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:

Apples aren’t oranges. Though this was my first time in Africa, I’ve traveled previously to other countries that fall under the über heading of “emerging market”.  In particular, I was struck by how different cities across Ghana felt relative to those I’ve explored in Brazil.  Both countries lead their respective continents as far as a growing, stable economy is concerned, but two major differences stuck out:

1. Ghanaian commerce is almost entirely cash-based, whereas I was easily able to credit card myself across Brazil.
2. Public transport, let alone serviceable roads, were hard to come by in Ghana while even a tourist like me could easily navigate Brazil’s city streets.

It may be tempting to view developing countries as a cohesive segment, but the financial institutions and basic infrastructure can vary drastically from country to country.  A marketing strategy must necessarily take into account the realities of the specific market at hand.

Mobile matters. From rural villages to the more urban city centers, one accessory was ubiquitous: the cell phone.  Ghanaians from all socioeconomic backgrounds use the phone not just to stay in touch with friends and family but as a major tool for conducting commerce.  While it’s no secret that mobile devices change the way American consumers shop, what’s less clear is how Marketing should adapt.  Accordingly, MLC will take a look at the impact this instant access to information has on the nature of both B2C and B2B purchase decision-making across 2011.

Adaptation is a must. Marketing attempts to inflect specific customer beliefs to achieve certain outcomes but, given major cultural and lifestyle differences, these attitudes vary drastically based on societal norms of a given country.  For instance, my travel-sized toothpaste appeals to largely cosmetic concerns when it touts a lasting white smile, whereas billboards for the same brand in Ghana appeal to a more primordial need when stating that “germs will attack your teeth at night.”  Both enact the same behavior (brush teeth more often), but the latter positioning demonstrates an appeal to the more basic health and well-being concerns prevalent in the developing world.

Of course, all these musings boil down to one central tenet: customer understanding must serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy, regardless of whether you’re building it for a developed or emerging marketplace.

HSBC, the world’s pre-eminent glocal brand, has developed a powerful brand strategy from which we can extract some generally applicable teaching points:

• Acknowledging cultural difference through your branding is a great start in crafting a glocal message. HSBC’s slogan and advertising takes on the glocal idea but infuses it with a deeper message of cultural sensitivity and tolerance. Their advertising campaigns seek to challenge our assumptions and prejudices, and teach us to look at the world from a fresh perspective (for example, consider their campaign headlines, ‘a different point of view is simply the view from a place where you’re not’ and ‘we see a world of opportunities. Do you?’). For HSBC, their CSR agenda is a part of their brand.
• Not all local markets are equal. HSBC’s sponsorship portfolio is strategically weighted towards the high-growth BRIC economies. This year the focus is on Brazil – with HSBC as chief sponsor of the international Festival Brazil that ran over the summer months in London – while last year concentrated on India, and 2008 was China. Some other recent flagship events here in London include the China Design Now exhibition at the V&A and an Argentine Contemporary Art exhibition.
• Infusing glocalization into your brand’s core values makes the message stick. The Group’s values require the organization to ‘meet the needs of our diverse customers around the world… with local knowledge and expertise’ and promote ‘the welfare and development of our local communities.’ Articulating the glocal message in the brand values helps HSBC to hardwire it into the organization.

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We have identified some further best-practices in the area of glocal branding and marketing, that focus on overcoming operational challenges. For more suggestions, MLC Members can check out our white paper on Examining the Interplay Between Corporate and Regional Marketing Groups.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution in this space, but in an increasingly interconnected world in which the biggest growth opportunities are migrating to the ‘developing’ nations, getting the answer right has rarely been as difficult or urgent.

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?”

Prices for translation jobs vary greatly, depending on what you’re looking for in terms of quality, turnaround time, and accuracy. Automatic translations usually are relatively cheap and have a very low turnaround time, but may not always be the most accurate.  A better option is a company with linguistic specialists, ideally indigenous to the target culture. Our executives named, in particular, a company that contracts with native language-trained English translators working at the United Nations.  Another firm, based in Michigan, provides translation and interpretation services, as well as offers live telephone interpretations 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  It also provides cultural training and e-learning language instruction.

Some executives advise to always use the same company, as many of them offer software that “remembers” previous translations and as a result, reduces costs of future translations and ensures consistency.  Others say that in order to ensure quality, you should not limit yourself to just one agency.  Although these opinions may be differing, there are some general tips in which everyone can agree on:

1. Shoot for translations from companies who are familiar with idiomatic, common usage of the language, not just ones who are able to provide an “academic translation.”
2. Look for a vendor with experience in the specific industry or product line in order to ensure proper technical vocabulary
3. When translating into English, always choose British English—terms and spellings tend to be more widely used/recognized
4. Don’t overlook units of measurement when translating (ex. converting feet to meters)
5. Before signing the dotted line, ask for a sample translation
6. Be aware of how to send a copy of what you are translating to the agency (most translation companies can strip written content straight from a PDF or website, which can save you lots of time and inconvenience).

