Welcome to the very first Ask SPRING podcast. It’s your go-to source for marketing, production, news, insights, and opinions. And I’m Jack, uh, head of content at SPRING Production, uh, and your host. Uh, in today’s episode, I’m joined by Austen Donnellan, uh, our business di development director here at SPRING Production.
And together we’re gonna explore the intricacies of adapting global marketing campaigns and exploring the strategies needed for ensuring a more efficient. More cost effective adaption process. Austen.
Hi. Um, yeah, I’m Austen. I’m, uh,
…business development director in the UK. Um, and you know. The reason why this topic is, is particularly pertinent is because whilst within the world of creative production, there’s all sorts of, of challenges and opportunities. I think one of the most, or one of the biggest recurring ones is always around how clients, our clients adapt their global campaigns to be most relevant for. Local markets and there’s, there, there really is a tension often within those in terms of how you know, well they can be developed and, and, and delivered. And I think it’s a really valid topic to explore in a little bit more detail on our screen today.
Absolutely, and I, I think it’s really important to kind of understand from the outset that brands aren’t just international, you know, they’re intercultural. Every market holds its own set of values, traditions, customer behaviors. And I think that’s where the, the kind of the modern marketer’s dilemma really sits.
Like how do you create campaigns that are globally consistent but also locally relevant? And I think in my time at SPRING production Austen, I dunno if you felt found the same. I’ve observed a really kinda distinct trend that clients are always searching for that sweet swap sweet spot between global consistency and local relevance.
Um, they’re trying to find that perfect art of adaption, fine tuning content to hit the right notes with local audiences, or while ensuring their campaigns, messaging plays harmoniously wherever it’s seen or heard. As many of our clients can probably attest, you know, simplifying the adaptions and ensuring market relevancy, it’s not an easy task.
You know, how do you ensure the right setup? What, what processes are needed for maximum efficiency? How do you manage localizing campaign messages without losing impact? What does it take to make them future-proofed? Like how do you even do that? And I think today, Austen, you know, we’d like to explore some of those topics, uh, and we’ll share some of our kind of insights and experiences from working in marketing production.
Um, and yeah, we’ll, we’ll see how we go. So let’s dive in. I think.
Sure.
Um, so yeah, I mean, Austen, the, the first kind of question that’s coming to my mind is how do you balance the need for customisation in local markets? You know, there’s always a goal of maintaining consistent brand identity globally, but how does customisation play into that, do you think?
Well, I mean, first of all, I mean the longstanding sort of challenge between sort of. Local marketing. It, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a subject that’s been around for, for decades to, to be honest. Um, but to get the balance right always relies on ensuring that there’s some key processes are in place through the creative and production process.
Now, that can be. The obvious things like understanding cultural nuances and cultural differences by market. Having well-defined, but also flexible brand guidelines is key. The idea of having, you know, modular master templates that can flex across the markets, you know, the idea of investing in localized content creation are all, are all key parts and that can, that can cover everything from language transcreation to. Region specific imagery, culturally appropriate messaging. These are all givens and that is also supported by one of the key points, which we’ll we’ll go onto in a bit more detail, I’m sure is around having, you know, the right sort of measures in place. Um, you know, the analytics are there to allow. The stakeholders to make informed decisions, you know, whether it’s on, you know, media customisation and also allow, allow, you know, have a channel to allow internal, um, you know, and audience feedback through the process to, to inform changes and, and, you know, allow you to optimize and learn as as you develop because you know, it’s always a key part of it. But I think also it’s worth stating as well that, you know, adding into this setup, um, is also about creating the right. Sort of roles and responsibilities. So particularly with a lot of companies where you may have a central marketing function and then you may have local individuals or teams, you know, delivering marketing on the on, on, on the ground as it were. It’s really important to sort of, it get the best of both perspectives, you know, locally relevant content and campaigns, but ensuring that the core sort of, you know, missions of the brand and the values remain consistent. They’re absolutely key. And then, you know, put all of those things together and you’ll have what in, you know, many ways people would regard as the right mix of inputs to make the customisation work for each market, whilst also maintaining that consistent brand identity. But, and there is a, but. We often find that, you know, this above approach can quickly become quite complex, and this is where the real tension, which will become quite a theme of this particular discussion. The tension exists because it can become very contra complex for clients, suppliers, customers, and finding that right balance between global and local needs can actually benefit from having a different start point.
