creation in the development of community. In the 1980s and 1990s, in the face of cultural infiltration in consumer market by foreign mass culture, Taiwanese was evoked to think about native consciousness, reflection on self-identity and cultural criticism, started positive self cultural updating and reconstruction to create plentiful and real local life culture, and then the global culture in Taiwan coexisted harmoniously (Hsiao 2002; Liao 1996). For the managers of local industry and designers, they can understand the opinion of ethnic group effectively and the demand of market by culture, on the other hand, they can bring culture into industry and endow industry with depth through culture, promoting consumer behavior to a kind of experience of life attitude and culture. In addition, from the opinion of consumer, when industry and designer are creating consumption value by using cultural code, the commodity contacted by consumers is not only consumer goods, but also contain the cultural implication, which create deep emotional and sensitive connection.

Because of the relationship with economy, culture is made and produced to appear as various kinds of physical commodity and sightseeing; while economic activities have made economic behavior produce emotional recognition, heterogeneity and distinguishing degree due to elements such as story with cultural connotation and emotion. Thus, there is a mutual benefit relationship between culture and economy (Lash and Urry 1994). The traits of culture such as diversification, uniqueness and distinguishing degree, making it one of the selling points of marketing, for local residents, culture is the element which is closely related to life, while it is exactly the trait of marketing, by digging local culture, culture has become the important core value in current marketing, design and community construction.

2.2 Service Experience Creating New Value of Brand

In the era of emphasizing experience economy, the products and service sold by enterprise have to produce unique value through experience design, and the introduction of service design is made by integrated service design system plan to consider using what kind of ways to create a service experience more perfectly and provide consumers with an innovative experience. Pine and Gilmore (1998) thought the difference between “Experience Economy” and traditional economy (agricultural economy, industrial economy) is that Experience Economy pursues the shaping of sensibility and experience to build and provide activities for consumers to recollect, besides, also pay attention to the interaction between consumers and commodity. However, service design refers to the people who has contacted and accepted service, brand, product, environment and connection between each other (Evenson 2006). Schmitt (1999) classifies experience into 5 kinds, namely sense, emotion, thinking, action and relation, these can be seen as a strategic experience module, by cooperating with its purpose and appeal, to choose one of them to apply independently or integrate them into a whole experience.

Generally speaking, both service design and experience economy pays attention to a kind of consumer experience context and interaction. Service design pays attention to explain the function and shape from consumer’s point of view, helping industry to provide innovative service or improve existing service, making customer side product and service establish more useful, available and desired traits, as well as taking the feasibility, service efficiency of the application of service provider and enterprise side (Yang and Huang 2011; Moritz 2005). Compared to general traditional design, service design is a kind of more macro design activity plan and procedure. If service provides customers with a kind of experience, service design should pay more attention to provide customers with a series of desired unique experience design (Ho and Sung 2014). The main idea of service design is to make the boundary between service providers (designers) and service receivers (consumers) fuzzy and become the participants in the process of co-creating experience, producing the concept of Co-creation (Yang and Huang 2011; Brown 2009). The thinking of observation and user-centered can be applied in different issues and field to create different opinion and thinking direction. However, when performing service design, the integrity of content, all-dimensional consideration planning, including communication, environment and behavior, etc. must be taken into consideration, no matter in what kind of ways to express, consistency, easy-to-use and strategic combination must be presented (Hollins and Hollins 1991), so as to provide suitable service solution based on field domain, connecting local, tourism, service and experience to create innovative content of creative tourism.

2.3 Opportunities of Adding Value by Digitalization for Local Industry Branding

In the past, Taiwan enterprises widely believed that talking about “brand” is vague and unpractical, as the transformation of industry and the changing of consumer’s interests, due to the gradual formation of “brand value” concept, making enterprises confront “brand” and pay attention (Lo and Lin 2007). The things brand differs from other competitive products or service are the following three functions: first, explicit function of distinguishing, such as brand name, mark, symbol, special color or font, etc., making brand produce uniqueness and easy to distinguish; second, implicit function of cohesion. Such as social responsibility, spirit pursuit and value orientation, which is regarded as the bridge between internal personnel and external consumer; third, function of market orientation. Brand is growing in market, which is the result of consumer’s recognition; there will be no brand without consumer (Tsai 2009). The items involved in the three functions of brand contain Interdisciplinary professional knowledge connotation, from the distinguishing strategy of brand, spiritual value to market value, the construction of brand requires strategic operation with integrity and creating the opportunity of brand digital marketing through new media.

