Marketing Governance

Harvard Business Review blog , Jerry Wind, Stan Sthanunathan, and Rob Malcolm argued that great advertising is both local and global. The authors contend that global enterprises have traditionally faced an unattractive trade-off when it comes to advertising. As they put it, “Global brand advertising can rarely reflect the idiosyncratic characteristics of every market, but the alternative – locally designed advertising – often sacrifices a consistent global message and misses out on economies of scale.”

To avoid this trade-off, the blog authors say that enterprises should pursue a glocal advertising strategy, which they define as, “locally adapting a universally embraced core idea that will resonate in any market anywhere in the world.” As an example of effective glocal advertising, the authors described a 13-year advertising campaign used by Johnnie Walker to reinvigorate its Scotch whiskey brand.

The Johnnie Walker campaign was based on the recognition that men around the world, regardless of culture or nationality, want to advance their lives. The creative expression of this theme was “Keep Walking.” This universal theme was localized through the use of inspirational quotes from multiple cultures. For example, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” by Lao Tsu was used in Asia. Over the life of the campaign, more than 100 “local” quotes were used.

The blog authors contend that an effective glocal advertising strategy has three core components:

• A global concept that embraces a universal human emotion
• A global brand vision combined with localized creative delivery
• An organizational architecture (including corporate culture, technology platform, and necessary resources) that facilitates effective collaboration between global and local marketers

In my view, the points made by Wind, Sthanunathan, and Malcolm about advertising apply equally to virtually all aspects of global marketing. Today, multinational enterprises must pursue both global brand consistency and effective localization simultaneously across all marketing tactics and channels.

Coordinating global and local marketing activities is especially important because the Internet largely erases geographical boundaries, making many consumers both global and local. For example, consumers in Japan or India increasingly expect marketing messages and materials that are culturally relevant and appropriate, but those same consumers can also easily access marketing content that is primarily intended for consumers in the US.

I also agree with the blog authors that both organizational culture and technology play critical roles in effective glocal marketing. Enterprises must nurture a close collaboration between marketers in the central marketing department and those in regional or national marketing offices around the world. Enterprises must also deploy the technology systems and tools that will enable geographically dispersed marketers to collaborate easily and efficiently. Without the right technology tools, timely and effective collaboration is all but impossible to achieve.

Marketing software applications have become mission-critical technologies for most global enterprises. The proliferation of marketing communication channels, the growing need to customize marketing messages and materials, and the emerging need to provide prospective customers detailed, interactive product/service information on a real-time basis have made it all but impossible for large organizations to manage marketing effectively without technology.

Choosing the right marketing software tools is, therefore, a major strategic decision, and one important aspect of the decision is whether to opt for software that is installed on in-house servers or software that is hosted by the software provider and accessed via the Internet. While the use of “cloud-based” applications is clearly growing, both delivery models have advantages and disadvantages. The choice ultimately depends on which model is the best fit for your business.

A new white paper by Ralph Windsor and Nick Brookes is a valuable resource for making this important decision. Ralph Windsor is a senior partner at Daydream, a UK-based digital asset management consulting firm, and Nick Brookes is an independent DAM technology and media delivery infrastructure consultant based in London. Both Windsor and Brookes are also members of the editorial staff at Digital Asset Management News.

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Pieter Casneuf, the CEO of ADAM Software, gave the keynote presentations at ADAM’s recent Sync! events held in Ghent and New York City. You can view a recording of Pieter’s presentation at the New York City event here.

In these presentations, Pieter reviewed the evolution of ADAM’s software solutions and announced the upcoming availability of ADAM’s cross-channel campaign management application. Pieter’s presentations dealt specifically with ADAM’s products, but they also generally describe how the DAM market space has evolved over the past decade.

Early digital asset management systems were what might be called “premium file systems.” They provided capabilities that focused on the organization, storage, and retrieval of digital content assets. They typically enabled organizations to use metadata to describe assets, provided relatively robust search functionality, and enabled version tracking and control.

In the first decade of this century, these early DAM systems evolved along three basic dimensions. The evolution didn’t follow a strict chronological order, and of course, not all DAM software providers followed the same path.

One evolutionary development was the addition of business process management capabilities to DAM systems. In fact, ADAM was an industry leader in proving these capabilities. Process management capabilities enable organizations to use their DAM software to manage and/or automate the processes and workflows that are involved in the creation, review, and approval of digital content assets. Read More

The acquisition and implementation of enterprise-level marketing software involves a substantial commitment of time, energy, and financial resources for any large organization. Marketing leaders who are responsible for selecting such software must consider many factors as they move through the evaluation process. Ultimately, however, the decision comes down to answering two fundamental questions:

• Does the proposed solution provide the functionality that will meet my company’s current needs and identifiable future needs?
• Does the proposed solution provide sufficient flexibility to address unpredictable future needs?

It’s relatively easy to determine whether a software application will meet your company’s current and identifiable future needs. You can collect appropriate information about existing marketing requirements and processes, develop a functional specification for the solution, and carefully evaluate the capabilities of alternative offerings. Read More

The need to create and use more relevant marketing messages and materials is prompting marketers to focus on localizing their content. In an earlier post, I described a recent survey by the CMO Council which shows that 86% of marketers intend to look for better ways to localize content.

Customizing messages and materials for specific audiences has traditionally forced marketers to make an unattractive trade-off between losing control of brand messaging and brand presentation or incurring excessive costs. Fortunately, now they have access to technology tools that can render this trade-off unnecessary. In fact, a comprehensive Marketing Execution Platform (MEP) will support two distinctive and complementary approaches to content localization. I refer to these two approaches as self-directed localization and menu-driven localization. Read More

Eighty-six percent of marketers intend to look for ways to better localize their content, according to a recent survey by the CMO Council. Other findings from the same research reveal the importance that marketers are placing on localized marketing and demonstrate that marketers have more work to do to make localized marketing effective.

• 49% of survey respondents said that localized marketing is essential to business growth and profitability.
• 41% of respondents said they devote 30% or more of their budget to field or localized programs.

Nearly 50% of respondents said that they are underperforming or need new strategic thinking and capability development in the area of localized marketing. Read More