Under the traditional model, each local marketing team worked with local creative and production partners to create brand assets for local use. As well as risking brand dilution and inconsistency between markets, this fragmented approach involved a hugely inefficient duplication of resource and marketing spend. For example, a TV commercial (TVC) created for one market couldn’t be – or simply wasn’t – repurposed for other markets.
The increase in a brands global reach has led to a growth in global campaigns, with the clear benefits of increased brand control, consistency and visibility. However, a global campaign means accommodating wide diversity – cultural, linguistic and regulatory.
The challenges
Brands are still falling foul of names issues, cultural sensitivities and advertising regulations – often with drastic consequences for brand equity and marketing spend. At best, your product name becomes a laughing stock; at worst, coming up against unexpected local advertising regulations means your global campaign launch may have to go live without one of your key markets.
Naming can be a minefield, as discovered by a well-known mobile phone brand with a model whose name means ‘prostitute’ in the slang of one of their core markets.
Cultural sensitivities and local nuances are similarly complex. There’s the obvious question of casting, locations, styling and props that will work at least regionally, if not globally. Beyond that, however, is the wider question of target audience. How much crossover is there between a home audience you know intimately and your audience in other countries? How much overlap in lifestyle, values, attitudes and aspirations – and sense of humour?
Take Toyota. Toyota launched in mainland China with a print ad showing a stone-carved lion saluting their new Prado SUV. To their Chinese audience, however, the scenario immediately recalled the Marco Polo Bridge, symbolic of national humiliation; it was here that Japanese imperial troops launched their 1937 full-scale invasion. The ads, already published, had to be pulled in China. Overall, the launch in China, a very valuable market, proved both expensive and damaging.
Devising a single Master asset that will safely navigate all your markets’ advertising regulations can be especially challenging in some sectors, such as automotive. What may pass as excitingly edgy in one market will fail TV clearance in another for depicting ‘reckless’ driving. There are tight restrictions in some markets on what can, and cannot, be kept in English. Elsewhere, full-frontal nudity is a no-go – no matter if this baby is two minutes old. In France you can’t show someone using a laptop, mobile or any other technology near food or drink. That’s right: no hipsters hot-desking in cafés! And don’t even think about showing children jumping off rocks into the sea.
Local-market advertising regulations are not only varied and complex, it can also be hard work to get hold of them (and then decipher them) in English. In China your TVC will have to pass each station’s internal clearance process before it can air. However, to get advice in advance is very likely to require a confirmed booking – not something you’re going to have during creative development. In addition, take something like audio levels: The standard in Germany is not the same as the standard in Italy. And in Denmark and Hungary, audio levels can vary between individual TV stations.
What you definitely don’t want to be doing is trying to resolve complex creative, cross-cultural, linguistic and clearance challenges in the last few days before your go-live date – that will bring inevitable delays and additional costs that will bring.
So what’s the solution?
The ideal scenario is a campaign concept, and creative, that will be optimal for global adaptation.
More realistically: to do the necessary research to enable you to anticipate the challenges of global adaptation and roll-out, so that you can align in advance on how best to address them.
1. Local-market insight during strategic development
Know your markets; your target audience and their cultural sensitivities; and the local advertising regulations you’ll need to navigate.
2. Cross-cultural checks during creative development
- Find out how your campaign concept is likely to be received by your local audience. Will it be received as you intend it? Will it resonate – and will it stand out?
- Check in advance if your copy line will work in other languages and cultures.
- Check casting, styling, locations, settings and props.
- And make sure your assets are optimised with a view to the technical aspects of localisation.
3. Super shoots and CGI – the best of both worlds
While a super-shoot requires additional upfront research and logistical management, the benefits are multiple: Enhanced efficiency, cost-effectiveness, global brand consistency, and creative which is relevant and resonant in all your markets.
A super-shoot is a centralised, large-scale production designed to capture TV and still image content which will be used worldwide for the duration of the campaign. This allows for the shooting of multiple casting, styling and setting options, as well as alternative scenarios to comply with local-market regulations. (Like two versions of one scene, one showing an alcoholic drink and the other a glass of juice; or the same model in both short and long sleeves.)
Post-production using CGI (computer-generated imagery) then comes into its own, enabling any further adjustments required at the individual-market level to comply with local clearance demands.
There’s a good example of a brand really using this process to their benefit. GSK chose a global super-shoot for its Panadol campaign, creating a set of Master brand assets for each region; subsequent tweaks for individual were then made in post-production using CGI.
Now that’s making the most of your global assets.
