| Cultural and creative industries are the combination of culture, technology and creativity, rooted from cultural industry, and based on the construction of intellectual property rights system and the application of high technology. Creativity is unified with each industry sector, and penetrated in every phase of the industrial chain. Cultural and creative industries provide products and services that satisfy various needs, create enormous wealth and offer great employment opportunities for the society. The development of cultural and creative industries can not only promote the comprehensive development of the society, but also stimulate the inheritance of our traditional culture and the protection of cultural heritage, so as to enhance the soft power of the Chinese culture.As a promising industry with huge potential and rapid developing speed, cultural industry has great chance to become the anchor industry in the future national economy. According to statistics, in recent years, in the US and many Western European countries about 30% of the household consumption is cultural consumption. The output value of cultural industry in the US has accounted for 18% to 25% of its GDP. Among the 400 wealthiest companies in the US,72 of them are in cultural industries. American audio and video industry is ranked No.1 in the country's exports, even surpassing the space industry, occupying about 40% of world market share. Cultural products export has been considered as a significant part in national competitiveness. China has now become a full member of the WTO. With the implementation of the market access principle in China, its cultural industry will inevitably face the trend of world culture and economic integration, which then will result in global economic and cultural penetration, for the nature of globalization is the process of cultural multi-penetration, and only when being introduced to the world can the national culture survive. China is a country with five thousand years of cultural history; however, the development of cultural and creative industries in our country is still comparatively weak. Therefore, it is of global strategic significance to fully promote the development of cultural and creative industries, construct globalization strategies and expand the international market in order to strengthen the influence and power of the Chinese culture in the world.After almost 30 years of cultivation and construction, cultural and creative industries in China have achieved great progress, and have been growing into an important part of China's market economy system. Whereas compared with developed countries, cultural and creative industries in China still remains at the beginning period, and many teething problems need to be faced with. In recent years, research on how to develop cultural industry more efficiently has been largely conducted by domestic scholars. This paper mainly focuses on exploring brand management strategies for China's cultural and creative industries.Brand is the product of market economy, and normally represents product quality and corporate image. Compared with traditional brand, cultural brand is a combination of both economic value and spiritual value and a unique cultural phenomenon with wide influence and distinguished characteristics formed during the process of culture construction. Cultural brand represents the core competitiveness of cultural industry that drives the development of the whole industrial chain. It can maximize cultural resources integration, optimize resources distribution, and effectively absorb human resources, materials, and capital and information flows, so as to largely enhance the ability of profit generating. Moreover, through branding, it is much easier to form an industrial value chain, to further explore market potential and to expand the influence and popularity of local culture. Hence, in order to develop cultural and creative industries in our country, we need to take the path of brand construction, establishing strong cultural brand and fully utilizing the economic competitiveness and cultural appealing power of cultural brand. This paper carries on further research on the detailed branding strategies for cultural and creative industries in China.This paper consists of six parts.The first chapter introduces the research background. It also explains the definition and classification of cultural and creative industries, and analyzes the current situation of the development of cultural and creative industries around the world. Different concepts are adopted by different countries in describing this type of industries. Despite of their different perspectives, the basic definition and connotation remain similar, generally including the following industries: publishing, music, movie, TV performance art, radio, software, network, advertising, construction, design, arts, hand crafts and fashion industry. In today's world, creative industry is no longer merely a concept, but a modern economic entity with huge economic efficiency. In global scale, many creative products, marketing strategies and services from the developed countries have attracted worldwide attention and aroused a huge wave of creative economy spreading throughout the world. The 21st century is an era of brand culture. The development of cultural and creative industries is inseparable from its brand management strategy. One of the most significant features of cultural and creative industries is that it can make the industry itself more prosperous and developed by forming a long list of industrial chain. While brand management is to start from each creative idea as the base spot, then extends to each product on the chain, and finally reaches the purpose of driving the development of the