Consumer Brands Panel
Building brands in emerging markets
Asia’s emerging economies are leading the world out of recession, and the region’s consumers are taking the baton from their overextended counterparts in developed countries. To win in the global market place, many large multinational brands leveraged a commonality of consumer behavioral patterns across nations and regions. Nevertheless, to compete in the Asian emerging markets, these global brands face intense competition from low-cost local players, consumers with disparate incomes and behavior, fragmented distribution channels, diverse languages and political systems. It presents a complex challenge to all brands seeking gold.
Join us in the Consumer Panel to explore the following questions:
- What are the primary challenges in branding in the Asian emerging markets?
- What are some critical ingredients to the brand success of locals when confronting the major external firms?
- How would the international companies blaze the way to the next growth phase in Asian emerging market?
- Conversely, are emerging market brands ready to take on the global market?
Panelists
José R. Davila, Vice President of Field Human Resources, Gap North America
José Davila is currently responsible for leading the human resources function for all of the Gap stores in the U.S. and Canada. He recently returned from an expatriate role in Japan where he served as the human resources leader for the domestic business including both Gap and Banana Republic. He localized several Gap functions through selection and hiring of Japanese nationals. In this position, he also experienced opening up new markets in China, Japan and Singapore. Prior to Gap, Jose was responsible for driving the people integration agenda for Diageo during their acquisition of the Joseph E. Seagram business. During his career he has also served in various global human resources leadership roles in Godiva, Campbell Soup and Nabisco. He specializes in strategic human resources planning, organization development and training, strategic staffing and recruitment, compensation design, and performance management. José holds a Masters Degree in Adult and Workplace Education from Columbia University and currently resides in Mill Valley, California.
Dave Sessions, Vice President of Global eCommerce, Walmart International
Dave Sessions is a vice president in the global ecommerce division of Walmart. In his role, he is responsible for driving the adoption and growth of ecommerce in the APAC and LATAM regions which requires a deep understanding of consumer behavior, supply chain, merchandising and marketing for each country resulting in billions of dollars of sales. Dave’s experience comes from a leadership role at Microsoft where he was responsible for building successful businesses in over 20 emerging markets as well as serving in global roles as vice president at Experian and senior vice president at Bank of America. He also built and ultimately sold a successful consulting firm serving multi-national corporations. Dave currently serves on the board of the largest trade association of on-line merchants and a number of not-for-profits serving the needs of the impoverished and underserved in the global south.
Rand Han, Strategy Director, Bloodyamazing
Rand Han, a Chinese American from California, is a full blooded China entrepreneur. In 2006, Rand built BA360 (Bloodyamazing Co. Ltd) from nothing into a tight 15-person operation, servicing multinational clients, such as Volkswagen, Porsche, Schindle, Coke, etc. Fueled by quick thinking, ambition, and luck, the service covers every aspect r of the advertising business from pitching clients to championing creative, project and client management. In Q1 2009 Rand built littleredbook.cn, the industry's most popular China-focused advertising blog; after, created missniuniu.com, one of China's top fashion blogs. In Q3 2009 Rand created zerosocialmedia.com (ZeroDegrees), a China social media company, pioneering China social media digital strategies in China. As of Q4 2009, ZeroDegrees' first clients are American Airlines and 3 Suisses (Europe's top fashion ecommerce retailer). Since then, Ran has consulted with top 4A digital, creative and media agencies for clients like Tiffany, Hennessy, Starbucks, J&J and others; Rand recently landed Unilever Knorr along with strategic partner agency SapientNitro.
Daniel Harris, Founder and Partner, Harris & Moure
Dan Harris is a founding member of Harris & Moure, a boutique international law firm with lawyers in Seattle, WA, and in Qingdao, China. Dan also is the lead editor of the award winning China Law Blog (chinalawblog.com). Dan holds a J.D. degree, Magna Cum Laude, from Indiana University and a Bachelor's degree from Grinnell College. Dan has nearly twenty years experience representing companies in their Asian legal matters.
Moderator
Paul Tiffany, Senior Lecturer, Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley 
Paul Tiffany is a senior lecture at the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches course in competitive strategy and international management. He is currently a visiting professor at SASIN in Thailand and CEIBS, the leading business school in China. In addition to his academic work, he he provides multi-specialty consulting and management training and development services to firms throughout the world. Recent clients have included IBM, Fidelity Investments, Cisco Systems, Morgan Stanley, US Steel, Johnson & Johnson, Banc of America Securities, Microsoft, Statoil (Norway), MinSheng Bank (China), Clorox, Kimberly-Clarke, Siam Cement Group (Thailand), Thai Beverage Co. (Thailand). He has served as a keynote speaker to conferences and programs throughout the world, including the European Facilities Management Association Conference (EU), the Investment Management Certified Analyst Association’s annual meeting (US); the Innobiz Innovation Conference (Korea),and the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) Thailand, among many others.