Enabling Scalability In (Global) Brand Creative Strategy & Execution Management

Inevitable part of 'going global' as a part of brand internationalisation or brand globalisation - expansion of business and brand presence in international / global markets will be a challenge of scaling your brand creative and adapting it to new organisational, operational and now multi-market / global marketing environment demands.

Scalability is, or better said should be, an inherent part of the 'globalisation' journey for brands and brand management. Namely, global brand as a marketing strategy rests on scalability as one of its building blocks as one of the major drivers behind the idea of creation of global brands and global branding (creative execution of marketing strategy and messaging) was costs saving or efficiency gains. Developing a single global story then replicating it with minor adjustments in creative for cultural and language differences across countries, not only costs less but yields better communication results from perspective of consistency and association creation in minds of consumers.

Scalability is an ability of a system / team / organisation to handle exponential workloads while incurring only incremental costs.

However, it turns out that for many brands - internationalisation or globalisation of creative strategy - creative definition and execution of marketing strategy becomes challenging both from conceptual, creative strategy (re)definition point of view, but also organisational (team, set-up) and executional dimension - how to actually operationalise a global brand creative strategy and multi-market support.

What is scalability?

Scalability is an ability of a system / team / organisation to handle exponential workloads while incurring only incremental costs. This means that (rapid) expansion of the work demand / workload that you need to serve in in terms of new markets / partners (retailers, distributors, franchisers etc) / touch-points (physical, print, social, digital, trade etc) should not come at same-rate additional costs - your workload can expand exponentially while for example your resourcing expand incrementally.

In lament terms, it means that in case your coverage of markets needing to support with brand creative and content from 5-10 (100% increase), your resourcing aspect (budget, team size etc) does not increase 100% - but let say 10%.

Scalability Enablement in Brand Creative Strategy Definition and Execution Management

Enabling scalability in brand creative strategy definition and execution management means embedding and accounting for principles of scalability - defining strategy with execution in mind as well as enabling execution with scalable creative concepts.

Creative Strategy Definition

Your creative strategy will need to account for the need multi-market presence and brand resonance across differing markets, while taking into account different stages of brand development, awareness, recognition etc. in each of those countries. This means that it will need to be built upon consumer insights which are above individual market specific nuances, but at the same time be able to achieve the marketing goals.

This means having multiple creative communication platforms that may be re-usable across markets which are built on cross-market relevant and unison consumer insights and may be organised for markets that are clustered across certain dimension - from development stage (eg. entry market vs mature etc) to marketing funnel level (awareness, conversion etc).

Scalable creative strategy will take into account that while markets are different there are dimension to which they are similar. Needles to say, one of the characteristics of global brands are that they are build on insights of global consumers - consumers needs, wants, fears that are market agnostics.

Creative Concept Definition

Your creative concepts will need to follow the scalable creative strategy principles as well. This means that for example your creative concepts will need to be created with scalability in mind - in this case to be re-usable across markets (without) any major adjustments and ensuring the brand consistency and brand resonance. One example is that instead of having each market create their own "Valentine's Day" activation, you come up with a creative concept and communication platform that can be leveraged by each market.

Needs to be both market-relevant enough to be usable in the market and market-agnostic enough to be re-usable across the markets

This means that it needs to be both market-relevant enough to be usable in the market and market-agnostic enough to be re-usable across the markets. Your creative concept needs to take into account the fact that it needs to be re-used across markets - so in the key visuals you will want to avoid visual elements which are specific for certain countries. For example people ( faces, race, gender) or background environment which isn't 'transportable' to any other market. In case your creative concept simply can't avoid the market relevant elements - you will want to plan it so that in production it is fairly 'swappable' for elements which are other market relevant. Moreover, you will want to make sure that your creative concepts are built in mind for localisation (in countries) through a process of (creative) translation and trans-creation.

Defining creative concepts with global consumer in mind and scalability in mind will take you on a much easier path than trying to 'export' your creative communication from the home market into new markets - as inevitably you will run into market differences.

Scalability in Creative Production & Post-Production

Scalability in creative production can be achieved in multiple ways. For example, In case your creative concept couldn't avoid faces / people which are different in different markets (eg. race, skin colour) in the (any) photo-shoot stage you'll want to have different models / actors - and reshoot with each set of them - at the same time so you avoid additional shoot costs.

