International Marketer’s Blog

William Grant & Sons is centralizing global marketing communications for its non-Scotch brands with the establishment of a new global marketing office.

In a move to ramp up its international marketing strategies, a 17-strong team based in Dublin will manage the entire global operations for the company’s non-Scotch brands. These include Sailor Jerry, Hendrick’s Gun and the newly acquired Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey.

Building Tullamore Dew, the world’s second largest Irish whiskey brand will be a prime focus of the Dublin team, according to the report in Marketing Week (marketingweek.co.uk, 07.09.10).

The company is currently commissioning an international marketing campaign for the brand, scheduled to run across television, print and outdoor channels. In order to streamline the global campaign implementation, the push will be entirely managed from the Dublin office.

Stella David, chief executive officer of William Grant & Sons, said: “We are assembling a very strong team to market our core non-Scotch brands throughout the world, as well as to drive our overall innovation agenda.” (more…)

International marketing strategies, implemented by Chinese ecommerce operator Alibaba .com during the past two years are delivering promising results, following interim figures which beat investors’ expectations.

In a bid to increase membership, Alibaba.com, the world’s largest online business to business trading platform for small businesses, focussed on a marketing strategy which saw the company temporarily sacrificing profit for market share.

According to the report in the Financial Times, the company restructured its pricing system, moving from uniform membership packages for enterprises that run virtual store fronts on Alibaba, to basic fees with an array of services that companies can purchase additionally.

The marketing push has resulted in net profit in the second quarter rising by 46 per cent compared with the same period last year, to Rmb363m ($53.6m).

However, the company is still working through its marketing campaign implementation, as further analysis of the results has shown that growth has been uneven across target groups. The number of Global Gold Suppliers, suppliers from outside China that pay a premium annual membership fee for their presence on Alibaba.com, fell by 30 per cent compared with the second quarter of 2009. (more…)

Innovation and untapped emerging markets are the brightest opportunities for consumer good companies’ future growth, according to new PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) research.

Last year businesses prioritised budgeting, even shedding their less profitable brands to survive the recession, says the report in Ad Week. But moving forward, the focus will need to be on growth, says the study, released yesterday.

Innovating, for example with new product technologies, will be a major factor for boosting revenues, especially within well-established sectors.

To attract consumers in emerging markets including China, Russia, Brazil, India and Southeast Asia, PwC advises “tailoring products for local consumer tastes�.

Companies may well opt to test new products in these emerging markets before launching them in North America and Western Europe.

Packaged goods businesses, like Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz and Unilever, are likely to adjust the marketing process in global markets, in response to consumers’ more careful spending habits. (more…)

A report in Marketing Week has made five recommendations global marketers should consider to make sure their brands are making the most of the international market.

Author Lou Cooper has distilled developments in global marketing from established global players Coca-Cola and Kraft as well as newcomers like Innocent who have all successfully leveraged marketing strategies on a global scale and with local relevance.

1) A priority is to create a strong brand culture, which remains familiar to consumers wherever it is in the world. The rise of digital channels has shifted brand emphasis from structure to culture and brands with a strong culture are doing well. Language has become an important element in ensuring consistency, with on-brand translations enabling brands to retain a distinctive tone of voice across markets.

2) Brands should adopt a borderless marketing approach. Digital platforms have meant that it is no longer possible for companies to follow different marketing strategies in different countries. Brands are being forced to adopt a more unified marketing approach, which has local strength and identity, but also consistency internationally. (more…)

Global brands including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Nike are using different international marketing strategies in the run-up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup. According to a report in Advertising Age, global marketers are describing the event as a bigger opportunity than even the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and one that will be viewed by half the world’s population.

Coke, one of the World Cup sponsors, says its campaign will be the largest in the company’s history, and its most integrated. The marketer is running a 120-country, 17-language deal with YouTube, encouraging users to film and post their own goal dances. This is being supported with a celebration-themed anthem by Somalian artist K’naan (available on iTunes) and celebration-themed packaging. The entire campaign is built around soccer players’ goal dances, which links neatly back to Coke’s long-held “Open Happiness� tagline.

