From Multi National to Global: The 5 Questions to Ensure Your Brand Stretches Without Breaking

From Multi-National to Global:

The 5 questions to ask to ensure your brand stretches around the world without breaking

Many multi-national brands are looking to go ‘global’ to some degree, but what ‘global’ means, and how it’s accomplished can vary significantly, as can the degree of results. Most brands start with similar motivations: to reduce the potential for marketplace confusion created by mixed messages as media crosses borders, as well as to satisfy procurement’s push for efficiencies.

My experience in global branding, which includes Disney and Nissan, among others, has taught me to ask these 5 questions of global brand owners. Answering them correctly will ensure that global branding efforts will result in maximum alignment and value creation.

1.  What is the end game: ‘matching luggage’ or alignment to brand truth?

Certain degrees of consistency are relatively easy to achieve, but in the end, don’t really serve the intended purpose.  For instance, imposing strict standards for global look and feel in communications can create a sense of ‘matching luggage’.  Going only this far, however, can still result in behavioral dissonance across borders. 

Consider the controversial Ford Figo ad that eventually resulted in firings in India.  At first glance, it certainly looks like a Ford ad.  It contains a brightly colored, prominently featured clean looking photograph of the car, and a brand compliant logo and tagline.  But closer inspection reveals the image of former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi in the back seat, and three women bound and gagged in the trunk.  This set of matching luggage was filled with explosives!

Brand Compliant?

Alignment to a brand truth, on the other hand, will actually give local markets more freedom to bring the brand to life in locally relevant ways, while still delivering a globally consistent customer experience at every touchpoint. 

2. Has the brand been defined in an actionable way that favors clarity over poetry?

Marketers tend to favor brand definitions that wax poetic about the virtues of their brands and sound more like clever advertising slogans than simple, single-minded, actionable statements.  While this makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, it can create confusion as the brand attempts to cross borders.  Puns, complex emotions, and 3-dollar words usually don’t translate easily, and encourage local markets to create local versions of the global statement. More often than not, these local statements actually wind up redefining the brand and erasing the original intent.

Brand statements must not only be clear, but they should be actionable by identifying brand behaviors that the entire organization can follow to create valuable customer experiences. 

Clarity or Poetry?

Over the years, Avis defined itself with the simply worded, ‘We Try Harder’. Much more than a tagline, it clearly informed all brand behaviors.  Recently, as part of a brand repositioning intended to focus on the customer experience, that iconic line has been replaced with the more poetic, and arguably much more enigmatic, ‘It’s Your Space’.  What does this new line tell the Avis franchisee in Milwaukee to do? Will it drive the same behavior as the franchisee in Dubai?  Probably not, as it is neither clear nor actionable.

3. In seeking local market relevance have we preserved the relevance of our brand?

One of the fundamental rules of global branding is to find local market relevance for your brand. But this philosophy can be easily misapplied.  The key to success lies in leveraging local market insights in service of the brand, rather than pushing the brand beyond credible truths, in service of local market insights. 

Anyone who has ever worked in the Chinese market has heard that Chinese consumers are driven by status. Certainly, ‘bling’ is king for certain consumers, and this has served certain brands well.

Too Far A Stretch? 

Recently, there have been reports of the internal struggles at Volvo regarding the future of their brand. Their new Chinese brand owners, Geely want to follow the bling with a bigger more powerful flagship. Their Swedish management believes Volvo’s value in the China market can be more credibly established by strengthening their current reputation as a safe, understated brand by leveraging their new safety and environmental technologies.  Is bling too far a stretch for Volvo?  Could such a direction be credible in the US and Europe, or is there another Chinese insight that better serves the Volvo brand everywhere? Considering that China has the second highest vehicle fatality rate in the world, and significant air pollution issues, might Volvo forgo the bling and win the future by credibly leveraging its unique strengths?

4. Do I need to centralize the organization in order to ensure consistency?

When moving towards global brand alignment, there is a natural tendency for global headquarters to want to control everything.  Not only is this impractical, it is also ineffective.

The key is not for headquarters to impose their will on the local markets, but rather for roles, responsibilities, and accountability to be clearly identified and tangibly reinforced.

Headquarters should be responsible for providing a strategic framework that is flexible enough to account for cultural nuances, but rigid enough to align all behaviors. When developing this framework, headquarters should consult with local markets, not for strategic advice, but rather to understand how cultural and competitive context might impact activation.

Local markets should be responsible for optimizing activation behaviors within the strategic framework, by leveraging their local market and customer knowledge. 

Many organizations stop there, only to be frustrated by lack of progress.  Perhaps the most critical factor in ensuring success is to make everyone in the organization accountable to the same objectives. Achievement of these objectives should directly tie to their compensation. 

5. Has the obvious been overlooked?

Urban legend has it that the Chevy Nova failed in Spanish speaking countries because ‘No va’, means ‘no go’.  While this is actually just an urban legend, there are many true examples of brands that have overlooked the obvious in committing faux pas when crossing borders.

When I was living in Australia, the Gap was opening its first store in Sydney.  There was much hype surrounding the opening, and as an American ex-pat, I was truly excited about the prospect. I fought my way through the opening day crowds during peak Christmas shopping season…the middle of the Down Under summer.  Imagine my surprise and disappointment when all the merchandise was fall/winter apparel! How such a great brand could overlook such an obvious detail seemed unfathomable!

Don’t take things like local climate, dialects, and taboos for granted.  Make sure that any globally run initiative, no matter how small is vetted with the locals before proceeding. 

The road to global branding is never easy, but properly thought through and executed, the move can bring big rewards for brand owners.