Centralization or Decentralization?

A brief review of the two approaches to advertising and marketing communications localization

By Gordon Husbands,
Wordbank’s VP Sales & Marketing Worldwide
33 CHARLOTTE STREET, LONDON W1T 1RR, U.K.
TEL: +44 (0) 20 7903 8800, FAX: +44 (0) 20 7903 8888,

gordon_husbands@wordbank.com
www.wordbank.com

and Rebecca Hampton,
Head of Key Accounts at Wordbank,

Rebecca_Hampton@wordbank.com
www.wordbank.com

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There was a conflicting view from the CEO of Philip Morris who was of the opinion that international marketing is purely the sum of all the individual country marketing and that this situation would remain "until we achieve 'One World'".

Standardization versus Product Customization

One of the legendary examples used to show the success of standardization is the Italian-led onslaught on the domestic appliance market at the time. In 1955, only three per cent of Italian households owned refrigerators and one in a hundred owned washing machines. Within a decade, Italian manufacturers were producing around 2.6 million refrigerators and 1.5 million washing machines and had captured a significant share of the wider European market as well as a major share of their home market.

Across Europe there were many differences in perceived consumer preferences relating to the size of kitchen and availability of hot water. The specifications for the German market were typically much higher all round. Not surprisingly, therefore, the market-leading German brands were highly priced and heavily advertised. However, the smaller, lower-priced Italian models rapidly established a 12 per cent market share, indicating that a sizable proportion of demanding German consumers were violating all expectations and buying simple, low-priced Italian machines.

In an attempt to counter this flood of Italian washing machines spilling into the market, Hoover commissioned some market research into the local product preferences then prevailing in the market. It revealed some surprising results.

The research showed that, although consumers said that they wanted certain features, they acted otherwise if the price and promotion were right. The Italians were able to successfully penetrate all the rapidly growing European markets by standardizing and reducing costs. Virtually overnight, UK consumers abandoned their doomed love affair with utilitarian, upright, top-loading, plodding agitators and succumbed to the seductive charms of the smooth, convenient and low priced Italian immigrant.

This example - and many others like it - strongly suggests that the essence of globalization is as follows:

·     Get it right in your domestic market

·     Exploit economies of scale gained from increased volume to reduce the unit cost of production

·     Standardize packaging - and even standardize advertising and communication.

As long as the price is more competitive and the quality acceptable, you can largely ignore calls to customize the product to suit local market needs.

As a result, the early clarion call of globalization was, notwithstanding cultural, legal and language differences, to make standardization a core aim of any potential product and marketing strategy, while maintaining product quality and driving down costs.

Promotion - the last opportunity to communicate?

But does this view hold up today? Clearly, part of the global success of products such as the Sony Walkman and the iPod has been derived from the centralization and standardization of the Product and Price. But what about the other important components of the marketing mix - Place and Promotion?

Standardization and centralization are clearly evident when considering today's channels to market - or Place. On one hand, there is the rise of direct channels, fuelled by the penetration of the Internet and the greater availability of credit cards - think Dell, Expedia or iTunes.

On the other, there is the increasingly dominant position of the retailer. It is increasingly difficult for brand owners to acquire and defend shelf-space against many own-label and other brands. Just consider the might of Wal-Mart, Tesco and Carrefour on the global retail stage.

In both these instances, communication is clearly fundamental to success, whether the aim is to reach out and drive consumers to a website or to stand out and attract consumers in a dense retail environment.

In a market so controlled by powerful and often dictatorial retailers, the last and potentially critical selling opportunity available to the product vendor is created by Promotion - advertising, product information, in-store promotions, and packaging.

This begs the question: "Is effective communication the global vendor's last chance to really influence the target customer?"

Let us examine the one element of the Promotion mix that consumers see all the time: the box or the packaging. Whether it is a laser printer, digital camera or smartphone, the packaging alone must communicate at many levels wherever the product is being sold in the world. In many countries it must carry a vast array of information from contents to environmental compliance just to get onto the shelf.

This leaves limited space in which to deliver the two main communication components that influence the consumer's purchasing decision - the marketing messages and technical information.

Most packaging displays persuasive marketing messages that clearly communicate product benefits and create a positive impact on the consumer. More important, though, is factual or technical information, the lack of which can have a very negative impact. For example, does the product support Windows XP or, more critically for those with a potentially fatal allergic reaction, does it contain nuts?