Emmanuel Seuge, Coke’s group director of worldwide sports and entertainment marketing, told Ad Age: “Consumers today are so connected and brands are talking to them in so many ways. We need to be super-focused and super, super clear if we expect to break through the clutter.â€� (more…)

It was reported in our blog last week that research firm Forrester has found that the majority of CMOs – 75% to be precise – are looking to revamp their marketing functions by the end of next year.

On the subject of this necessary organizational change, Steven Noble, an analyst at Forrester, has aired his views in trade journal Advertising Age – discussing the theme of how CMOs can “rise to the challengesâ€� of global marketing.

Noble describes three, separate contexts for global brand management and implementation. Within each of these contexts, Freedman is ideally placed to help, by identifying and providing the necessary resources to implement global brand solutions which will streamline the marketing process.

Noble sees the first context as being when most marketing is local – for instance when a global firm like Kraft manages a local brand like Vegemite – a household name in Australia, but, in the UK, just a distant relation to Marmite. In this context, he says, the CMO must provide “assetsâ€� that help their local marketing teams to make better decisions. (more…)

According to a Forrester report released this week – entitled “How to manage global marketing” – moves to restructure international teams will become increasingly common over the coming months as brands seek to take control of marketing spend, and to leverage growth opportunities, via increased efficiencies.

According to the report’s author, Steven Noble: “Brands must harness the strength that comes from their global reach. This includes their ability to harvest best practices which they can apply worldwide [through local teams].”

He stresses the need for regional marketers to continue to apply insights according to each individual market, but to recognise alongside this also the importance of avoiding a dogged insistence on operating according to often age-old systems and processes which are not necessarily streamlined across the organisation.

“There is a natural tendency for local marketers to attempt to create silos – to insist on operating their way because that’s always been their approach,” he says. “The challenge is for local marketers to stop simply insisting the global marketing fails, and to start using customer data and engagement to deepen the brand’s relationship with customers who happen to live in their geography.”

For a long time, the internal workings of many advertising and marketing agencies, like their clients, have not been geared towards optimal efficiency. In the context of the global financial crisis, this simply cannot continue. (more…)

According to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council’s latest State of Marketing report, released this week, traditional advertising and marketing agencies are at risk of becoming redundant in the light of a growing trend for global marketing organizations to undertake “transformational marketing projects� in-house.

Many clients are developing their internal skills in order to gain more control over web-based marketing efforts, says the report, with agencies being forced to take a back seat while corporate marketers become more self-sufficient with their digital marketing infrastructures.

The report, entitled The State of Marketing: Outlook, Intentions and Investments for 2010, surveyed more than 600 of the CMO’s members globally, representing “most vertical industry sectors and company sizes.� Almost half (46%) say that investing in digital demand generation and online relationship building ranks among the top initiatives being undertaken to maximize the impact and value of marketing in 2010, while almost two thirds (62%) say they will be crunching customer data in order to improve segmentation and targeting.

“Globalization of markets and new channels of digital engagement are causing senior corporate marketers to seek new internal skills and capabilities, and re-direct spend towards more inventive and localized go-to-market programs,â€� said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. (more…)

The agency account handling model has been the same for years and years. Way back in the Mad Men style ‘60’s you’d have an account manager who briefs the creatives, who make the changes, reverting to the AM, who checks with the client, returns to the creative team, and so on.

Nothing wrong with that..back then. In fact it worked up until relatively recently but technology has finally overtaken it and there are now much more efficient, cost effective ways to handle campaign production and agencies operating in the old style have to make severe changes.

Sir Martin Sorrell announced on August 26^th 09 that pre-tax profits at WPP had halved (47%) in the first six months of the year, saying “I think we’d have to admit we should have moved quickerâ€� in cutting costs. (more…)