Marketers May Think Globally But Must Act Locally

According to a recent study conducted by Brandiosity for Heidrick & Struggles, perceived effectiveness of multicultural marketing by companies remains low despite increased efforts. Surprisingly, nearly 40% of the chief marketers surveyed say they don’t know how much minority groups contribute to their companies’ revenues, yet 84% of the group agree that multicultural marketing is critical to their business.

My Three Points:

1. Plan Locally: I have worked for companies with offices on every continent except Antarctica, and in fact I have had global responsibility for their strategic alliances and marketing. In the countries where we had local marketing representation, our messaging was better tailored, more targeted and consequently more effective. And I’m not talking about simply hiring a local translation firm to localize existing collateral.
2. Act Locally: Learn from my mistake of trying to execute a marketing campaign on a global basis to leverage resources. It doesn’t work even if you tweek the content by region. Follow in the footsteps of branding giants like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s and create unique campaigns for every culture you are targeting. Hire an agency in each region to conceptualize and execute locally.
3. Measure Locally: Perhaps one of the reasons that the companies surveyed do not believe their multicultural marketing is effective is because they are measuring it improperly. Just as you should plan and execute marketing campaigns locally, you should also establish unique marketing benchmarks and measurements locally. You must consider variances in factors such as access to technology that affect marketing averages like email open rates, returned calls, and online research.

I’ve always said that there is no such thing as a truly “global companies”, only multi-national ones.

-Melissa

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Tags: act local, Brandiosity, chief marketer, global marketing, Heidrick & Struggles, Marketing, marketing study, marketing survey, multicultural marketing, multinational marketing, think global

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