The so called “new media” connect people who use media in different places and time to form a community by using digital, website and interactive technology, so as to conduct group interaction, from which share information or experience, and then achieve the marketing mode of transmitting information (Ryan and Jones 2009). New social media mostly appear on website; the content is chosen or created by users, which is mostly published by people with the same interest. From the one-way information delivery in Web1.0 to the Web2.0 bilateral interaction social times, website platform is gradually transformed from customer service to citizen-oriented concept (Chen 2010). Digital technology has provided the new marketing opportunity, the business environment on social media is no longer the same as traditional media mode, always advertising or promoting products, it has to pay more time and energy to interact with members in social groups to achieve marketing performance (Ku and Lee 2014). In the ear of Web2.0, users have become information sharer, providing interaction mode between users as well as between users and website. The continuous development of digital technology brings great convenience to human life, making the relation between digital and life much closer.

2.4 Summary

The uniqueness in culture and life, in addition to endow town with character and life, when introducing design into local field to observe, plan and design, the diversification and feature of local culture will be the key point of local brand development and integrating design strategy. This study can help promote the brand development of the local economy, integrate local cultural features with the tourism brand, and facilitate the localization of industries in Taiwan by introducing digital technology. The cultural identity of a local industry is explored based on the settlements of villages and towns (or space, field, and strongpoint). Characteristic enterprises are regarded as a brand to build a test base. Local industries have a small business scope and may be unfamiliar with the concept of “brand management”. Thus, products with good quality are often sold with poor marketing strategies. The study is expected to assist local industries in determining their advantages, integrating local stories into brand marketing, and seeking potential opportunities to create brand value through digital marketing. The study introduces service design and brand strategy into the local cultural industry as well as promotes industry transformation and brand marketing.

The study has three stages. In the first stage, literature review and current case study were conducted to explore and determine the current conditions and resources of local brands in Taiwan. Lectures on brand image and planning were held. Experienced experts and scholars were invited to share their experiences. In addition, workshops on creative service design and creative brand strategies were provided to motivate the participants. They were also guided to visit villages and towns to obtain first-hand experience. A design project on local branding was proposed as a primary test, thus providing the relevant experience of brand operation and foundation for the formulation of a theory.

In the second stage, the results and theoretical foundation in the first stage were adopted to investigate the application of digital technology in brand management and operation. A project on the application of digital content service in the local industry was designed and proposed. The formulated theory was applied through practical operations.

In the third stage, research data were collected to build a local brand strategy pattern in accordance with local conditions. Through the evaluation of digital tools and research results from case analysis, a creative marketing pattern is built by integrating the digital technology into the distinct branding of the local industry.

The study analysis is divided into three major parts to propose the perception based on different study methods and steps for the current phase. At first, the expert speeches are analyzed to learn the opinions of the experts with practical experience towards the brand operation strategy. Then it hosts the workshop that introduces the service design tools through practical operation and diagnoses the existing local brands in Taiwan through the strategy of service design, so as to understand the current situation of local brand operation and outline the feasible strategy patterns in the future. Finally, the academic and industrial experts are invited to discuss about the opportunities for brand development in the future, and to propose the related suggestions and illustrations. To sum up the views in each phase, it integrates and proposes the operation strategy patterns of introducing the digital service into local brand operation.

