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Millward Brown: Point of View
Ads That Travel: Planning a Safe and
Profitable Journey for Your Campaign
For those of us who love to travel, the variety of cultures around the world is endlessly
fascinating. The Pyramids of Giza, the bright lights of Ho Chi Minh City, and the Gaudi
architecture in Barcelona all attest to the rich and unique history of each place.
Sana M. Carlton
Managing Director
Millward Brown Switzerland
[email protected]
Yet in countries and environments as different as Mumbai and Miami, a global traveler will
see many familiar brands. It’s no mean feat to maintain a successful global brand; managing
brand positioning and communication strategies across countries is a tricky business. And
in recent years, global media, the Internet, and an increasingly well-traveled population of
consumers have made it more important than ever for brands to have a consistent tone and
message. In addition, if they can harmonize a brand’s position across regions, marketers
can save money by reducing the number of campaigns and executions that must be
developed. But with the world’s cultures so diverse, can advertising communications really
cross borders effectively?
The answer is that developing such communication is a challenge. The dream of reaching
a worldwide audience with just one ad is rarely realized. Very often, something important
gets lost in the translation. But with a bit of due diligence, campaigns can be developed
that will work effectively across many geographies and cultures, allowing advertisers to
realize great efficiencies while establishing seamless brand positionings.
To create communication that can cross borders effectively, marketers must follow a threestep process:
1. Determine the global brand promise, based
on applying the unique product benefits to
a universal human need.
2. Identify the marketing task that faces the
brand in each geography.
3. Implement the creative idea with sensitivity
to differences across countries and
cultures.
By following these steps, described more fully
here, an advertiser can leverage the economic
power of multi-country scale while achieving a
cohesive brand position around the world.
The dream of reaching a worldwide audience with just one ad
is rarely realized. Very often,
something important gets lost
in the translation. But with a
bit of due diligence, campaigns
can be developed that will work
effectively across many geographies and cultures.
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Millward Brown: Point of View Ads That Travel
Determine the global brand promise
A successful brand has unique and distinctive benefits that
set it apart from other offerings. Coca-Cola appeals to our
emotions with its promise of happiness through refreshment,
while Gillette Fusion offers the functional advantage of a fifth
blade. Whether their advantages are tangible or intangible,
most brands that succeed on the world stage do so by building
on a consistent brand promise that transcends cultures and
countries by tapping into some universal human truth.
If a truly relevant global promise can be identified, it is very
likely that a campaign based on that promise can successfully
travel. Working together with your research team, you need to
identify the brand promise that can be used around the world.
standing varies significantly by country. For example, the
image-building campaign that will benefit a brand in countries
where it is well established will do little good in countries
where the brand is not very well known and needs awarenessbuilding communication.
A brand’s standing in relation to its advertising needs can be
defined by two things:
•
The brand’s position within the category — that is,
whether it is a “Classic” or “Olympic” market leader,
a medium-sized “Defender, ” a “Specialist” brand
occupying a niche, or a recently launched “Little Tiger”
or “Clean Slate. ”
•
The maturity of the category itself.
Various combinations of these two parameters can point
to very different needs. Advertising for a medium-sized
Defender in a mature category usually needs to reinforce
product benefits, while advertising for a Clean Slate in a new
category needs to introduce both brand and category while
driving awareness and trial.
However, this will not always be possible; the needs and wants
of consumers do vary from country to country, and different
approaches may be needed when a brand’s standing is not
consistent across regions. But even in those cases, clusters of
markets that will respond to a single brand promise can often
be identified.
The women’s hair removal category provides an example
of a need to cluster markets due to category differences. In
some markets, such as Turkey, waxing is the norm, making
the removal of root hair well known and accepted, while
in others, including Russia, waxes play only a nominal role,
and use of razors is more broadly accepted. Therefore, the
messaging for a brand such as Braun’s Silk-épil, an electrical
epilator (root removal), may need to be adapted to account
for the different competitive environments. The benefits of
a razor versus wax or epilator are quite pronounced, so in
Russia the challenge is to communicate about the benefits
of changing your habits to the root removal of the epilator.
In markets where waxing is the norm, root removal is not the
benefit, and instead the unique benefits of the Braun Silk-épil
versus waxing is of critical importance.
Identify the marketing task in each geography
As always, the key to developing effective marketing
communications is to first identify the business and
marketing objectives. For an international brand, this includes
determining whether those objectives are consistent across
markets. While this step may seem obvious, it is sometimes
overlooked and can lead to inefficiencies when a brand’s
©2009 Millward Brown
Once you’ve finished the process of classifying your markets
according to brand status and category maturity, you will have
done most of your due diligence for developing a successful
multi-country campaign. At this stage, you should focus your
attention back on to the local nuances of the marketing
environment.
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Millward Brown: Point of View Ads That Travel
Implement the creative idea with sensitivity to differences
Finding one ad that suits all markets is rare indeed. An analysis
of our Link™ pretest database shows that ads that perform
exceptionally well (that is, score in the top 5 percent) in their
country of origin do not usually replicate that level of success
in other countries. These findings support the point Nigel
Hollis made in a recent Point of View on cultural differences.
