How many times have you read about a big brand ‘blunder’, where you cringed and thought, ‘could they not have just checked with someone in their local team?’ Nike had to recall thousands of products when a decoration intended to resemble fire on the back of the shoe resembled the Arabic word for Allah. Mercedes-Benz entered the Chinese market under the brand name ‘Bensi’, which incidentally meant, ‘rush to die’.
Beyond avoiding a listing in ‘Ad Blunders of the Year’, global brands have the opportunity to connect with consumers in a relevant way, rooted in culture. Creating a global platform allows brands to have consistency across the world. However, to connect with consumers, build brand loyalty and, most importantly, to sell products, brands must be relevant and brand experiences must add value to people’s lives.
Coke Happiness is a great example; in Peru, the campaign was brought to life by creating a movement for smiling in people’s national IDs. It was built on a simple insight that regardless of how happy the population is, smiling was not in their nature. In the UAE, a country built on success and wealth, the labor camps, where workers live away from their home countries, are often targeted for CSR initiatives. In this context, Happiness was brought to life by allowing an extra phone call home for free from a Coke booth. Both created locally relevant content that could be scaled to connect with consumers.
In the Middle East, consumers are embracing new technologies faster than in most other regions. Saudi Arabia is still the highest consumer of YouTube content per capita in the world and, overall, the region has some of the highest mobile penetration figures. However, evolving with the modern world is not coming at a cost of traditions and culture, and the consumers continue to embrace and celebrate their roots and traditions.
The biggest challenge for brands is to deliver the ambition, aspiration and standards of the global platform, but to root the activation with local insights and culture. The right balance is the winning formula. Less exciting, but incredibly important are the logistics and planning of rolling out a global brand platform. Building the right team that understands a local market, and more so, the consumers, and timelines to do this will elevate the work and results. Achieving this in the right time will enable the right people to deliver the adaptation across markets, avoiding the Ad Blunder list of the year.
The world has evolved. The biggest opportunity brands have is to get the balance right between global and local lies with technology and the smart use of data in planning. In today’s world, technology and data enable marketers to build personalized experiences for consumers – understanding behavior, situation and mindset is possible now through all manner of data sources that, when fused together, allow brands to speak to consumers as individuals.
The tapestry across the world of different cultures makes the world interesting, different and creates the best storytelling platform for brands. Getting it wrong is personal – and it creates a real risk of turning consumers away with a long path to win them back.
