Over time we’ve seen strong growth in brands with global reach and in the use of international campaigns, which has led to increased brand control, consistency and visibility. However, although this may be the case, a global campaign means more work to accommodate wider diversity – cultural, linguistic and regulatory issues. And it’s still evident that brands are still falling foul of cultural sensitivities and advertising regulations. This can often result in 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.
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.
Cultural sensitivities and local nuances are 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. New York’s Fox 5 was lambasted recently for blurring out the breasts of Picasso's painting "Women of Algiers (Version O)"; a case of erring comically too far on the side of caution. 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 – with the inevitable delays and additional costs that will bring.
A good example of a brand really using this process to their benefit is GSK - who choose a global super-shoot for its Panadol campaign, creating a set of Master brand assets for each region; subsequent tweaks for individual markets were then made in post-production using CGI, ensuring that a consistent brand experience was delivered globally to consumers.
By Kate Robinson, Transcreation and Insight Team Leader at Hogarth Worldwide.
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