I recently met with the Head of Global Branding for a large multi national and we spoke about the challenges global marketers face trying to get consistencies in ways of working across regions, and the difficulties in getting local markets on board to a centralized model of technology and process.
Increasingly global companies are centralizing global marketing activities. The benefits are obvious and many: Brand consistency globally across all channels and markets can be significantly enhanced which strengthens brand awareness across the globe. Also consistency in technology used and ways of working, this gives much greater clarity for global teams to understand local market activity and the ability to track and monitor the effectiveness of marketing activity across the regions. Leveraging from global resource can result in a significant cost reduction across all areas and regions of marketing. Global campaigns produced centrally can be delivered into market fast.
Implementing the shift from decentralized to centralized marketing campaigns is often more complex and carries greater risk than is first realized. The complexity often comes from the assumption that local markets will easily adapt to a centralized way of working which does not always happen smoothly.
