Magnifying Big Ideas Locally

“What we really need now is a global activation agency.”

That’s what the CMO of a major financial services company said to me a few months back. Then, just two weeks ago, an old friend, the CEO of a giant food company, told me that if an agency could truly help drive best practices in activation and shopper marketing around the world, it would have clients lining up for the help.

Interesting times.

How many of us have worked on big brand campaigns that somehow lost their way when they were executed at a local level?

I’ve spent many years developing idea platforms that were meant to travel across channels, cultures and geographies. The client and agency team would feel great about what it did from the center, but then we’d all too often find ourselves crossing our fingers … hoping local markets would do right by the brand and right by the idea.

Those were the days when I first realized the power of local brand activation. It could make a big idea even more impactful. Or it could undermine the idea’s effectiveness with off-brand activities, inconsistent brand voice … all in the supposed pursuit of local business.

This dynamic has been a fundamental issue for marketers over the years. Many have found ways to drive smarter, more consistent programs from one region, one channel, one neighborhood to the next. And this came by applying local wisdom and creativity to central initiatives.

Today, our planet gets smaller and smaller. The Internet connects everyone everywhere. Everything can be seen. Everything can be heard. For the global brand marketer, this creates a real challenge on the one hand. But it can be leveraged into a big opportunity across markets.

Historically, folks managing global brands would send “above-the-line materials” (I do hate that phrase) to local markets with very specific instructions. Everything was clear for the “above-the-line” work. But the local marketer would have the right to create programs he believed would drive his business at a street and retail level. We would all too often cringe when we saw how our efforts ultimately got translated.

Marketers of global brands are learning they have a choice. Yes, they must absolutely drive business at a local level. But they don’t need to leave things to chance, and they don’t need to be reinventing work from one market to the next. Yes, they need local wisdom. But just as marketers have sought big brand ideas that can travel, they are searching for big activation concepts that worked elsewhere and can be adapted.

Local brand activation and shopper marketing is taking on growing importance around the world. Global marketers want their brands to travel with one voice across traditional media. But they know they won’t win if they don’t connect where it matters most in what OgilvyAction calls “The Last Mile.” When the consumer makes a purchase decision, that’s the ultimate moment of truth for driving business and mandatory for delivering ROI.

Here are a few “must do” suggestions for activating global brands at a local level.

KNOW YOUR CONSUMER — KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER

The days of tactical one-offs are gone. Or at least they should be. When we are caring for the health of a brand, every engagement makes either a deposit in or withdrawal from its value. We need to apply the same level of strategic thinking to our local activation plans as we do in general market planning, but with a bit of a twist. We need to focus on people’s typical days, and how we can build programs that will influence actions.

We need to take the time to understand brand relationships. There are three dynamics to consider:

• the brand and the consumer
• the brand and the retailer
• the retailer and its shopper

These relationships will vary by shopping occasion, channel, consumer and culture. Understanding how consumers interact with brands and then influencing them along the path to purchase is how we turn consumers into shoppers and shoppers into buyers.

Having the right media planners — people who understand consumer journeys, touch-points and media-neutral engagement — can make all the difference determining the impact of your work.

MAKE THE CONNECTIONS

Here’s what we’re up against. Our consumer is more barraged with messages than ever before, more empowered and more fickle. Our retail and trade customer has more control today, and we can count on him holding more of the cards over time. The brand he cares about most is his own. This is happening everywhere.

Brand marketers must find new ways to connect, to interrupt and to engage. Few things can replace a physical connection, and this is fundamentally why activation and experiential programs are becoming so much more critical in brand marketing today.

MAGNIFY THE BIG IDEA

Not long ago, marketing folks celebrated “integration” as the ultimate goal. If we could take a TV idea and replicate it out-of-home or in-store, that was a home run. Not anymore. Replication is redundancy. Consumers need and deserve more if we expect to hold their attention. And this thinking applies around the world.

It rarely makes sense to send the same exact program to every market and expect it to work. It’s not enough simply to ship translated adaptations. Instead, we should look for ways to magnify the idea so it’s particularly relevant at a local level. When we do this right, we get the consumer to engage and the trade to advocate for our brand.

Here is an example that demonstrates the power of magnifying a big idea.

We are all familiar with Dove’s award-winning Real Beauty Campaign and how it captivated millions with a simple brilliant film taken digitally around the world. It empowers women everywhere to appreciate who they are and their natural beauty.

The Dove campaign was supported with television, outdoor, print, etc. But certain markets magnified the idea locally in ways that made big impressions, had great local relevance and drove business further. In Tokyo, hundreds of Japanese women gathered near a rail station, all wearing blond wigs. Then, all at once, they tossed their wigs into the air to celebrate their own unique beauty. That’s a magnified idea that made a big impression. That’s an activation concept that can travel.

PROVE IT’S WORKING

When that global work is activated locally, do we have a handle on how it’s performing? Are we learning what works and what doesn’t? Or are we waiting for the quarterly numbers and once again crossing our fingers?

Advanced tools like OgilvyAction’s Last Mile Analytics exist today to provide a real-time line of sight to what’s truly happening at the point of sale. We can deliver data to a desk-top dashboard to help us instantly see issues and make adjustments on the run. And we can do this by country, by market and even at the individual store level. We can now measure POS effectiveness, shopper behavior and ROI like never before.

Brands typically still use a hodge-podge of local promotion agencies to handle retail activation. Many global brand marketers are saying it’s time to change. And many local marketers are ready to embrace what’s coming. But there’s a catch.

It has to drive local business. The work has to be smart, the idea has to be magnified and the cash register has to ring.

Rick Roth is global CEO of OgilvyAction. He can be reached at [email protected].