Connecting in the digitally globalized landscape

As a CMO, marketer or brand leader, do you feel that you’re truly connecting with your potential consumers? No? Then A Little Bird has a solution. We’ve created ‘Applied Strategy’ to meet these needs; a tool for building communication that delivers global consistency and local connection.

Digital and mobile are having massive influence on the communication landscape. Connections are faster, content more prolific and campaigns instantly accessible. While marketing choices have become increasingly complex and data driven, human connection hasn’t, it’s just dropped down the marketing priority list. Our Applied Strategy approach seeks to address this.

While campaigns have become global, the majority of people are not global citizens. They’re local citizens exploring their geographically limited world through mobile.

Regardless of the ability to deliver ubiquitous communications, it is cultural influence and locally relevant connection that really deliver impact. A Little Bird’s Applied Strategy approach, meets this challenge.

To manage this intricate landscape, you need to understand consumers, interpret their behaviour, gather insight on how they engage with their world and plan how to harness it. This is how we deliver effective brand engagement and commercial advantage.

It’s not an argument against investment in global reach, digital and mobile; the opposite. Applied Strategy encourages global planning and locally considered investment. It is informed by leveraging the principles of habit, lifestyle and desire to distil global assets and local insights into actionable campaigns and execution. Through it we deliver consistency, local relevance and a more effective marketing spend.

We believe that one of the biggest challenges facing marketers is the inevitable disconnect created by homogeneous global communications. After all is it truly possible to effectively take a single big idea through four stages of consumer connection?

Applied strategy: global, local, peer group, personal

Using the ‘applied strategy’ approach, we create campaigns that are hard-wired for flexibility and adaptability through a five step approach:

1. INTERPRETATION

Find the ‘special’ and keep it Avoid global campaigns becoming a commodity by defining the value proposition and establishing what makes them uniquely resonate with consumers and stand out in the world.

2. LOCALISATION

Define global communities and create them locally Define central assets within a framework that allows for localisation while maintaining global consistency.

3. TARGETING

Understand people to drive connection Apply an understanding of how consumers connect to brands through human and cultural behaviour. Use this to define how ideas and content are shared across tribes and geographies.

4. EXPERIENCE

Define the consumer experience baseline to deliver on the bottom line Consumers might be local, but they’re still hyper-connected. Establish a seamless customer experience across every channel to ensure consistency.

5. ACCOUNTABILITY

Shared measurement metrics, set up front Clearly define the expectations of campaigns differentiating between ‘Brand’ and ‘Activation’. Measurement should report overall performance on a centralised scorecard for shared accountability.

If you’re responsible for a global brand, how are you delivering cross market consistency and fully meeting your global and local communication needs? If the answer is not as well as you should be, then your challenge sounds familiar to us.