GLOBAL BRANDING consensus development process, including multimarket analysis, strategic assessment, positioning, branding, tactics, and a sharing of best practices. All communication starts with a core positioning statement.This statement may lead to a core selling message, but, in and of itself, a positioning statement is not copy; it’s a vision for the brand. While it’s necessary to conduct market research to help determine a product’s position, it should not be the final deter mination.Testing an aspirational statement with physicians who are, by nature, very literal doesn’t always provide the best results. Global marketers should conduct market research by testing a copy strategy or brand promise.This is what the target audience will actually see in brand communication.This is what we want them to react to. When conducting research, global marketers must avoid settling on the lowest common denominator, or what works best across all markets.The core team must strive for the highest common denominator and develop what’s best for all markets while maintaining the integrity of the brand. The branding process should continue after launch. Too often, corporate headquarters will move global marketing managers to other projects after a launch, the budgets allocated for agency creative rapidly decrease, and local affil iates start to develop their own materials with little regard for the global brand. Management needs to monitor the global brand postlaunch to ensure continu ity across markets.The core marketing team must continue to meet and share best practices, and the agency team must work with their affiliates to continue to monitor the brand to assess if and when the core campaign should evolve. If you truly believe in branding, you have to believe in global branding. When properly developed and executed, global branding can do magical things.To be successful, it requires adherence to a core idea, built on a con sistent worldwide creative workplan, resulting in a consistent brand identity. Building consensus and maintaining consistency are keys to success in glob al branding. I f, in practical terms, a brand can be said to consist of attributes, associations, and identifiers, then a global or international brand is one for which these attributes, associations, and identifiers are clearly and consistently presented to target customers, regardless of their geographic location. Several manu facturers have adopted global branding as part of their standard operating procedures, while most agencies have attempted to showcase their global branding talents as an integral part of their capabilities. In pharmaceutical marketing, there are a few successful cases of true global branding, whereas most attempts fall short. Global campaigns are usually developed by corporate headquarters, then dis seminated to various market affiliates in expensive brand binders. Too often, the binder sits on a shelf, never to see the light of day. The need for global branding stems from a variety of factors. If done properly, a global campaign can create cost savings both corporately and among local com pany affiliates. For most corporations, that should be reason enough to move for ward. But there are other reasons why global branding has become so important to the pharma industry. Primary among these is that the pharma industry operates in short timeframes. By creating strong brands that are marketed globally, pharma ceutical marketers offer a consistent message to physicians around the world, there by avoiding conflicting and confusing messages.A strong and lasting brand can sup port a product’s position even after it has lost patent protection.The timeframe in which we work doesn’t allow for mixed messages.The rise of the Internet, where physicians interact across borders in real time, and the fact that physicians travel rou tinely to international congresses and meetings, provide additional support for a consistent global message. Despite protests from naysayers, globalization is here to stay. We may have national and cultural differences, but we are — whether we like it or not — increas ingly part of the global market.You don’t have to like globalization, but you do have to live and work with it.The pharma industry is not exempt from this. Contrary to popular belief, global branding is not simply about developing a core ad campaign and sales aid. It is not about creating copy that is exactly the same regionally or using the same exact graphic images across markets.Too often, this becomes a common trap faced by even the most seasoned globalmarketing managers and their agencies. Global branding is bigger — it’s a strategic process that must be implemented by corporate management and adopted by regional marketing managers. This strategic process should include a creative agency that has an experienced team of global brand man agers with a history of multinational launch experience, open lines of communication, and a crosscultural approach to the business.The agency must provide a battletested consen SUDLER &HENNESSEY is a global healthcare communications network with 28 offices in 11 countries. For more information, visit www.sudler.com. Massimo Vergnano President Sudler & Hennessey, Europe, Middle East, Africa Larry Lannino Executive VP Sudler & Hennessey, NewYork David McLean Chairman Sudler & Hennessey, Asia/Pacific, Australia Practical Dos and Don’ts in Global Branding Sudler & Hennessey Don’t Let Global Branding Be Global Blanding DO involve representatives from local market affiliates at the start of the globalbranding process DO NOT provide a forum for chaos in which everyone can claim “that won’t work in my market” DO build a brand consensus based on shared information, experience, and common sense, using a creative work plan as a basis for discussion DO NOT fall into the trap of “lowest commondenominator communica tions” in which everyone can agree, but which no one actively supports DO use market research for information on marketplace realities DO NOT believe or rely on presentations that claim to quantify nonquantifiable variables (i.e., love) DO recreate the essence of the campaign across markets DO NOT simply translate and adapt local market campaigns and attempt to enforce global implementation DO take a multidisciplinary, multichannel communications approach and understand the cultures and histories of your core markets DO NOT confuse global branding with global advertising, which is currently practiced in healthcare, and is often so bland that it fails to be engaging and is, as a result, completely ineffective DO get the help of a communications agency experienced in the development of integrated, multidisciplinary global branding and brand communications campaigns DO NOT allow the creative work to become the surrogate battleground for disputes about underlying brand strategy
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Don't Let Global Branding Be Global Blanding
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