So we’ve outlined all of those different areas above, but. Think about it in a different way, and if you do, you almost have to reframe the balance between global and local needs in a different light. You know, that standard approach we’ve talked about will produce the required marketing assets, but it won’t necessarily unlock and achieve the marketing potential. And that’s where this becomes really important and interesting. You have to look at the balance between global and local in a more strategic way, namely that, you know, global marketing is there to grow the brand via an emotive and. You know, longer term campaign that presents a consistent brand message, you know, and a face that works for all markets.
But this is then supported by what we’re talking about, more tactical market activations that are often shorter term. They’re often more direct. They’re often more there to grow revenue in a specific market that they serve. So you find that the reality is that in the modern. Marketing landscape to achieve that growth and that which is that holy grail every marketing department in the world over is, is, is looking for. You need to have both of the above in place, that combination of a sort of brand-led global campaign, but supported by a local adapted activation to deliver the revenue in, in a surefire way to sort of win. So if you start from that point of view, you’re gonna get the balance right. Then all the other factors start to come into play, and that’s the fundamental message about, you know, global marketing and local adaptation customisation is. Reframe the question in terms of what each of them is trying to deliver, and then as you get into that process, it will become complex, but you’ll find it a lot easier to navigate your way through to get to that end result.
Just I, I’m biased Austen as a, as a copywriter by trade. Um, but whenever I often do work for large clients, I’m always kind of struck by marketing manager managers asking me when I write a headline or whether when I write sort of some master copy in English. They will often come back with feedback where they talk about can you simplify the, the message, uh, in a way that is easily translated or adapted, uh, for other markets.
Um, do you think that languages themselves, uh, play into the, the kinda complexity, uh, of, of adaption? And how do you think that that can, uh, can, uh, pose challenges to, to brands?
It absolutely can. Um, I guess taking each of those parts of your question, in turn, I see the same as well that, you know, marketing managers, they’re always looking to try and find very simple headlines, thinking that that would be easy to translate. world doesn’t work like that. The world doesn’t have, you know, certain languages. I won’t name them. I mean, German’s an obvious one, but sometimes you find that there’s a lot more words and letters involved in the headline or the copy than you would in say English or Spanish. Similarly, you know, so the idea of starting with a, a short, simple headline may seem like the right approach, but it doesn’t always work out like that. I guess it always comes back to that key point around, well, what is the brand actually trying to say and start from that perspective. And it’s okay to sometimes dabble in the sort of the, the more creative or the more complex or something that’s more distinctive and differentiating. There’s obviously some very simple headlines can be. You know, easy to potentially understand, but actually you don’t remember them, and that’s often part of the battle, and then it takes you into other territories. And the other territories can, can, you know, include things such as, you know, the use of, well-known phrases or, or idioms, you know, and, and vernacular.
And that’s where, you know, years ago we used to talk about translation, but very few of us talk about translations these days. We talk about transcreation, we talk about the idea of, well, what’s the most culturally relevant way to say that, you know, and we’ll, we’ll put some examples in, you know, during the course of this, this conversation where we can show how, you know, a certain phrase in, in English will then be having, has to be adapted and changed to, you know, to have the same meaning but using completely different sets of words for Japanese or for German or for, you know, another language.
And, you know, it’s, it’s always one of those situations whereby we you need to be able to understand and listen to what stakeholders are saying, but having the, the strength and the determination to find the right course through, that’s gonna get to that required output for, for the brand and for the communication. But you know, without overly complicating it along the way, that’s often one of the key things that we’re always looking for when, particularly around headlines and language. I think that’s absolutely key.