4.1 Expert’s Brand Speech: Value, Strategy and Profits

The study invites 10 experts with the practical experience related to brand operation, to share their experience in the speeches on the topics of local operation, brand strategy and design planning. It expects the experts could share the strategy experience and opinions of brand operation within the short speech by summary and brief elaboration. The study further conducts interview for the experts and analyzes their opinions towards brand establishment through the transcript codes, which are taken as the foundation and direction of the propositions in the follow-up studies. For the practical experience shared by the 10 experts, it analyzes and summarizes three major directions of brand operation, namely, 1. Value- sustainable operation of local specialties, 2. Strategy- brand positioning and marketing channels, and 3. Profits-Business features and patterns, as detailed below:

1. 1.

   Value- sustainable operation of local specialties

   Developing brand and design from the perspective of caring locality, the experts consider the local spirits and features as the core of brand development, so as to strengthen the correlation of brand and locality that can become the irreplaceable brand distinction and create the brand identity. For the brand design plan from the perspective of local specialties, the core value must return to the local place, so as to build favorable operation interaction with the locals. Finally, it repays the locals and creates the opportunities for sustainable operation.

2. 2.

   Strategy- brand positioning and marketing channels

   The brand planning strategy requires strict investigation and study. It conducts design service and visual planning suitable to the development of brand essence, so as to create the overall consistency of brand development. The product value is planned and the target consumer groups are defined through the brand positioning. Various problems related to the consumers and market orientation can determine the brand and product design strategies and conditions. Through the design diagnosis, problem digging and design positioning before the brand is promoted to the market, it can create brand and product and release them to the market in the test phase. In this way, it can create the profitable opportunities and save costs. Different positioning can determine the design operation direction and idea. Therefore, before a new brand and new design is released to the market, it requires strict analysis and strategy formulation. By doing so, it can discover the special stories and values of the products, grasp and magnify the characteristics, as well as strengthen the brand characteristics and finally produce identity and memory in the minds of the consumers. During this process, it must have quite good interaction and mutual trust relationship with the brand.

3. 3.

   Profits- business features and patterns

   The current industrial pattern focuses on the consumption mechanism at the consumer end to gain profits, while the design itself is a business idea. Thus, the design originality can’t ignore the thinking mode in the business field. During the operation, it first requires a full research and investigation on the cases of different brands, and then designs the optimal solution based on different positions and properties of the cases. With a clear thought and objective cutting point, it formulates the strategies and resolves problems by following the five steps of observation, imitation, cultivation, understanding, and creation. Moreover, it discovers the special stories and values of the products, grasps and magnifies the characteristics, as well as strengthens the brand characteristics and finally produces identity and memory in the minds of the consumers. During this process, it must have quite good interaction and mutual trust relationship with the brand. It values the teamwork and interaction, and insists on the direction of brand positioning. The brand operation must closely combine the design with the channels, so as to match different channels to different customer groups and work out different design proposals. At the meantime, it must conduct market analysis and channel planning.

4.2 Brand Strategy Workshop: See Brand Innovation Opportunity from Service Design

After the experts share the experience, the study hosts the brand strategy workshop. It intends to introduce the service design to review the 7 local brand cases in Taiwan, find out the problems and clarify the current situation of the brands. The detailed instruction content includes building the fundamental concept of service design, introducing the service design tools, as well as the service design practice and brand strategy planning. The participants generate insights from service design through the analysis on the local industrial brands, draw the sustainable operation blueprint with the brand strategy planning, discover and increase the possibilities for the local industrial to develop international brands.

During the workshop operation, the study introduces a total of 10 service design tools for different phases of design process, as shown in Fig. 1.

Service design tools introduced for each phase

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In the middle and ending phases of the workshop, the participants are required to think about the use of each service tool and provide feedbacks. To sum up the opinions of the participants, 4 of the 10 service design tools provide the greatest assistance for them during the process of brand strategy positioning, namely, “Customer Journey Map”, “Storyboard”, “Service Blueprint” and “Business Model Canvas”, which can match the process of using the service tools. “Customer Journey Map” analyzes the customer positioning, and can help the participants sort and analyze the current situation of brand and service in a systematical way. “Storyboard” sorts the service order, and finds out whether there are some missing items or whether the logical is improper. The content of “Service Blueprint” clearly allocates the resources and manpower, and outlines the overall content and rules. “Business Model Canvas” presents the overall outlook of the brand and service. After clarifying various content items of the brand, it utilizes “Business Model Canvas” to review whether there are some missing parts from the core value to the profitability pattern, so as to think about the final positioning of the brand value. From the feedbacks of the participants, it is learned when introducing the service design tools into the brand; it can start from the process of problem diagnosis, strategy planning, resource allocation and business model, so as to facilitate the brand to build complete and comprehensive view.

