Here at Freedman, we’ve helped numerous companies with their global brand communications and marketing campaign planning, from conducting creative and cultural consultations, to managing the production and delivery of assets. Our ability to understand and interpret global brand communications for local audiences, wherever they might be in the world, has secured our success as a global creative production company. But what does a global creative production company do, and how can we help brands ensure their marketing messages make an impact on an international scale?
Why is a global creative production partner so important?
Naturally, when brands come up with a great idea, they want to share it with as many potential customers as possible. But taking an idea global requires more than just translating a tagline. Ensuring a global campaign resonates around the world means taking a custom approach to local markets.
Failing to take different markets into account can dramatically hinder a campaign’s success. That’s why Fitbit, the San Francisco-based fitness tracking and wearables company, came to us with their first global sports-inspired ad campaign. As a global creative production company, we were able to get involved and advise on different sporting trends across different markets, providing insights into various countries and their attitudes to sports and fitness. This included:
- France, where the focus is on keeping fit whilst enjoying a great lifestyle
- Italy, where the focus is on using fitness to look good
- Germany, where the focus is on measuring and tracking fitness
The key for Fitbit was to create content that actually tapped into each of these different types of behaviours.
Our consultation meant that we could flag any issues with potential legal implications. We were able to advise on certain rules and regulations that might affect Fitbit’s creative. For example, in France, you can’t show people running in the street and you can’t show an iPhone by the bedside of a child. Armed with this knowledge of global clearance processes, our team of cultural specialists were able to help Fitbit get their creative passed by the relevant local market clearance bodies.
Our global-first approach allowed Fitbit to successfully deliver their campaign worldwide, making the right impression on various local markets.
What are the key considerations of a global brand communications plan?
We believe that independent agencies are the natural home for global brands, thanks to their agile approach towards implementing global campaigns. At Freedman, a creative and cultural consultation always precedes any production, meaning that we can find out whether a brand’s big idea is going to work in key markets before it’s too late.
The cost of discovering problems later down the line can be great. If brands aren’t clear on what marketing content is needed for different markets, they might waste resources on generating inappropriate or irrelevant content. Likewise, if brands don’t understand each local market well, they might not be able to maximise on the similarities between markets, effectively wasting money and resources. Thanks to our large community of experts (with 100s of transcreation specialists, copywriters in 80+ markets and 7 global production studios), we can help brands escape these common problems.
A huge part of our success rests on our ability to look beyond a brand’s translation requirements, focusing on transcreation. Transcreation is a process where copy is not only translated but also localised by taking into account the cultural, political and social differences of each region. To do this, every word is interrogated by in-market, local language specialists to ensure that brands never miss the mark. As well as words, we also take into account images and sounds (such as voice over). Armed with our local understanding, the process of creating, testing, approving and validating campaign assets is streamlined – ensuring that the right message is received around the world.
We hope this brief look into getting the right message around the world was useful. Want to know more about what we do here at Freedman? Feel free to get in touch.