In the same way that I can never remember whether I should feed a cold and starve a fever, I also tend to forget whether I’m meant to think globally and act locally. (Or is it the other way around?) But I’m in good company. I share this quandary with many of the world’s greatest marketers. Brand owners everywhere are struggling to strike the right balance between global and local when it comes to managing their precious brand assets.
On the surface, global brand management sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Simply insist on global brand consistency, develop a common channel strategy, and generate demand with a universally compelling message. But therein lies the rub. People around the world are, indeed, different in many ways. We eat different foods, we shop in different ways and different places, we form households differently, and we certainly laugh at different jokes. These infinite variations make the world a truly magical place. Its endless diversity drives our wanderlust and provides us with a lifetime of fascinating friendships and enriching experiences. But it sure doesn’t make a marketer’s life easy!
My good friend and colleague Nigel Hollis has spent the last year studying and writing in an attempt to remedy this problem—in short, to make life a little easier for global marketers. He has mined the many and massive international databases we maintain at Millward Brown, conducted important new primary research, and talked to literally hundreds of people involved in marketing, either as brand owners or in the many agencies that support them.
Not surprisingly, he found that global brand management is a bit like geopolitics. It is characterized by an endless litany of seemingly unanswerable questions and a dazzling array of opinions, often divergent. But amid all of this cacophony, Nigel has come up with a pretty startling thesis: There’s no such thing as a “global brand”!
“What?” you say. “Isn’t the book called The Global Brand?” Indeed. What Nigel will help marketers understand is that while brands can succeed globally, they can’t do it without being incredibly adaptive. In the same way that a sports team can deliver an undefeated season, marketers can win on many fronts by understanding the specific playing field, studying the local competition, and tailoring their game plan accordingly. But be forewarned: Trotting out the same old game plan on every field will rarely be the route to sustained success.
So what are marketers to do? Start from scratch in every market they enter? Of course not! There are often huge operational benefits to scale. Simply being able to amortize things like research and development, innovation investment, and manufacturing capacity over a larger global buying population can have immense payback. And going back to my sporting analogy, there will almost always be some plays in your arsenal that are fail-safe and will work every time. By all means, use them! But listen to Nigel when he advises you to mix them up with a few new moves designed to endear you to the local crowd.
“Endear” is not a word I choose lightly. Increasingly, we are seeing that brands must connect on an emotional level in order to succeed. And very few things are tougher to do with a one-size-fits-all strategy than win hearts. Nigel’s message, quite clearly articulated in this book, is one of balancing that which can be truly global with that which must be genuinely local. For this reason alone, The Global Brand deserves a place on every marketer’s (and perhaps every diplomat’s) bookshelf.
So with Nigel’s sage counsel, we are reminded of the essential need to think locally before acting globally. It’s perhaps not as pithy on a bumper sticker, but it’s damned good marketing advice!