How can Vietnamese brands move beyond scale and salience?

While Vietnam continues to stand out as one of Asia’s fastest-growing markets, brand leaders warn that growth alone is no longer enough. The next phase will be defined by meaning, experience, and emotional connection. Brand leaders, marketers, and strategists gathered at the Kantar BrandZ Vietnam Awards 2025 to examine how Vietnamese brands can move beyond scale and salience to achieve sustainable, long-term growth.

“There is a very interesting dynamic in Vietnam,” Ms. Maslina M. Mokhtar, Regional Head of Experience, APAC and Chief Client Officer, Vietnam at Kantar Insights, told Vietnam Economic Times / VnEconomy. “Most brands are very good at building awareness. People know who they are. But for many of them, the relationship with consumers is still largely transactional. Very few brands are able to build real loyalty.”

Meaningful Difference

According to Ms. Mokhtar, Vietnam’s fundamentals remain compelling. The country benefits from a young, skilled workforce, rising foreign investment, and increasing commitments to sustainability, green energy, and responsible finance. At the same time, domestic consumption has proven resilient, allowing the economy to grow not only through exports but also from within.

Yet this favorable environment also raises expectations for brands. “The question is no longer whether Vietnam can grow,” she continued. “It’s how brands choose to grow when they are already in a good place.”

Kantar’s answer lies in what it calls Meaningful Difference - a concept that goes beyond awareness or market share to focus on relevance, emotional connection, and consistent experience.

Drawing on Kantar BrandZ data, Ms. Mokhtar noted that many brands in Vietnam excel at generating visibility but struggle to articulate a clear purpose or personality. “In many categories, you see one or two brands that are very clear about what they stand for,” she said. “They are meaningful, they are different, and they retain the same customers over time.”

This lack of clarity, she warned, leads to wasted investment. Brands spend heavily on exposure, but without a strong point of view or emotional relevance, awareness fails to translate into loyalty or pricing power. That challenge is particularly evident in categories where competition has intensified and products have become increasingly similar.

The growing role of the customer experience as a driver of brand equity is also highlighted. Historically, many organizations treated the customer experience as an operational issue rather than a strategic one. That mindset is now outdated.

Kantar data shows that touchpoints account for more than 75 per cent of brand equity and predisposition. In sectors such as financial services, more than half of brand equity is driven by the experience. Even in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), the experience - including retail, e-commerce, and product trial - accounts for nearly 45 per cent. The implication is clear: brand promises must be delivered seamlessly across channels, from advertising and digital platforms to physical stores and after-sales service.

Shifting consumer mindsets

Across sectors, changes in how people discover, evaluate, and engage with brands are reshaping the foundations of marketing, product development, and the customer experience.

For Ms. Khiet Ly, Channel Partnership Team Lead at TikTok Vietnam, the most significant shifts relate to attention, emotional connection, and search behavior. “Retaining attention has become much harder,” she said. “Consumers are exposed to so much content every day. They scroll faster and are far more selective.” As a result, brands must work harder to earn attention rather than simply buying it.

TikTok data shows that 83 per cent of users say emotional connection is the reason they stay loyal to a brand, make a purchase, or recall a brand first when a need arises. “Consumers want content that feels authentic and human,” Ms. Khiet said. “Brands need to step away from overly polished messaging and create content that genuinely connects.”

Discovery increasingly happens on social platforms through video, rather than on traditional search engines alone. On TikTok, more than half of users search for a product directly on the platform after seeing it.

From a product and communications perspective, Mr. Thanh Dat Cao, Marketing Director at Häfele Vietnam, emphasized the need for meaningful innovation. “Consumers are no longer buying solutions, they are buying refinement and experience,” he said. “In home appliances, for example, expectations have shifted towards sophistication and ease.”

However, not all innovation creates value. Some product enhancements, he noted, introduce unnecessary complexity and burden users instead of improving their lives. “Meaningfully different innovation is what helps brands go further,” Mr. Dat said. “Not innovation for its own sake.”

In media and communications, fragmentation has made consistency more important than ever. In the home appliance category, around 60 per cent of purchase decisions are influenced by social networks and recommendations rather than advertising alone.

In banking, the shift is even more pronounced. Ms. Nhi Phan, Senior Manager of Digital Sales Management and MarTech Stack at Techcombank, described a move from digital-first to experience-first thinking. “What matters to customers is the end-to-end experience,” she said. “From advertising and onboarding to transactions and post-sale service.”

Speed and proactivity are now essential. Rather than waiting for customers to seek out products, banks must reach them at the right moment with relevant solutions. Transparency and trust remain non-negotiable. As pricing and fees converge across banks, consumers increasingly evaluate institutions based on credibility and the ability to deliver on promises. Technology, particularly MarTech and data ecosystems, enables personalization at scale, allowing banks to respond more intelligently to changing customer needs.

From an advertising perspective, Mr. Alex Ngo, Country Head of Marketing at MGID, highlighted how Vietnam differs from Western markets. “Vietnam is one of the few markets where consumers don’t pay upfront, as around 90 per cent of transactions are still cash on delivery,” he said. “That’s very different from the US and Europe.”

Discovery behavior also varies regionally. While web reach is high in Ho Chi Minh City, conversion rates tend to be higher in Hanoi. For high-trust categories such as real estate and finance, transparency remains the top priority.

For Ms. Mokhtar, the takeaway for businesses is straightforward. “Be clear. Have a strong brand purpose and be consistent,” she said. As Vietnam’s market matures and competition intensifies, brands that move beyond awareness to become meaningfully different will be best positioned to turn growth into lasting value.