4.3 In-depth Expert Interviews: Strategic Ideas from Concept to Profits

1. 1.

   Story─ Create brand value with story emotion

   The local development must find out the core value. This view is proposed repeatedly in different stages of the study process, which is taken as the core and key to the local brand development. The core value is from the local culture, including the local people, landscapes, industries, and etc. For these local values, it must find out a way for marketing and a point for standing. In this way, the economic value can be transformed and created during the cultural preservation and inheritance. Wherein, the story is an important element to strengthen and magnify the local characteristics, which can establish the development of local brands and the characteristic value of the brand operation through discovering the emotional value of the stories with local characteristics. When the functionalities of the product show minor difference, the consumer can further compare the sentimental elements such as the core value conveyed by the brand, and the cultural emotion contained in the product. In this case, what the consumer values is the spiritual story of the brand, and manufacturing persistence and finer points. When the consumer’s concern transfers the focus, it depends on the formulation of the spiritual connotation of the brand to determine whether it can attract the consumer continuously and further makes them purchase.

2. 2.

   Integration─ Integration of interdisciplinary talents and resources

   When introducing the digital technology in the brand, it requires a communication role between the brand and the digital technology, as well as the resource integration. There are a lot of cases in the cultural creative industry which apply the digital technology to obtain value-added benefits. However, for the local brands, they haven’t obtained a deep understanding on and contact with the digital techniques and technologies, so they can’t capture the market trend and technological application precisely. Therefore, it requires the communication media role which can understand the language between these two. In this way, the industries can benefit and cooperate with each other, as well as create the value-added opportunities.

• Positioning roles of interdisciplinary talents

  The terms and ideas adopted by the designers are different from that of the general managers or the technological developers, who are inclined to use the sentimental ones, but know how to apply the rational investigation tools. Therefore, the role positioning of the designers should be more open in the process of the brand operation, so they can participate in the overall process, and design the work that is closer to the brand requirements and customer demands. However, the technology and culture show a significant difference in the rational and sentimental orientation. Thus, the industrial experts with practical experience emphasize that the professional talents that play the bridge role are required to shorten the time and cost spent on the communication. Such interdisciplinary talents can be positioned as the role of managers or consultants, who create the innovative market opportunities through the understanding of the technology and the combination with the requirements of brand originality.

• Integration and application of technical resources

  Beside the integration of talents, the resource integration is also crucial. The management talents acquiring the knowledge from the both parties know how to communication with people from different industries. Furthermore, it needs to make good use of the resources and integrate them to maximize the strengths and benefits between the industries. Moreover, it must know how to use the resources at hand to seek assistance. For example, when seeking support from the government, it must clearly know which resources are in need. That can help get to the point directly and obtain the most support and assistance. The resource integration can create the synergistic effect that can link points into planes

1. 3.

   Digitalization─ Communication, interaction and cost-saving

   The digital technology should be considered as a tool used to create ideas and concept implementation. Moreover, it provides the operators and the consumers with a communication bridge, and helps the industries save cost, and so on. With the nature of service, the digital technology can help create value-added opportunities and reduce the operation costs for different industries if it is applied properly.

   • Building communication bridge with the consumers

     With the era changes, the modern consumer groups show an increasingly high acceptance and dependency level. The digital message communication has become an indispensable part for promotion of modern brands, which can help shorten the communication cost and increase the brand visibility. Besides, the digital way also allows the brand operators to have the most direct contact and interaction. The royal consumers supporting the brand can be cultivated in the communities. With these supporters, the brand operation can be maintained steadily. The word-of-mouth marketing effect of the network media makes the operators which show high requirements and persistence on the self-quality can create outstanding performance even without the advertisement exposure. All these are the benefits for the brand communication brought by the digital technology.