Yeah. Well that leads me on quite nicely to my next question, really. So when it comes to delivering, adaptions, uh, of campaigns across local markets. What does it actually take to make it work? Really work.
Um, simple question, complex answer. Um, but it all starts at the beginning, you know, whether it’s the relationship with your production team or a partner. It often starts at that sort of initial, what we call the onboarding stages. And, you know, when we’re looking at onboarding and working with clients, whether it’s their global teams or their local teams, it’s, it’s vital to ensure everybody is involved. Um, you know, whether it’s regional, local marketing teams with global or headquarters, this can then instill that clarity on the roles and responsibilities for each team, and it avoids those sort of painful and often sort of costly disagreements that can fall into the process further down the line, or at worse, , produce badly adapted and underperforming campaigns.
’cause that’s the last thing anybody wants when you know, particularly you’re looking at the returns and the, and the value for every single dollar. And, and, you know, that’s spent on, on a campaign so. That onboarding process, when it’s well-defined and comprehensive, it will set the tone for the relationship and it does have a large bearing on how the work will perform and for ourselves at SPRING Production.
I mean, you know, onboarding has been a massive part of what we’ve done and I you know, emphasized from, from the very beginning of the business because, you know, we needed to have a robust and involved process and, you know, whilst it’s tailored for, for each sort of client that we work with, based on what they specifically need, it will typically involve a couple of key elements.
The first one is, I. That sense, you know, of alignment. You know, what is the scope of work, what are the processes, what are the workflows? How is the work being briefed? How are we auditing the existing assets to ensure they’re fit for purpose? You know, what are the reporting and communication lines, quality control processes and so on. So that’s the sort of first part of it. And then for us. Particularly when we’re thinking about adaptation campaigns, it’s always to think about, you know, how can we learn the best way to implement this without too much risk for the client. Now we usually start with a pilot project. You know, it’s a quick way to sort of understand what the blockers are, what the showstoppers are. It can also allow us to showcase some skills and sort of identify gains so we can learn a lot quickly, and then that can feed into bigger campaigns further down the line. And then as we move forwards, all of those learnings and those processes start to feed into how we’re actually gonna run the work. Setting up the production team based on, you know, the commitments and needs. You know, how are we gonna liaise with each other? What’s the view that will allow us to sort of review things quickly and make course corrections? Are all of those different. Processes get put into place. So that’s the first big area that we always look at in order to make it work. And I guess the second big area, which will be familiar to a lot of people as well, is, you know, as well as having a sound process for the work to be adapted. The other requirement to make it work is really having that content production, you know, planning, you know, involved earlier on in the stages. So typically like any process for a campaign or piece of content, there’ll be a strategic. Process, there’ll be a creative process. Then finally, it’s given to the production side of things to produce. That’s fundamentally an issue because often in the position that we’re in at the production, the creative production end of the market. Is we get, you know, provided with various assets, but they just won’t work when we’re trying to adapt them. They will not be able to have the flexibility that they need to both be, you know, customized for specific markets, be that on imagery, texts, messaging, whatever it may be. And keep the sort of core brand messages in the same point. So we always push as hard as we can to be, you know, considered early on.
And when the creatives or the strategic thinking and the creative processes taking place to think about how this could be adapted across six markets, 16 markets, 60 markets, whatever it may be. ’cause without that in place early on, it fundamentally will only create problems further down the line when you come to sort of roll and get out. So I guess they’re the sort of two big areas that we sort of look at when we’re thinking about how we actually make this work on a very much day-to-day basis.
I think Austen, like just hearing you talk about all these different kind of moving parts, it feels to me there’s, it’s, it’s extremely complex. Um, there is, there are any number of variable factors that can contribute towards making or breaking a production process or a partnership. So in all of those kind of like points that you’ve outlined, what is like the most difficult aspect of like, getting that mix right from the start?