Not only is central control of messaging and branding essential but the articulation of the message and the brand identity must also be effectively localized to ensure clear understanding of the product benefits and local differentiation in the target audience in each country.

This can reach critical importance where an aim of the marketing strategy is to be perceived as a local (if not community) vendor rather than a huge, aggressive, soulless multi-national.  For example, after the acquisition of a German Linux supplier, Novell rapidly disenchanted many customers with its corporate American approach. The consumer response was so negative that Novell was forced to carry out a remedial campaign communicating that its Linux products were still made in and supported from Germany, where they were originally developed before acquisition.

The trend towards the centralization of advertising and marketing communications

There is sufficient evidence that a high degree of standardization can benefit a global marketing strategy and that this can only be achieved if it is supported by a global marketing authority (although this does not necessarily imply a hierarchical approach, rather a focus of accountability and responsibility).

Marketing to an ever-increasing number of countries, each with different languages, attitudes and legal restrictions is never going to be easy and, by its very nature, seems to defy standardization.

Different companies adopt different marketing models and may have champions of both highly distributed and highly centralized approaches within their organizations. However, the desire to reduce time-to-market and drive down costs appears to be encouraging the trend towards centralization.

A recent high visibility re-branding campaign for an automotive client, Chevrolet, provides a good case study of the benefits and challenges of the centralized approach.

The campaign that was executed included TV advertising, direct mail, an interactive CD-ROM and a microsite into 11 European languages. The challenges of managing this project to the satisfaction of all of the countries were huge and there is no doubt that a campaign of this technical and logistical complexity could be a nightmare without both a high degree of centralization and co-operation between the corporate HQ, the countries and the client's agencies.

These are some of the lessons that were brought home to us during the localization of this campaign:

·     With multiple parties involved, clarity and consistency of the message was always going to be important to ensure a successful campaign. A high quality of localization was achieved by involving us early on, providing a clear and comprehensive brief, and channelling all content through a single localization agency. A single point of contact meant that any errors or changes made to the source could quickly be communicated across all languages; and key terminology could be translated and approved once and incorporated across all of the campaign content.

·     The management of the matrix of locale-specific data associated with the content for each market could have been a communications and logistics nightmare if the agencies were all individually trying to ensure that model types, contact addresses, URLs etc were correct - especially as much of this information was only confirmed at the last minute.

·     Automation, wherever possible, was key. Special import and export tools were used to automate the database localization and a similar approach was used for typesetting the language versions of the various layouts. This avoided the use of error-prone copy and paste techniques for 17 different language versions and, ultimately, saved a lot of time and money.

·     With the full support of Chevrolet, the countries were briefed early and were in direct contact with us for approvals and sign-off, with all communication copied to the relevant agency to maintain full synchronization. This ensured that linguistic style and terminology preferences could be readily accommodated and the countries could also approve the market-specific data. The result was that the project was achieved within some very tight deadlines and the countries maintained their control without having the burden of doing the actual content translation, agency briefing and project management of all of the materials.

·     The best result was that not only were the tight deadlines met as a result of the close co-operation of everyone involved but Chevrolet also experienced a significant uplift in sales across the region.

Is there a case for decentralization?

Despite the trend towards centralization, many companies still adopt a decentralized approach to their marketing communication. This model often stems from how the corporate structure has evolved historically and is indicative of the relative power of the country sales and marketing organizations. In either case, corporate decision-making is ceded to the country offices who then choose exactly how, when and where they will promote themselves in their domestic markets. This is the model as described by Philip Morris' CEO in the 1960s.

The typical benefits of this approach are as follows:

• Content and the campaign can be readily tailored or tuned to match local culture and needs
  
  
• Each country is best placed to understand local legal issues and how best to ship products locally
  
  
• Purely as a function of location, the countries should also be best placed to identify and quickly respond to local competition
  
  
• As everything is theoretically within their direct control, the countries should want to commit more time and effort to support their own campaigns to make them successful
  
  
• We must assume that they are also in a good position to source and select local suppliers for copywriting, design and print.

There are, however, a number of downsides that include:

• The country organizations/subsidiaries may put their own interpretation on the brand and product positioning - which may or may not conflict with the corporate view
  
  
• Potentially, the opportunities for duplicating and reinventing the wheel in different countries will result in much higher agency costs
  
  
• While it is relatively easy to co-ordinate or synchronise a few countries, it is a huge task to control, synchronise and motivate a large number of countries to fulfil their role in a campaign or product launch. Just look at the vastly varied - and unexpected - attitudes of 20 EC countries to the much-publicised European Constitution!
  
