International Marketer’s Blog

Advertising Age took a worldwide look at the state of digital marketing this week, having surveyed executives at ICOM, a global network of independent ad agencies, about the top digital trends and issues facing their markets in 2010.

The findings underscore the importance of understanding local trends and behaviours as marketers worldwide seek to leverage the growing power of digital marketing. They also highlight the opportunities available to those marketers who do grasp regional peculiarities and differences – and harness these – as internet use continues to increase and evolve in key country markets.

For example, we are told that in Brazil and Estonia Google-owned social networking site Orkut is proving popular. Social media is a hot topic in both markets.

Take global restaurant chain T.G.I. Friday’s in Brazil. It used Orkut, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to launch (more…)

Just 15 months ago Procter & Gamble had serious reservations about Facebook as a marketing tool, according to a report in Advertising Age this week.

Yet all that has now changed, with the global marketing behemoth keen for ‘all of its brands’ to develop a presence on the popular social networking site this year. In fact, P&G has recently opened a research-and-development office in Palo Alto, California, not far from Facebook’s headquarters, in an attempt to co-develop capabilities in digital and social media.

Facebook now has 400 million global users and is proving a marketing force multinational brands may well be unwise to ignore. P&G rival Unilever and multinational soft drinks brand Coca-Cola have also “begun shifting attention in digital marketing from campaign websites to more permanent relationships with consumers on their Facebook pages.� Coca-Cola’s 5 million Facebook fans easily outnumber the 300,000 or so monthly US visitors to its brand website.

Other global brands, such as Starbucks, Ikea and Honda, are experimenting with new ways to connect with consumers via the site. (more…)

Kofola, a Czech soft drink that competes with the likes of Coca-Cola dropped Santa Claus (Jezisek) from their festive commercials in 2003. Instead, their ads make use of a local legend, according to which a golden pig shows itself to those fasting on Christmas Day.

The commercial shows while trekking through a snow-covered forest in a quest of a Christmas tree, a father tells his daughter the golden pig tale until the little girl declares she won’t have to fast because she already sees a pig. A wild boar chases them away.

One of the main challenges for global brands seeking to expand to foreign markets is the task of balancing standardisation with customisation. When global brands expand overseas, they are often tempted to repeat their tried and tested formula in the new market as well. In marketing execution terms meaning they often without further exploration, will try to adopt the global advertising with minimum adjustments for the local market.

The assumption is that customers would be too eager to adopt the brand because of its ‘global reputation’. However, we have to understand (more…)

If you want your global brand to be found online, by search engines the world over, simply hiring a few translators is not enough. As our relationship with the Internet matures, any international marketer will tell you that creating a truly multi-national SEO strategy is a multi-faceted process – and one that will almost certainly necessitate the hiring of experts in this field.

Here at Freedman we believe that in order to be truly relevant – and genuinely local – in key country markets, a brand must have at least a regional presence. That’s precisely why we offer clients regional hubs, with managers that understand the quirks of particular cultures, and can offer valuable – and actionable – insights, above and beyond the nuances of language.

It’s also key to use analytics in order to discover where your successful markets are for your products or services, and which keywords are being used to find you. You may well be surprised. The world of international SEO is not one in which you can safely make assumptions. (more…)

Late last year, PC giant Lenovo launched a new campaign in China for the ThinkPad Edge range of PC. The marketing campaign rides on the classic “red stick� design of the “TrackPoint� and brings to life the brand personality of focused creativity. Quite an ambitious task since it seems like they are trying to unite not only the heritage of the brand but also to communicate a new product offering. What had naturally become the platform for Lenovo’s brand message was probably also from the great Chinese name it had created.

Successful Chinese brand names often attach a strong association with the product. The brand name often implies what the brand stands for and hence become an effective platform for brand communications. There are numerous successful Chinese brand names and two of the classic examples include Revlon 露�浓 (lù huá nóng) that literally means “glimmering with the spring dew� and is also inspired by a verse of one of the legendary poet Li Bai (�白); and BMW�马 (bǎomǎ), meaning appropriately “treasure horse�.

