Marketing to a Connected but Diverse Global Audience

In many ways ours has become a truly global marketplace, driven by digital tools & technology that have deepened connections and reduced the sense of separation that once characterised our experience of globality. These digital tools, from social media, to streaming, to gaming among others, have given the marketer extended reach. Combined with traditional forms of marketing, these platforms give both the small, local brand, and the huge, global brand a heady mix of choices. What they also do is increase the responsibility on the marketer to create and deliver marketing that is relevant to the local community. 

We’ve all seen what can happen when a global campaign is recklessly introduced into a local marketplace without the benefit of local insight. In some instances a global campaign can fall flat when transplanted or worse can be offensive to the local market. So for those brands that decide to go for their share of international markets, they need to make ongoing assessments about the relevance of their brand ideas and executions to work across different markets. As much as possible they need to tap into the DNA of these campaigns whilst adapting them for the local market. Brands, especially global brands, should never assume the existence of a homogenous marketplace. Where in the past audiences from ‘marginal’ markets may have accepted the novelty of ‘global’ campaigns, today they insist on being included, instead of ‘accommodated’. The marketer who will thrive in today’s world is the one who is grounded in a full understanding of local risks/issues and their attendant opportunities.

 I have always believed that one of the most important factors in marketing is context. This is true of even the most celebrated global campaign. Before you decide to run a campaign in a certain market, you have to consider its relevance, authenticity and value based on the local context. If we simply supplant a global campaign in a local setting we may achieve reach but lose relevance. This is where insights and behavioural understanding comes in. As marketers I often coach teams to  rely on both the science of marketing but also their lived experiences and intuition to evaluate campaigns. That will always be an important part of our decision making tool kit. Together with that we also need to tap into the insights that directive consumer understanding provides so that our campaigns resonate with our target audiences. The intentional integration of technology, data plus creativity and strategy has made our job of making smarter, better informed decisions about what is likely to have stickability in the local market that much easier. 

 Global brands naturally have global campaigns, and many of them are powerful, moving and often enduring. But it is when they reflect awareness of the uniqueness of the local market that global brands demonstrate their awareness and respect for a diverse global marketplace. Perhaps a simple example will make this point much more forcefully. In doing a commute TV or Print advert, a brand focused on the New York market would use the subway. But such an advert has reduced relevance in a Johannesburg setting where the commute is the minibus taxi. So even though both adverts may be beautifully shot, emotionally moving and deliver compelling copy, their ability to bridge social/context divides is limited. This reinforces the need for marketers to always weigh in the role of context in making decisions about where and how they run their campaigns. 

The juggling that is experienced by those who manage global brands in local markets becomes even more demanding in the African context where we have so many diverse complexities from race, gender, socioeconomic and sexual orientation challenges among many others. Those who’ve ever travelled across Africa are well aware of how representation of gender stereotypes can change across different African markets. As marketers operating in a nominally global marketplace, we need to always remain alert to nuance and context to not just reflect our world but also shape it through the power of our collective influence. Because in this way we can delight our audiences, create discussions and transformation with reduced risk for offending them unintentionally. It’s remarkable to me that we, South African marketers, and our allies in the advertising sector are still lagging behind so much when it comes to transformation and diversity. Our industry is the poorer for it. We need to do better. 

 As marketers we need to appreciate the power of truly seeing and acknowledging the full humanity of those that we market to. When they see themselves in our campaigns, these campaigns become their own stories, they are transformed from brand communication to cultural moments. One of the fantastic campaigns that really resonated with consumers was the Bells Reader campaign we developed in 014 ‘where a Father learns how to read at an elderly age in order to be able to ready his son’s first book .  This campaign was successful because as a local team we were empowered to create the most insightful idea that had a powerful cultural presentation of who we were and this communication  went from the corporate desk to the heart of the community. It was a powerful reminder that global brands are most impactful when they celebrate the local market even as they leverage their global insights. 

 Even the slickest campaign will fall flat if the target community are baffled by its references. For marketing to be effective, there must be something convincingly familiar to the audience, it must be a magnet to shape the future and have a point of view. We always have to be mindful that global ideas are an important part of the marketing mix, but most times local executions work best. Those global businesses that have made the most of their communication are the ones that invest in proper discovery processes, partner with local teams better to listen more and make smart choices about how they grow global brands in a locally relevant way. 

This brings me to perhaps one of the most important aspects of global VS local marketing. It takes us from the What to the Who. We’ve all wondered when campaigns offend and they go viral for all the wrong reasons, WHO was in the room when the campaign was signed off. Contemporary culture is shaped by movements and socially led values in response to a changing world. This means Inclusion and diversity are two of the factors that have to be prioritised when global brands create and introduce campaigns. A mono cultural team is likely to have blind spots that would be spotted by a diverse and inclusive team. In any case inclusivity and diversity are more than just a way of avoiding glitches in your marketing. They bring new voices, new ways of seeing and ultimately enrich the overall quality of our brand building. Put simply, global brands need teams that reflect global diversity if they are to truly capture the creativity that abounds across the globe. The marketing director in charge of a specific market should be constantly engaging the global teams on how to get to an outcome that protects the integrity of the brand but also drives effectiveness in a diverse marketplace. Marketers preparing campaigns for the African markets need to also remember the primacy of the UN sustainable development goals and the extent to which the nations constitutions celebrate and protect human rights. In practice this means that marketers have to steer away from campaigns that reinforce stereotypes or that exclude previously marginalised communities. In this context, marketing directors and their teams have to include the LGBTQ+ community, show women in a positive progressive light, include those who are differently abled, show new perspectives and characterization that drive equality  to promote and reflect the inclusivity enshrined we strive for.  In this way marketing directors and their teams have to hire with with this in mind because only in this way are they able to walk the talk. Attitudes and values in the wider social context should be a key driver of how we run our marketing. 

 Ultimately global and local teams can create fantastic outcomes if their partnership is based on mutual respect, balancing effectiveness and efficiency of marketing spend, ensuring strong diverse representation and ultimately putting consumers first. 

A personal reflection

Zumi Njongwe