“The world is not yet a global village,” said Nigel, “and in
all likelihood is not going to become one.” In other words,
though there may be global brands, there is not one global
culture. Therefore, those who adapt a creative idea to different
markets must have a thorough understanding of the cultural
differences that come into play.
Gaudi architecture in Barcelona
Marketers must consider cultural differences that are
where commercial advertising has a long history, viewers are
manifested in:
typically more receptive to emotional nuance and subtle or
• Attitudes and values
coded messages. For example, an advertiser in France can
expect to transmit the exquisite taste of a luxury food product
• Levels of sophistication about advertising
through sensual images of people in an elegant dining room,
• Interaction with various media
while in other markets that message might not register.
There may be global brands, but there is not one
Attitudes and values vary by country; as a result, advertising global culture. Those who adapt a creative idea to
that might be highly successful in one region may fail in another. different markets must have a thorough understandFor example, the value placed on the concept of “face” in China ing of the cultural differences that come into play.
Attitudes and values
makes certain kinds of humor unacceptable in advertising. (In
China, to get a laugh at someone else’s expense causes him
to lose face.) In the Middle East, it’s inappropriate to use dogs
in advertising because they are seen as dirty. Clearly, sensitive
topics such as sexuality and religion present issues, but so
too do some seemingly more innocuous elements such as
numbers and colors.
Though cultural differences can create pitfalls for advertisers,
they may also present opportunities to enhance a brand’s
message. For example, in Switzerland, Swiss produce is
highly respected. Therefore, the universal idea “I’m lovin’
it” is adapted in Swiss executions to highlight the fact that
McDonald’s French fries are made of Swiss potatoes.
Levels of sophistication about advertising
In markets that are relatively new to advertising, direct and
rational messages about product benefits are typically more
successful.
Interaction with various media
Finally, the ways in which people interact with advertising and
media in different countries are perhaps as diverse as the
cultures themselves. If we followed a young woman in Los
Angeles throughout her day, we might observe that she has an
hour-long commute in her car on billboard-strewn highways;
she listens to radio stations that have not only audio ads but
also written ads on the radio display; and she spends most of
her day online. When she’s home at night, she has access to
over 500 TV channels.
The sophistication of the target audience in relation to A woman of similar age and socioeconomic status in Madrid
advertising is another key difference to consider. In countries would spend much more time walking outside and commuting
©2009 Millward Brown
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Millward Brown: Point of View Ads That Travel
on the metro, where she’s exposed to poster and video ads as
she waits. She arrives home much later in the day, and if she
decides to watch television, she has just a few dozen stations
to choose from. Clearly, the touchpoints for the same target
audience may be very different across the countries in which
you market your brands.
Similarly, different communication opportunities will present
themselves near the points of purchase. For example, shoppers
in the United States are likely to buy shampoo in a large store
such as a discount drug store, supermarket, or Wal-Mart. In
those retail outlets, they might encounter in-store video. In
Spain, however, shampoo is more likely to be purchased in a
perfumeria, and ads are more apt to appear in metro and bus
shelters. Consumers in Vietnam would probably visit a local
one-room shop to make their purchases, where they would
find communication on the packaging that explained product
benefits.
The efficiency of individual media also varies across countries.
For example, in the United States, the use of relatively short,
frequent ad breaks encourages viewers to stay tuned. In
Denmark, there are fewer ad breaks within a program, though
they are also relatively short. In Spain, however, a 22-minute
show would be broadcast in its entirety, followed by an eightminute run of ads. So for an ad to be noticed in Spain, it might
need to be more actively engaging than an ad intended to air
in Denmark. The implication for maximizing the value of your
communications is clear: One size does not fit all. Both your
media plan and your ad executions must be developed with
the local media environment in mind.
©2009 Millward Brown
Adapting a global approach for local relevance can take a
variety of forms, including:
•
Relatively minor changes such as translating a tagline
and recutting an ad to fit local norms for ad length. The
Nescafé Dolce Gusto coffee machine launch utilizes
this approach. Product benefits are at the center of the
communication story as a variety of coffees are shown
dancing around the Dolce Gusto machine to James
Brown’s “Sex Machine.”
•
Utilizing the same consumer insight and creative idea
while reshooting the ad using local talent to provide more
identification with the target consumer.
•
Evolving the creative to work within a new cultural context.
An exceptional example of this is the global campaign for
IBM Websphere Integration Software. In this campaign,
the idea of linking parties together is represented in China
by a spiritual man talking about the magical integration
thread of connectivity, but in the United States, it is
depicted as an electricity adaptor that can connect all
inputs together.
Avoiding the extremes of being mindlessly global or hopelessly
local requires striking a balance between global synergies and
local relevance. Organizing insight around the brand equity and
category status in each country is the key first step. Developing
communications around market clusters brings the insight
into action. Then, adapting the creative idea in light of cultural
nuances maximizes the efficiency of each execution.
To read more about advertising for global brands,
visit www.mb-blog.com.
If you liked “Ads that Travel, ” you might also be interested in:
Culture Clash: Globalization Does Not Imply
Homogenization
Why is it so Difficult to Produce World-class
International Advertising?
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