“Lenovoâ€� is a blend of “Le-â€� (from Legend) and “novoâ€�, pseudo-Latin for “newâ€�. The Chinese nameè�”想 (pronounced liánxiÇŽng) means “connected thinkingâ€� that also implies the “unificationâ€� of imagination and creativity. (more…)

The centralising of marketing operations for international brands continues apace, Unilever, P&G, Reckit Benckiser have been moving this way for some time and advertising agencies have been reshaping their international structures to fit their client’s new requirements for high quality, centralised creative and more efficient implementation across country markets.

Whereas in the past, major brands have run virtually autonomous marketing offices in many different countries that run their own version of a centrally planned campaign, in 2010 the decision making power is steadily sliding back up the reporting chain to head office. Here they are using marketing technology to satisfy country market demand for bespoke creative, with head office’s desire to reduce costs whilst maintaining quality, consistency and detailed reporting.

In between head office and country office, many brands are now more actively using regional hubs which act as a staging post for creative campaigns coming down the line to be adapted for use across a number of geographically and culturally related countries.

Our own hub offices, thanks to good technology and experience of the regional markets, offer brands an efficient solution to the issues facing them internationally. (more…)

Never has the international marketer’s maxim, “think global, act local� been so relevant than in today’s recession hit market. Thinking global in 2010 means not just rolling out campaigns internationally, but finding economies of scale within that process.

The FMCG giants of international marketing, Unilever, P&G have put a well documented squeeze on their advertising agencies and marketing suppliers, controversially involving procurement practices that some claim, stifle the creative process.

The move to centralised creative, rolled out across country markets is certainly an attractive option, keeping origination costs low and maintaining control of brand values. The limitations of centralised creative really start to show however when it leaves western markets, particularly if celebrity endorsement is involved.

While David Beckham is known across many country markets, there comes a point, particularly in Asia-Pacific regions where a more local celebrity, a Bollywood star for example, is going to shift more product than even the golden one can manage.

Even without a localised celebrity, a generic advert can only stretch so far before it loses influence or worse, becomes laughable or offensive. We’ve all seen ads that are badly dubbed into English with the lip synch out, making it memorable for the wrong reasons.

In Asia, the cultural references become even more localised, Vietnam needs a different approach to China for example. Getting into this level of marketing localisation is traditionally expensive for brands trying to roll out internationally; you simply can’t reshoot an advertisement in every country. (more…)

If there’s one thing in the mind of the international marketer at the moment it’s efficiency. As I make my way around marketing strategy meetings via the airports of Europe, it’s always the issues of reducing wastage and streamlining processes that are top of the agenda.

Management of the creative development process is a key area of discussion. Developing creative centrally that can be rolled out across many country markets is no easy task. Even before you get to the part where you’re translating and implementing multiple executions, the first hurdle is often ensuring that the in-country marketing departments across the globe buy in to the central creative strategy and direction.

More often than not, country offices fight the one size fits all creative and they recreate/repurpose campaigns via their own local agencies and suppliers, duplicating effort and cost and most importantly, moving away from the global brand message. If this happens all around the globe, the costs mount up exponentially. (more…)

A large part of the costs of adapting international brand campaigns to local country markets can be tied up in translating campaign materials. So this is an area where today’s efficiency focussed international marketers can make significant gains using workflow solutions that eliminate the excess costs of an old school approach to translation.

Often international brands have a full locally managed translation team in each country market they operate in, to ensure that the notion of thinking global, acting local is fully deployed and to deliver the brand message in the most culturally relevant and current way to the local audience.

Inevitably, this approach creates duplication of effort; not so much in the translation itself, which we agree needs to remain as locally nuanced as possible, but in the local control and management of the translation process which can be very hands-on and time consuming. And a locally driven solution leads to locally divergent brand expression. (more…)

Monday – it must be Geneva. Last week it was Brussels and before that Paris. Strangely though on three different occasions, in three different countries and three very different product markets, I’ve come across the exact same marketing problem relating to ERP systems.

All of the big international brands I met use an established enterprise management solution to handle supply and demand, arrange work flow systems and feedback information to learn from – up to a point. When it comes to management of marketing resources, the systems just stop short.

As an example, in the run up to Christmas, book, DVD and CD publishers will be looking to maximise their returns from the latest releases, big name musicians, authors and films. While they might know exactly how many units they’re going to produce, what the cost of materials will be and where they need to be at a given time, the marketing, artwork costs and implementation will mostly (more…)