5 key considerations for growing your global brand

In a modern, connected, digital economy, it’s easy to assume that growing a brand globally can be as simple as launching a website, a customer service portal or ecommerce site in different languages. There’s certainly plenty of pressure on marketers to think that way. And with an expectation that businesses should scale quickly, it’s convenient to assume that a brand that drives growth in one country will deliver the same results everywhere.

The truth is that deliberately ignoring cultural nuance means missing many of the opportunities in taking a brand global. You don’t just miss out on sales; you also miss the opportunity to create a multi-dimensional brand, which drives growth in more ways and is ultimately more valuable. For a vivid example of how much richer the marketing conversation is when you lean into cultural adaptation, tune into Words Matter, an in-depth fireside chat I held recently with Nataly Kelly and Katherine Melchior Ray.

Nataly is the CMO of Zappi. Katherine is a faculty member at the University of California Berkeley and a former marketing leader at Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Tommy Hilfiger. Together, they are the co-authors of “Brand Global, Adapt Local”, a book I was honored to write a forward for, and one that’s filled with rich insights on the value of cultural intelligence in today’s world. Our fireside chat explored the role that language plays in enabling this; how it supports more effective collaboration, surfaces valuable local insights, and helps adapt brand messaging so that it has meaning — everywhere.

Here are the key points that I took away from the Words Matter conversation, which you can watch in full, on demand.

1. Businesses can go global from anywhere

You only had to scan over the long list of attendees for our fireside chat to get a sense of how rich and diverse the global brand landscape is. The hundreds who joined us live included marketers from The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Angola, Brazil, Indonesia, China, Spain and many other countries. 

It was telling evidence that in today’s global economy, and with today’s technologies, brands can go global from anywhere. Your advantage doesn’t come from which language you launch your brand in, but rather from how intelligently you adapt to the other languages and cultures you encounter. At a time when 76% of consumers expect customer support in their native language, this adaptation has a direct impact on how your brand lands — and how your audience responds to your messaging.

2. Great brands vary tone and language to reflect cultural priorities

In our fireside chat, we had plenty of opportunity to celebrate moments of magic, when brands get local adaptation right. We also told a few “tales of fail”, when big names unintentionally provide a lesson in what not to do. A core theme that emerged from it all was the fact that successful global brands aren’t one-dimensional; the most successful know which aspects to dial up for different countries or cultures.

Nike may stand for edgy teen rebellion in the US or Japan. But in China, its athletes are role models for dutiful commitment and responsibility. Both are genuine aspects of the brand. Both are interpretations of the idea, “Just do it”, but depending on the market, Nike knows which one to emphasize. 

Similarly, L’Oréal knows to focus on functional benefits when it’s marketing to US consumers, on the quality and provenance of its ingredients in Japan, and on romance and storytelling in France. This flows through everything from R&D labs and product development (localized to each market), to packaging, to advertising. It’s a great example of a brand that gets bigger through being curious about the elements that resonate in different places. 

In both Nike and L’Oréal’s case, the brand remains recognizable, anchored in its core values as well as its visuals, but expresses different elements of itself, in order to travel successfully.

3. Adaptation has many different dimensions

Marketing involves much more than just promotion or advertising, and adapting brands involves much more than just adapting how they communicate. In “Brand Global, Adapt Local”, Nataly and Katherine introduce the CAGE framework to describe the different dimensions of adaptation. 

CAGE stands for Culture, Administration, Geography and Economics. The framework reminds marketers that they need to pay attention to elements such as how people like to pay for things (Culture), when and how they get paid (Administration), the physical size of the market itself (Geography), and relative spending incomes and spending power (Economics). 

Katherine told the story of how Airbnb struggled to take off in China due to differences in many of these dimensions. They included a less-established credit card infrastructure for payments, cultural suspicions around cleanliness, but also relative income levels and the sense among consumers that spending on accommodation is a big deal, and the experience of a hotel better reflects their sense of the investment they’re making.

As Nataly explained, many of these dimensions are particularly important to B2B brands adapting to different markets. She drew attention to the often-overlooked importance of billing communications, when striking the wrong tone in an invoice can have a devastating impact on repeat business. As she puts it, “The closer you get to someone’s wallet, the greater the importance of localization.”

4. There are different ways to balance speed, scale and quality when going global

Global marketing strategies involve balancing speed and scale with the quality of the experiences that you deliver, and the value they generate for your business. As Nataly, Katherine and I discussed, there are many different ways to balance these different elements, and therefore many different ways to go global with a brand. You could take a market-by-market approach to establishing relevance, and find clues from successful expansion in one country to help you identify the next to launch in. You could alternatively launch in multiple markets and aim to learn quickly about what works and what doesn’t. 

The thing that matters most is realizing that the rules for one country won’t necessarily apply in another. Once you’re clear on the challenge, you can find a way of rising to it that suits your business model.

5. There’s far more to the role of localization teams than just translating content

Localization doesn’t just involve translating content for different markets. Its real task is more complex, more interesting and more valuable: ensuring that content connects culturally. That involves being alive to nuances in language, cultural idioms and expressions. It also involves being ready to warn when particular messages, campaigns, and even products, aren’t right for a country. Localization teams can offer valuable input for the overall marketing strategy.

International marketing is at its best when there’s room in the GTM strategy for prioritization. Some markets represent far more accessible opportunities than others. Some products have a large potential customer base in one country, but not in a neighboring one. There will be campaigns that work brilliantly in five markets, but aren’t right for a sixth. The insights that localization teams provide have a vital role in informing decisions about where and when to launch. They help ensure that you know where your brand wants to play, and which hand it should play in each of those places.

Watch "Words Matter", on demand

Marketing is a profession for curious minds, and there are few more valuable uses of that curiosity than asking what your brand means for different cultures. Being able to answer that question will help your message resonate in a meaningful way, everywhere you do business. It makes the difference between the growth potential of expanding internationally, and the growth you actually achieve.

If you’d like to start asking those questions, watching Words Matter on demand is a great place to start.