By Whitney Satin

This holiday season, I escaped the snow drifts plaguing much of the East Coast and spent the end of my year in hot and humid Ghana.  Ostensibly I was there for a friend’s wedding, but while touring the colorful fishing villages and bustling marketplaces in and around Accra, the marketer in me couldn’t sit still.  Given that “emerging market” seems to be the buzzword for 2011, I thought I’d share a few brief impressions from the pages of my unofficial travelogue: Read More »

‘Glocal’ branding – as the neologism hints – involves a tension. Strong brands should be consistent, wherever in the world they are, but they must also be responsive to their customer base, which will differ from region to region. How should marketers reconcile this? Read More »

While the English language is certainly a common denominator in the business world, assuming everyone speaks it is definitely ill-advised.  So how does a marketing team ensure its product materials are accurate in another language?  One executive poses this question in our recently-launched Marketing Org & Ops Forum, asking “What are the best practices in assessing the quality and correctness of translation service jobs?” Read More »

One of the most common social media questions we hear is “How do I build global capabilities?”  The challenge is that each market has a unique manifestation of social media (different platforms, levels of uptake, user habits), while each marketing team has different strengths and weaknesses.  With such varied needs and opportunities, attempting to standardize capabilities globally simply doesn’t work.

The best companies embrace heterogeneity instead of aiming for global consistency.  They assess each region’s individual needs in order to tailor capability goals and training accordingly. Read More »

By Rob Hamshar

One of the many hats I wore while posted in CEB’s Asia hub in New Delhi was that of “glocalizer”—contributing to the organization-wide effort to translate insights for the region.  It was exciting to see such efforts come to fruition. 

One of the more visible projects I was involved with is CEB’s joint initiative with the Indian business publication Mint Magazine (a partnership of HT Media—inaugurated by The Mahatma himself—and The Wall Street Journal).  With Mint, we publish a monthly series, entitled the Six Myths, based on the thought leadership from the global memberships at CEB and the regional expertise of the folks at Mint. 

Recently, our Six Myths installment focused on six common misconceptions about the world of Sales that are especially relevant to heads of Sales and Marketing in central and east Asia.  Though most of the myths align to the broader challenges faced anywhere in the world, some were especially resonant in India.  Read More »

Those who live and breathe marketing have a problem: we can never fully unplug. Marketing follows us wherever we go. The TV ads, the social media forums, the direct e-mail – there’s a constant wondering of the strategic idea behind a campaign, whether the target audience was properly selected, and whether the channel mix works. Or perhaps this is just me and I’m projecting. Let’s move on.

Following my last post on globalization and its ramifications for the structure of global marketing functions, I spent a week trying to unplug in Italy (thank you, Starwood points). What spurred the above introduction was the amazing difference in marketing communications techniques required in the Italian market versus the United States – both industrialized Western countries with heavy penetration of traditional and digital media. Similar on paper, far different in practice. Read More »