Read through the member commentary on the Org & Ops forum here.  If you’re interested in global marketing and/or more suggestions for effective translations, check out our study on Consumer Perceptions of Multilingual Packaging.

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.

To determine needs, companies rate local teams’ social media maturity against local consumers’ maturity and size the gap to close. Self-assessment surveys are the quickest way to determine maturity.  Ideally, questions on marketing maturity should cover agency capabilities as well as internal expertise, while questions on consumer maturity should cover how much data is available on consumers’ media preferences/habits.  Surveys are usually administered once or twice a year and should evolve as the company’s knowledge of social media grows. MLC’s Social Media Maturity Diagnostic is a good example of the kinds of questions to ask. Members can administer this survey in multiple regions at no cost.

By ranking each region’s internal (marketing) vs. external (consumer) sophistication on a simple 3-point scale (low, medium, high), companies can quickly identify leading and lagging countries. This enables central marketing to:

a)     Prioritize groups with the greatest need for improvement by identifying those in which marketers’ use of social lags farthest behind consumers’,

b)    Customize training and resources to each team’s individual needs by creating a menu of training modules,

c)     Bucket countries with similar needs/opportunities together for joint training,

d)    Identify teams pioneering particular capabilities and task them with teaching the broader organization (e.g., South Africa may be leading the way in mobile marketing, while South Korea may be advanced at online community management)

e)     Set locally relevant performance targets (rather than unrealistic standard targets) and track progress.

MLC members, for more information on global capability building, please see our webinar on Microsoft’s digital Center of Excellence.

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. 

The one the stands out the most is Myth #3—Sales Rep Time is Best Spent in the Field.  The idea that an “always be in the field” mentality is an indicator of poor performance was an edgy finding from our quantitative analysis of Sales Rep Effectiveness a couple of years back.  But it really takes on new meaning when you place it in the Indian context—where I’ve personally negotiated 3-hour traffic nightmares to attend important meetings across town (fyi: during monsoon season, multiply travel time by six).  When you’re trying to close deals in the urban centers of today’s growth engine economies, perhaps the time in field measure takes on greater significance, and requires a traffic-to-meeting ratio to understand true performance (or would that just promote more aggressive driving?).  More research to be done, I suppose.

As another example, we tackled the myths in driving customer loyalty.  We pulled heavily from the past 4 years of MLC research into the Loyalty topic.  As we got into it, we found the concept and connotations of loyalty can be markedly different in India and much of Asia when compared to North America, so finding the relevant parallels from our work was a bit tricky. 

In the Indian B2B sector, relationship-based selling is still a dominant practice , despite findings to the contrary in most western contexts .  And so personal loyalty and reciprocity is still the prevailing frame. 

In the Indian B2C sector, there’s still considerable disagreement around what works and doesn’t work in building loyalty, especially when so few customers have reached the minimum threshold of satisfaction with their brand experience.  Believe me—I can share more customer experience nightmares than you’d care to hear about from the mobile phone providers and food purveyors. 

However, despite these differences, there is still a huge opportunity for MLC to immediately help Marketers understand and manage loyalty in their regional contexts.  The success of the Six Myths is evidence of that. 

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.

Two examples to illustrate the point: the U.S. has more television channels than anyone can possibly absorb; Italy is lucky to top out at 20, with RAI and Mediaset accounting for most viewership. Micro-targeting by consumer preferences, geography, and niche TV channels, while so prevalent in the US, could hardly exist in any meaningful fashion for Italian campaigns.

Or take outdoor advertising – billboards, posters, street signs. You can’t turn a corner in Rome without seeing an ad plastered on exterior building walls; street names adorn the top of 2×3 foot signs displaying the latest Versace gown. Put those same posters in downtown Chicago or Washington D.C. and you’d be handed fines for littering or defacing private property. In both examples, touchpoints deemed critical for one media consumption culture have little to no value in another.

Are our marketing departments structured to take advantage of these diverse media environments? As consultant-speak as it sounds, glocalization must become a capability of global marketing functions if those organizations want to achieve some semblance of communications resonance in diverse markets. There are multitudes of trade-offs for marketing executives to consider here – which capabilities to keep tethered to a global center, how to overlay behavioral segmentation with media consumption, how local the ownership/creation of communications must become. All the while, executives must keep brand consistency and customer experience foremost in their minds. The power of today’s technology means that a misstep in Italy can mean headaches in the United States; local can become global instantaneously.

MLC members, browse our collection of marketing communications organizational profiles to see how your peers are tackling the organizational challenges behind communications resonance, and also see how Ford has overcome the challenge of selecting the right channels for each market through strong test-and-control experiments.