whole industrial chain. In general, even though the trend of domestic research in the cultural and creative industries is more thriving today, the depth and breadth of research is still quite limited and remains to be further explored.Chapter two is about brand and cultural industry branding. This chapter first introduces the definition of brand and cultural brand, and then analyzes the connotation and characteristics of cultural brand, and the difference between cultural brand and traditional brand. Cultural brand is the cohesion of both economic value and spiritual value. With intangible form, brand can create tangible values. Condensing the carrier of all industry elements in it, brand is the concept and impression formed by its audience and customers under the comprehensive effect of all sorts of relevant information. Strong brand identity system not only reflects the brand value and lays the foundation for brand construction and good customer relationship, but also forms the core content of brand strategy. Brand symbol, brand personality, and corporate brand together compose a powerful cultural brand identity system, due to the intangible nature of cultural and creative industries. The general branding process in cultural and creative industries starts from brand establishing, management, promotion and develops to brand extension and maintenance.Chapter three focuses on the thorough analysis of brand management strategies of Harry Potter, aiming to provide reference for the development of domestic cultural brand. This chapter explores Harry Potter's brand positioning and construction, and analyzes its story-telling techniques and brand development skills. Mrs. Rowling succeeded in capturing the audience wants and needs, and closely attracts her audience's attention through her unique narrative skills and crafty structuring techniques. The distinctive feature about this brand is that it always aims at the same group of target audience by developing brand along with the growth of the audience. In this way most of its audiences not only didn't drift away from the brand, but also spread good word-of-mouth that generates strong brand loyalty. The application of experiential marketing and multi-channel interactive marketing successfully helps the promotion and development of this brand. Through creating brand dramas and mystery by using brand effect, its market expectation is highly raised, and so is its selling power. Another important element is its successful management of brand extension. As an extremely strong cultural brand, "Harry Potter" generates various derivative products that cover several industries, from movie, audio and video products, Internet games to toys, clothing, stationeries, then to theme parks, forming a powerful business value chain. Its experience is undoubtedly worth study.Chapter four analyzes the current situation of cultural and creative industries in China. The share of profits and absolute value created by cultural and creative industries in GDP is increasing year by year in most major domestic cities and regions. Meanwhile, new members of enterprises and employees in cultural and creative industries increase annually as well; the whole industries present a thriving scene. Cultural and creative industrial parks are founded in many major cities, hoping to drive the development of local economy. In addition, various policies are launched and special funds are authorized to support their development. Each major city has set up its own distinguished goals for the development of cultural and creative industries based on their local characteristics. Whereas behind the thriving development, there are still many problems existing in the brand construction in cultural and creative industries, such as limited creativity, weak awareness of brand protection, blind brand extension, and problem in brand connotation maintenance.In chapter five, some suggestions are put forward for the effective brand construction in cultural and creative industries in China. Firstly, market analysis is needed before setting up brand strategies. To establish an effective brand strategy, analysis of the cultural product market structure is necessary. This can be made through researching on the market demand and supply factors. Then adjustments can be conducted based on industry condition and market environment. In addition, a concrete study on the supply of competitors, and the upstream and downstream conditions of the industrial chain is also essential in deciding brand strategies. After comprehensive market analysis, there are usually two ways to take in establishing a cultural brand:through the exploration of existing historical, national and local cultural resources; or creating a totally new brand based on creativity and originality. After the establishment, the strategy for brand development needs to be considered. During the process of constant brand exploration, the relationship between brand exploration and cultural resources protection needs to be noticed, since they are codependent and supplement each other. Meanwhile, it is of equal importance to strength brand extension management. Last but not the least is the maintenance of brand. For a successful cultural product brand, it requires long term brand quality management to maintain its market position and safeguard the interests of its consumers. Moreover, in order to exceed in fierce competition and create good strong brand effect, cultural enterprises must pay full attention to the preservation of brand, and implement intellectual property right strategy.The last part of the paper is conclusion, pointing out that there is still a long way for China's cultural and creative industries to go. |
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