  
• It is much harder to deploy CMS or CRM systems which rely on standardization, centralized systems and everyone doing things in the same way.

It is also worth remembering that any international campaign is only as good as its weakest locale. While it may be possible to negotiate lower individual country costs by using local suppliers, there will still be central costs to be borne for managing the overall project direction and co-ordination if the campaign is to meet its objectives and timelines.

So why centralize?

We have found that, where the client centralizes marketing activity, it can:

• Enhance the customer's experience by ensuring message consistency and accuracy across all languages in all communication that they receive
  
  
• Provide strong control of the brand identity and a consistent look and feel throughout
  
  
• Focus the countries on the most value-added area of tuning messaging style rather than wasting valuable time on copywriting or translation
  
  
• Enable fast, predictable turnaround of multilingual projects. Dedicated, committed resources are allocated rather than negotiating for scarce resources in local offices or managing suppliers in each market. In addition, it is far easier to accommodate the inevitable last minute changes
  
  
• Deliver cost savings through the use of centralized linguistic assets such as translation memories and the use of technology tools to reduce typesetting, file engineering and translation costs
  
  
• Creates the opportunity to slim down the country resources. This is rarely popular but in many countries the cost of employing staff is very high due to local tax and welfare payments. For example, social and welfare costs can add up to 50% to salaries in Germany and Greece, and seven or eight weeks annual vacation are the norm.

Inevitably, there are some downsides to a centralized approach that include:

• Countries feel disengaged and de-motivated by the loss of control and need to be consulted to ensure that they still feel involved
  
  
• Corporate campaigns can be a trade-off where concepts work well in most countries but not all
  
  
• Investment in people and process is required to implement a centralized approach
  
  
• Concepts and content must be developed for global and regional execution not purely for a domestic market and then forced to fit
  
  
• Someone needs to pick up the baton and run with it to communicate the vision, marshal resources and make it happen.

Like most things in life, neither approach suits everybody all of the time and many companies use a combination of both approaches depending upon the nature of the campaign, the objectives and timescale. There will always be some need to execute local sales promotions and events that cater for the specific needs of the local market.

By analyzing some of our most recent projects across the spectrum of industries, campaign type and country scope, we have identified where centralization and standardization can enhance and benefit marketing communications at a regional or global level.

The steps to centralization success

When you are at the planning stage of an international communications campaign, it is worth adhering to the advice below:

·     Set clear global marketing and communications objectives, bearing in mind they will have to be digested by non-native English speakers and potentially pass through several filters on the way to those actually executing individual activities. Be clear on your country priorities

·     Ensure that marketing messages are articulated specifically for the global market knowing that they will have to be localized - so avoid cultural references and 'street' language

·     Test campaign concepts (both creative and key messaging) before execution in the most important countries (as determined by the marketing plan not by who shouts loudest). Review alternatives with the countries for specific feedback to ensure that campaigns can be effectively used across all planned territories. It is also a good idea to build this into your standard concept development timeline. This tends to generate a better sense of involvement and ownership by the countries, as was very much in evidence with Chevrolet

·     Create guidelines for branding and messaging to ensure that all originators, internal or external, do not reinvent the wheel or redefine market positioning. Internationalize design layout templates and set technical standards for both on- and offline media to ensure that different languages can be accommodated while preserving the look and feel of the campaign.

Guidelines for campaign execution

When you move into the executive phase of your international campaign, you can avoid costly repetition and duplication by:

·     Planning clear project timelines for each campaign component in the to-market plan and being aware that communication quality can degrade quickly in localization if stages are skipped or timescales severely compressed. Creatively written English copy needs to be creatively translated by specialist in-country translators. It is simply not possible to deliver 26 languages in two days.

·     Ensuring that the countries are well briefed on what to expect and when; that they buy-in to the concepts being used; and understand the campaign objectives and overall deadlines.

·     Using the countries to assist by tuning the translation style of sales messages, providing input on preferred terminology and confirming product availability.

·     Creating centralized linguistic assets such as language and country-style guides, key terminology databases and translations memories (TMs) to ensure better consistency of message and reduce translation costs.

International campaigns can be complex but we have found that the centralized approach does have a lot to offer in terms of ensuring brand consistency, evoking the correct response in the target audience and meeting tight deadlines for high visibility projects.

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