To create an illusion of shoots in locations many brands organise in studios market and location specific elements instead of going to location shoots - eg. recreating a street (like in film studios).

Scalability in creative production is obviously done through many different sets of digital tools which enhance productivity. From creative work management tools, to digital asset management, creative localisation tools. However, finding right tools is a process that often in-house creative teams are not entirely equipped to do. Choosing right digital technology tools is one of the key steps in enabling scalability.

Generative AI (GenAI) has most recently been the biggest advancement in productivity when it comes to creative production and many global brands and in-house creative agencies are already leveraging it for creative adaptations and social adaptations. Large corporates are also creating their own LLM / GenAI tools - such one example is Reckitt global creative team which claims to have cut 60% time in creative concept development and 30% in creative ad adaptation. (source )

Enabling scalability in creative implementation is also possible through formation of remote creative (lower cost country) teams which partner with in-house creative agencies but at a fraction of the costs.

Scalability in Creative Team Set-up and Management

Setting up the creative team for scalable brand growth and multi-market expansion coverage is also a requirement to take into account. Depending on your creative teams' remit you will need to stack up creative localisation and language translation teams / vendors / copywriters to be able to address specific market needs. Having a right balance of project managers vs. creatives and localisation strategy defined will be paramount to proper team functioning. Depending on your work remit you might need to add market-specific / local market designers into your core team.

We bring in creative leaders of rapidly scaling brands to share their insights and best practices.

Learning how to best organise your team for scalable growth is possible through our advisory board services where we bring in creative leaders of rapidly scaling brands to share their insights and best practices.

Scalability in Creative Operations

Serving multiple markets and serving multiple markets creative content request can become a huge burden to creative operations. Markets need agile support from central creative teams and in case they don't get creative support often will act on their own jeopardising global brand consistency. Scalability enablement in creative operations means taking into account the market-level demands (current and future) and optimising operations and creative support both from the perspective of creative content supply (how and what you provide to markets) and also creative content demand (how and what markets ask from you).

In case this isn't treated from supply chain management perspective you will most likely end up with a common problem of in-house creative teams - that is that most of the time they don't have time for actual creative work (creative concepts) but are rather overrun by market content demands and streams.

Perquisite to scalability in creative operations is standardisation, structurisation and codification (digitalisation) of operating procedures, establishment of processes - ideally with the help of software solutions that will help manage the workload. Here's an article which elaborates more on that topic.

Scalability in Creative Resourcing

Enabling scalability in creative resourcing comes down to ensuring you have scalable creative talent and vendor pool network that is able to provide support to an exponential workload but without exponential costs. Many different models exist. Many in-house creative agencies rely on the network of freelancers - which sometimes are 'shadow employees' - formally listed as freelancers but actually just working for one client.

Principle of creative decoupling is a sure path to success when it comes to enabling scalability. Essentially, when decoupling is utilised, companies unbundle creative and strategy development from asset creation in order to improve speed, quality and lower production costs when executing advertising campaigns.

Production decoupling allows the in-house creative team to do what they do best: strategy, ideation and creation of master assets for global campaigns. Production work is assigned to the remote localisation and adaptation hub, including copy transcription, distributing assets over media channels in different markets, delivery to publishers, amongst others. Because today’s advertising campaigns tend to be global and multi-channel, there is an argument that “garden” and “factory” models should be implemented.

Gardens grow ideas, whereas factories manufacture them.?In this regard, garden agencies are costly because they are staffed with expensive talent who are expert problem solvers, work in expensive offices, often in expensive cities. On the other hand, the factory model is where companies can focus on cutting costs and achieving operational efficiencies.

Enabling Scalability In (Global) Brand Creative Strategy & Execution Management - client cases of Nike, Uber, HBO Max, Amazon Ring

To get a better understanding of how to scale brand creative and unlock scalable brand growth feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to showcase how we enabled scalability for clients like Nike (14 WE markets), Uber (46 markets), HBO Max (17 market), Amazon Ring (10 markets).

Feel free to reach out and set-up an intro call / showcase of client cases.