Expanding your brand through globalization or localization is a significant undertaking, but one that can propel your business. Imagine applying a single strategy and brand identity to distribute it in several regions internationally.
“Global branding provides companies with compelling economies of scale in everything from research and development to marketing to operations,” says Harvard Business School Professor Jill Avery, who teaches the online course Creating Brand Value.
Despite its benefits, global branding isn’t as simple as it seems and requires extensive consideration and planning. Before exploring how to implement global branding as part of your business strategy, here’s a deeper dive into what it is.
What Is Global Branding?
Global branding is when your product or service has a shared brand identity system—such as a consistent name, logo, aesthetic, and messaging—established in most or all parts of the world. What often varies is your marketing strategy’s execution, which you must tailor to fit local preferences and differences.
Some multinational brands aren’t exclusive to one country or region—they may operate in multiple areas but not have global brands’ international saturation. Unlike global brands’ uniformity, they may also vary in their identities and strategic positions. Both global and multinational brands must compete with local brands exclusive to one market or region.
Related: Tune in to this bonus episode of The Parlor Room podcast for more of Professor Avery’s thoughts on branding.
Global branding offers compelling international marketing benefits—particularly for brands already thriving in a region, such as U.S. beer-maker Budweiser, featured in Creating Brand Value. As detailed in the course, Budweiser wasn’t marketed and imported to over 80 countries until it had a proven sales track record throughout the United States.
Brian Perkins, president of Western Europe and CEO of Budweiser Brewing Group United Kingdom and Ireland, explains that its parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), is the biggest beer company in the world. With over 500 global trademarks in beer, that’s a lot to manage and market.
“The big value unlock for us that we’ve been pursuing is global brands,” Perkins says. “There’s a huge and disproportionate focus on the brands that work everywhere. And for us, that means Budweiser, that means Corona, and that means Stella Artois. These are brands that cross borders, that we sell in every country, with the same visual identity, the same brand positioning, and the same creative assets and tools that we use to distribute and sell these brands.”
A globalized brand strategy means you must standardize your customer value proposition, brand identity, and narrative, which entails identifying what’s universal among your audience and catering to those insights.
Benefits of Global Branding
If you want to capitalize on globalizing your brand, here are its most significant benefits.
Centralization
Centrally managing your business strategy—from research to marketing to operations—is a huge benefit. You can not only streamline your company but agilely respond to industry changes.
To centralize successfully, focus on what’s universal to your consumers rather than culturally specific attributes. The less you need to customize, the more you can centralize operations. A decentralized brand is highly customized—or localized—to each market.
Cost and Efficiency
There are inherent savings with a single brand strategy, even if it’s marketed differently across regions. Creating one strategy, consistent products, and brand identity and supporting them using the same software everywhere can save resources.
“The gains are asset efficiency,” Perkins says in Creating Brand Value. “You can sponsor the FIFA World Cup. You can make one TV commercial. You can have one visual brand identity for the packaging worldwide.”
Brand Recognition
When your brand reaches a certain level of recognition in one or more countries, it can be easier to establish it in new ones and educate and sell consumers on it—especially if it has a positive brand image.
Conversely, preconceived notions about your brand can support or detract from its equity. It’s essential to account for cultural branding to appropriately market in a new territory—even if your brand already has local awareness—to tap into preferences and anxieties and project a narrative that resonates.
Benefits to Consumers
Consumer perceptions can trend positively for global brands—such as the notion that they have higher, more consistent quality or access to broader communities—making them feel more cultured than if they purchased a local option.
Take chocolate in the United States, for example. It has an uphill battle to be considered premium, which often entails using hard-to-find ingredients, unique packaging, and fair-trade status. In comparison, chocolate imported from Belgium might be perceived as premium and command a higher price.
Choosing to Globalize or Localize (or Glocalize)
Globalizing your brand can be difficult; what works in one market may not in another.
Creating Brand Value explores the challenges Budweiser faced when expanding globally. While the brand’s narrative changed over the years—from “The King of Beers” to “This Bud’s for You” to the “Whassuuuuup?!” campaign—it doubled down on cultural branding in America by identifying with male fraternity and maintaining an affordable price point.
“When you make commercials about Clydesdale horses and hard-working brewery guys in dungarees with big beards sweeping out the inside of the brewing tank, this is perceived in America as rugged, authentic, hard work,” Perkins says. “Work hard, play hard. Work, reward. These are good things to communicate for an authentic everyday beer.”
When going international, its brand identity wouldn’t play in markets like China, which emphasized beautiful packaging and premium brand identity.
“Outside of the U.S., they read as low brow, not sexy, not interesting, and not aspirational,” Perkins says.