📍 From our perspective is getting the clients to agree to it in the first place. So when we look at things like process and onboarding and we talk about. Having these elements in place, or being involved in these particular stages of the strategical creative process, that’s usually quite a big jump for a lot of clients in the sense that it, they don’t always understand or realize why we are asking to be involved in those sort of things, you know? Particularly also if, if a client is looking to bring in a new set of supply, the onboarding process is a massive risk for them because it’s where, you know, they effectively can become exposed within their organization. Um, they’ve, you know, run a process of, you know, whatever nature they’ve looked at a number of different suppliers.
Then they brought in a, a new supplier to work with the company to help make this all work. Client is then mostly anxious about is what does that mean for us? How can we overcome some of the challenges we have within our own business to make the onboarding process work seamlessly? And that’s where at SPRING Production, we’re really experienced at that because we see those. Those anxieties, those fears, those, you know, oh my God, how’s this all gonna work? When I start to introduce these people to my colleagues and my, you know, departments and my local marketing teams, how is it all gonna work? So from our perspective, it’s always around how can we give this as much of a robust process as possible so everybody can see why we want to do it like this, and why it works.
Now every wave. Every onboarding plan we put together is always tailored. It’s always bespoke. It’s always slightly different because all companies are different, no matter how much, you know, they may say they’re not, but they often usually are in terms of the setup, you know, the, the sort of markets that they’re in and, and the types of marketing that they do.
So every planning is bespoke, but it’s having that robust plan in place at the start will just basically put everybody at ease a little bit more and say, okay, this, well-defined process will help us get to where we need to get to. It
may take a little bit longer, but it’ll be worth it now ’cause we’re only gonna be saving money further down the line.
Yeah. And do you think as well that a lot of, I guess, brands, they may see production as this kind of add-on that gets kind of like just slotted in at the end of a, of a creative process. Um, and do you think that has pro causes problems for, for brands? I.
It absolutely does. You know, when you look at the, the, the sort of the, the spectrum of the, sort of the creative process, there’s obviously a lot of energy and a lot of value goes into the strategic, the conceptual creative. But, and we can put some examples, you know, through this particular deck and, and, and share afterwards as well.
But much of the craft and the real energy or the differentiation comes at the production side of things where the value can be added. So it’s, it can’t just be seen as. The last part of the chain that needs to be what’s done quickly and efficiently and cheaply to get us out the door. You can’t always think of it in those terms. Yes, that is often an overriding concern. Timelines get compressed. The launch date never changes, and all of a sudden. You know, there’s an awful lot of work that needs to be customized and adapted across the globe, and it puts massive pressure on production partners to get it done right. But with more thinking, more planning, and usually more time, it starts to then add value at each step because, you know, a nice strategic document and PowerPoint, some nice black and white visuals that are presented to the, to the board or to the, the head of marketing that get approved. Don’t do anything.
They only start to work when they’re actually live in the field. When they’re live in market, that’s where you’re gonna make the difference. So you have to start thinking about the production side of things as equally as valid as the strategic, , as the creative side of it,, as the design and the development part of it as well. When you start to think about it in those terms, you’ll find that the work starts to get better.
But does take a mind shift from a lot of a lot of organizations to understand that.
And what do you think is the reason that, that their mindset isn’t there right now, Austen, why, why do you think that they’re still maybe stuck in a a different mindset?
Um, it depends who you ask and the different, the reasons will be different. It often comes down to time. It often comes down to the fact that it’s seen as just the final part of the jigsaw.
Um, it’s often down to the fact that it just seems to be that it has the least amount of time to be delivered, therefore. By definition, it becomes something that is, less prioritized. Um, it could be for any number of reasons, um, why that, why that does happen. But in our experience, it’s it’s often where the real gains can be made, where the real I. Points of difference or the, the, that final, few percentage points of marginal gains to use a, well, a well used phrase in marketing can be really applied to actually , make or break the difference between work that’s just good or work that could be great. That’s
thing for me.
And I think that all those things you’ve outlined are actually quite practical things. They’re all things that are very actionable. Things that can be actually done , whenever is whenever necessary. So let’s say you have all those points in place and you’ve done an amazing job of putting them all together and aligning them all.
