The worldwide battle of the beige

We are all acutely aware that we live in a globalised economy. Not everyone benefits from, or is tolerant of this, despite the fact that more people have been moved out of poverty in the post Cold War era than ever before, thanks, in part to globalisation. One part of the system that does not now get the best from this interconnectedness, and is paying a price for it, is global brands.

Unless and until the stranglehold of big agency defaults is broken by the small, the nimble and the new — mediocre and mixed up creative will keep on leading to middling, or simply missing, results.

There are three reasons why the global marketplace which has been such an earner and opportunity for brands often has damaging effects.

The first pathology is ‘build once for many’, where HQ provides mostly the same assets for all local markets. This approach looks like good business sense but is a total nonsense.

Why?

The best way to keep down the big costs is to rationalise them.

That means London, New York, Paris, Hong Kong or wherever spew out fully formed campaigns for the globe. The local markets get to translate the copy, and sometimes even choose the media plan.

This also means that brands end up trying to sell tea, tampons or toothpaste the same way from Toledo to Taipei to Tallinn. (Try that as a real salesman on the street, and you will soon need to find a new career.)

This very, very rarely works.

Some global financial institutions, notably HSBC, have been able to square this circle by having a simple, impactful visual identity that makes sense to a broadly compatible cosmopolitan and mobile customer base.

In the rest of the brand sphere, TV ads shot in the USA have awkward, dubbed-in VO in other English speaking nations, while Bratislava [co-production tax breaks et cetera] has to stand in for everywhere from Beijing to Barcelona. And it all feels a bit … beige.

It’s a value destroying disgrace.

The second problem is the opposite extreme where local markets are given a free hand to do whatever. In the recent past, this meant regional agencies and affiliates not only created a chaotic lack of brand consistency, but also that some approaches — rightly seen as contradictory, stupid or even a bit racist by ‘head office’ -slipped through the net.

In Tier 1 markets across the globe — different agencies with varying financial interests, strategic ideas and creative approaches jealously occupy various layers of the communication mix. And inevitably, when the customer looks — all the seams show.

Sometimes, in efforts to avoid agency anarchy, brands retreat back into that comfort zone of ‘once for many’ — with a lead agency, often far away, dictating everything other than in market execution.

This can be even worse — as chaos at least sometimes lets something interesting get through by mistake.

The third problem can be the result of the first two, and is the insidious assumption that underpins them.

It is a brand deciding it is too big to bother.

Too big for there to be any medium term risk from incoherence, creative bankruptcy, or simple disinvestment — even just in media.

Big name brands too often think they can rely on a skeletal Social campaign unworthy of the name, or else some bland TVC and/or outdoor with no digital investment to maintain, or even grow their position. This is corrosively complacent.

To be fair, this thing looked like it was working. For a while.

Global Brand X was so big, and massively well known, and in all the shops to the extent that a campaign in 201X could be great, or terrible, big or small — and it would not have moved the sales or even awareness meter enough to earn the concern of a brand manager who usually is in the job for less than two years.

Let’s take a step back and ask/remind ourselves again: why do brands matter?

Brands emerged almost as soon as we could recognise a scrawled likeness of a bison on a cave wall.

They were, and still are, a very fast way for people to be assured that the product they are buying is from a source they desire and trust.

Bass was known and loved worldwide. But in the latter half of the last century, its owners started to take its momentum for granted. It was so big it sold itself, as is assumed by so many FMCG brands today.

As the brand owner focused on the finances — going through plenty of sell offs, mergers, acquisitions, and all kinds of corporate gymnastics — the priceless brand was left to fend for itself. Toolkits were provided from its head office in Burton, England, or else local bottlers were left to their own devices.

The result? Everyone just stopped bothering.

Bass was one of the biggest FMCG brands on earth. Countless millions, if not billions, were invested over the years to make that so. But what was the last time you saw or thought of Bass?

The brand would not, and could not, find a way to invest sensibly for the long term, allowing a local accent to be applied sufficiently to a global brand language.

To be fair, few have worked this out. Even though the solution is simple.

Decide on a tone, language, look and feel for your brand. Reap the benefits of this aspect of strategy, creative and production being created centrally — but in a way that not just empowers, but requires, proper local interpretation.

Not adaption, or translation. Interpretation.

It is akin to providing a clutch of ingredients and a topline recipe to a gifted chef. They must deliver a three course meal that satisfies a certain occasion, but in a way that makes sense where they are and includes all the ingredients provided. With a little local flair and garnish.

A small but keen local operation with global knowledge of all aspects of the communications mix can develop a symbiotic relationship at the centre — providing unbiased counsel, smoothing over differences, building in-house capabilities where it makes sense, empowering local markets — while cutting out big agency costs and sloth in the process.

We could cite a few large brands that do this well, but they really are the outliers.

Big agencies have trouble understanding or selling this. Meanwhile, burnt by high costs and with financial agendas of their own, many big brands are in the process of stopping to bother. Even as local champions innovate and erode their positions.

But that is an intimately related problem we will discuss another time.

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