Experimenting with aluminum bottles was one shift Budweiser made to appeal to new consumers in China, enabling it to differentiate from other offerings and sell beer at a premium price. In short: The change helped to elevate the brand.
After many local branding decisions, Budweiser was somewhere between global and local, or “glocalized.” While glocalization allows for tailoring brand marketing to different regions, it can be tricky to juggle various cultural identities—especially when seeping into neighboring markets. Ultimately, Budweiser had to determine whether it would be a global brand or if cultural differences were too great a factor, in which case it could be localized.
You must decide how centralized or decentralized your brand should be. Many factors are at play depending on its industry and region, and those help dictate whether globalizing makes sense.
How to Implement a Global Branding Strategy: 4 Steps
Once you’ve decided a global branding strategy is the way to go, the brand-building opportunities can be exciting. But first, you must assess your brand’s health to launch from a place of strength in your home market. You should also ensure your brand strategies build rather than weaken its equity.
1. Develop a Clear Brand Vision
With brand vision, consider your strategy around your brand portfolio. How many is the right number? Do you clearly define and differentiate each brand’s role? Do the brands support one another, or is there a chance of competition?
In Creating Brand Value, Avery discusses the importance of brand architecture and building a strong portfolio.
“We want to make every brand in the portfolio as strong as possible—to stand on its own with resonance,” Avery says. “But we also want to knit those brands together into a portfolio that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”
Set yourself up for success by clarifying your brand’s goals and customer value proposition. Research your target audience and worldwide demographic, and assess where you can serve common customer needs.
Related: Listen to Professor Avery discuss how to build a winning brand portfolio on The Parlor Room podcast, or watch the episode on YouTube.
2. Standardize
If conditions lend themselves to standardization, it’s a good sign that implementing a global strategy may benefit your brand.
Consider customer needs, the competitive environments you’re entering, economic conditions, and retail platforms. Will your brand succeed globally with a uniform strategy? If local cultures require heavy adaptation to market your brand, it may signal that globalization isn’t the best approach.
3. Centralize Your Brand Platform
Standardization correlates with centralization. To reap a unified strategy’s rewards, you must take your clear, standardized brand vision and activate it through a well-managed platform.
Consider coffee brand Starbucks: Its branding is consistent regardless of country. Its offerings may differ, but it has a familiar visual identity. Centralized operations make such reach possible.
You can decentralize your marketing activations for each region—as there are benefits to localized marketing tactics—but you must streamline your global strategy and its foundational elements to grow.
4. Global Consistency with Local Relevance
As the saying goes: “Think globally but act locally.” Your strategy may be global, but an expert who knows their region’s language and culture will likely be better at rolling out an effective local marketing plan. How much personalization you need regionally depends on your brand and its target consumers.
For example, the restaurant chain McDonald’s is a highly recognized global brand with deep community ties that Creating Brand Value features.
“Even though we’re around the globe, when you go into your local restaurant, and it’s owned by somebody in that community that lives in that community, and you know that they understand you from your culture and your perspective, it’s very powerful,” says Amy Murray, former vice president of global marketing at the company, in the course. “So, McDonald’s is able to be hyperlocal and hyper-global at the exact same time. And I feel like that is one of our biggest competitive advantages.”
Murray explains that offering a consistent, culturally tailored experience helps the brand stay relevant against local competitors.
“At McDonald’s, wherever you go in the world, you know that you’re going to be able to get a Big Mac and french fries,” Murray says. “But every market is different. And so, we’ve given a lot of flexibility. For example, the vegetarian meals that are in India and in Japan: They actually found that they didn’t have a big dinner business because rice is so important for dinner in Japan. So, Japan created a rice burger, and that really helped their dinner occasion grow because they were providing rice in a burger form.”
Explore Effective Global Branding Strategies
Global branding offers many benefits. If you want to implement a successful strategy with a clear brand vision, take a deeper dive into learning about global branding, brand storytelling, consumer-brand relationships, and brand valuation.
One way to do so is by enrolling in an online course, such as Creating Brand Value, that can teach you how to position your brand in the market. Beyond industry experts’ insights, Creating Brand Value includes case studies centered on high-profile global brands, including:
- Marriott and Sheraton: Consider how Marriott and Sheraton differed after Marriott acquired Starwood hotels.
- Lego: Learn about brand health’s importance and the risks associated with making changes to a brand through the lens of Lego.
- Dove: Learn how Dove repositioned its brand with its Campaign for Real Beauty.
Are you interested in taking a brand value course? Explore Creating Brand Value—one of our online marketing courses—and download our interactive online learning success guide to discover online programs’ benefits and how to prepare for one.