   • Providing diverse assistance for the industries to save entrepreneurship cost

     The application of digital technology in the entrepreneurship of cultural creative industry can be divided into different phases to provide different benefits and effects. In the founding phase, it can take advantage of the network features, such as low cost and high communication efficiency to make the brand contact with the consumers earlier. In this way, it tests the acceptance level of the market with lower cost. In the development phase, when the customers and consumer groups are gradually fixed, the network interaction can maintain the communication with the consumers. Moreover, it can provide service to stabilize the consumer groups. In addition, when the operation tends to be stable, it can introduce the product innovation and development, create different product items and perform the brand value innovation through the value-added benefit of the digital technology. Moreover, it communicates with the consumers constantly, and takes it as the way to keep in line with the preference of the consumers in the new era.

2. 4.

   Commercialization ─ Diversified business models

   In the process of developing local brands, how can we find a balancing point between the profits and the cultural value, and will the industrial development based on the commercial value fail to consider the cultural reality and make the application mere formality. In terms of the strategy of business model, the creative cultural operators can think about diversified business models in addition to the cost reduced by using the digital technology as stated above. The operation system can be divided into the profit department and development department. The former selects to operate with high market acceptance degree, stable case sources and low risk, so as to create stable revenue sources for the enterprise and the brand. At the meantime, the latter invests into the development of the creative and innovative ideas for the core perception of the brand, which is not restricted by whether the product will have immediate benefits and returns. The diversified operation strategy allows the local culture to strengthen the investment into the culture when developing the brand. The key for enterprise profits is not at the core value development end. Since the development end needs cultivation and test, so it may not obtain the market response immediately. However, with the time passing by, it can develop the consumer groups show recognition towards the brand perception, so as to create the long-tail effect in the enterprise. To achieve sustainable operation, the enterprise must think the return flow about from multiple perspectives. The operators cannot only think about gaining profits from the consumers, but also work out various profitable means. The profits can be gained by not only selling products, but also selling advertisements and even providing services. Moreover, the operation subjects can be B-to-C or B-to-B, and even C-to-C. Also it can create stable operation and development with various profitable means.

After the constant operation is achieved, the enterprise should not stagnate. Under stable development, it must keep in line with the market preference and maintain the communication with the consumers. Furthermore, it can conduct development and innovation based on the customer preference, so as to achieve the goal of sustainable operation. To achieve sustainable operation, the practical consideration is to gain profits immediately. With the economic benefits, it can expand the business into industry, attract more talents and create more employment opportunities and new opportunities in the market.

In the enterprise operation cycle from founding phase, development phase, stablization phase to recession phase, the operation strategies in different phases must be centered with core value, so as to maintain the consistency of brand operation. Moreover, the strategic planning shall be performed based on the profitable means, manpower utilization and technological investment. Due to different brand stability, the operation strategies in each phase have different requirements of various talents and technologies. In the initial foundation phase, it could first plan the future development strategies for the overall operation, and then make adjustments according to the actual operation situation and the changes of market environment. By doing so, when entering the recession phase, the enterprise can develop new businesses based on the previous experience accumulation, or make transformation with various assets, so as to create the sustainable cycle. In terms of the brand operation, how to make innovation based on the times change and the technological advancement? It must keep good interaction with the consumers in addition to practicing the core value mainly based on the local culture. This can maintain the stable return flow and create opportunity of sustainable operation. The key echoes with the proposition of the study, namely, the assistance of Communication with the Consumers brought by the digitalization. Moreover, the promotion of digitalization depends on the talent cultivation and integration. These parts that are correlated with each other closely can create a new innovation point of brand operation strategy in the core value, strategy, integration, digital and commercial profits (Fig. 2).

Model of local brand operation strategies

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