Consider for a moment the economies of scale enjoyed by IBM. It costs IBM much less to create a single global advertising campaign than it would create separate campaigns for dozens of markets. And because IBM uses only one agency for all its global advertising, it carries a lot of clout with the agency and can get the most talented people working on its behalf.
A global brand also benefits from being driven by a single strategy. Visa’s unvarying “worldwide acceptance” position, for example, is much easier for the company to manage than dozens of country-specific strategies.
Global branding and advertising can help you market your product or service in many different countries around the world. Some of its advantages include:
Leadership
You can build on the benefits of a global brand by utilizing an approach known as brand leadership. This means defining the important elements of your brand, but using a flexible approach and customizing communications for local markets. To ensure success, you need to monitor the success of the campaign in each market with the aim of establishing brand leadership across all key territories.
Management
Running a consistent global branding and advertising program reduces the cost and complexity of managing your campaigns. Some multinational companies employ different advertising and marketing agencies for each territory. If each agency creates a different campaign for the local market, costs can rise rapidly because of the duplication of effort. By developing a single global branding and advertising strategy, you can reduce the number of agencies you use and eliminate duplicate costs.
Consistent
Creating a global branding and advertising program enables you to create a consistent international brand image and communicate consistent messages to customers in all your export markets. Consumers now receive marketing messages from a huge number of different sources, so delivering a consistent message is the most effective way to reach consumers, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Risk Reduction
You can reduce the risk in developing a global campaign by building on branding and advertising strategies that deliver successful results in your domestic market. Building an existing brand progressively, market by market is the safest and most cost-effective way to create a global brand.
Localization
For the fact that consistency is still important, your global branding and advertising program do not necessarily need to communicate exactly the same message to each local market. It’s important to understand and respect the language, cultural and business differences in individual territories by adapting your communications to meet the various local preferences. This process is called localization.
A number of companies have been very successful using a global advertising approach, including Coca-Cola, Merrill Lynch, Xerox, American Express, and British Airways.
