This is an excerpt of the full article by Sharon Johnson,  CEO of RE:PURPOSE and Kate CoxManaging Partner – Strategy at Havas Media, published in the Brand Quarterly & Brand2Global ‘Global Marketing’ Special Edition.


Brand Quarterly Global Marketing Special Edition

Today’s marketing leaders are incentivized to seek the economies of globalized branding strategies. Global unity requires compromise, collaboration and a type of participative decision making that seems to run counter to marketing to the always-on ‘consumer’, driving an insatiable need for marketing with speed, authenticity and scale.

Whilst many global consumer companies have decentralized marketing accountabilities, the pressure on marketing spend, the proliferation of digital channels and the organic spread of content creates the perfect conditions to unify the central premise: the brand Purpose. Here are three incredibly simple, yet fundamentally large shifts to help global brands to win in local markets.

1. Offer People Radical, Game-Changing Benefits To Their Quality Of Life.

People don’t just want better products and services: they want better lives. Havas Media has conducted a companion study to the UN Global Compact-Accenture authoritative CEO study on sustainability. We surveyed 30,000 people across 20 countries.

In emerging markets – where most global brands are seeking substantial growth – people are optimistic about the future, they anticipate marked improvement to their quality of life and they’re highly engaged with brands. In developed markets – where global brands seek to sustain a large part of their sales – people are largely negative in their outlook for the future and anticipate negative impacts on their quality of life.

Whether optimistic or negative, people globally expect brands to help them attain the best possible future. In fact, globally people think brands are as responsible as governments for improving our lives – a metric that has increased by 15% in the past 2 years alone. Yet our study showed that whilst brands are performing broadly on traditional factors of price, quality and being ‘innovative’, marketers are under-performing in driving home 6 of the top 10 factors people nominated as influential to their purchasing.

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You can read the full article online at BrandQuarterly.com as an individual website article or check out this and much more great content in the Brand Quarterly & Brand2Global ‘Global Marketing’ Special Edition.