And what would you say are the kind of things that people should look out for or watch out for to overcome those kind of practical issues and make sure that their production performs and actually improves over time?
Yeah, this is the classic part of it, isn’t it? You can, you can talk about general principles and approaches and how you should look at doing things, but actually a lot of this boils down to, well, what are those key ingredients that you need in place to start to make your adaptation and your customisation work really, really become more and more effective?
So, you know, the things that we often have and make sure we have in place are, that sense of a single source truth, for a lot of our clients as well as our colleagues, the idea of wading through countless emails. WhatsApp teams messages, looking for files and rounds of amends and comments and is such a massive burn of time now, having a, single digital asset management system.
I. They’ve been around for quite a while, probably over 30 years. They’ve, they’ve been in the marketplace. The idea of having a central sort of repository, which has got, all the details of the projects, the latest, versions of the artwork, the sort of historical timeline , of the amends and the approval so that there’s clear transparency for all. You can see how, much money’s being spent. So you can track budgets on there and you can also give it the facility now to, to have plugins. So, we often have. Brands who are using sort of existing systems that we can quite easily plug into with our sort of digital asset management, which we can then need to use to apply some of the right solutions that they need.
So, the world that we live in of open APIs as well, tech platforms need to be able to talk to each other. That’s a really key part of all of this is the idea that whatever. However the assets are being managed, having the ability to add certain things to it, to allow it to work and perform better for everybody is absolutely key.
And from our perspective, we’re always very sort of tech agnostic when it comes to, to this kind of stuff, but it’s all about making sure we have the sort of the best possible solution to sort of match the client, requirements. And then on top of that, increasingly when we talk about things like open APIs and plugins, it’s content and sort of media engines that can often serve multiple markets.
So being able to share master assets in the planning stages to sort of ensure they’re viable for the sort of required channels, for where the campaigns need to run. I mean, they’re, absolutely sort of key points that are really vital to have in place. And then when we look at. You know, parts of that whole sort of way that the work is delivered. One of the biggest topics is around, how do you incorporate automation? how do you bring in automation to the production process to save money, save time, get through often tens, if not hundreds of thousands of assets as sometimes can be the case for some of our clients and get them into a position whereby, we can get a lot of the work done quickly and efficiently. But, and this is always the, but, and this is one of the key, the second key point really about how we deliver this is you need to balance that technology, that automation with that sort of human creativity as well. a lot of campaigns can have their content, adapted and versioned,
In an automated way to, to save time and, and money, as we’ve said. And this can often, be good for much simpler work and simpler adaptations and use of language or imagery or messaging. Now that’s all fine, but it’s only really good for when you’re looking at volume. You still need that human eye, that human need creativity to look at. the more complex things to take account of specific learnings they’ve had specific, , insights and factors and more nuanced or complex content. , From our perspective, we always like to have both process. So we have automation as well as the human creativity side of it. So that campaign can then, , produce a lot of volume assets, but also has that process in place to be a bit more bespoke when required.
I, I think when it comes to automation it’s such a, a huge topic at the moment, and we could go down a rabbit hole talking about, uh, AI all day. I think it always comes back to the, the same issue and that it’s not a magic bullet. It’s, it’s a tool that you can use to enhance time, timeframes, improve efficiency, improve costs, and I think that there’s a lot of people at the moment that feel that. AI is gonna just completely revolutionise the way they work. And ultimately it’s all about kind of small incremental changes. And when it comes to adaptions in particular, it can do a huge amount of the legwork in terms of actually translating content, imagery, messages, whatever else into a specific template.
But there still needs to be that creative behind it all that is orchestrating it, that is checking it, quality, checking it, and ensuring that all those messages are mixed and matched. Right. That they, they work for the audience because I think that the first kind of output that it will give you, you’re gonna spend at least five hours reviewing it, trying to make sure that it works.
I’ve been there myself, you know, so yeah. I.
Yeah, and I think, it’s obviously a very, it’s very fashion at the moment, AI and generative AI and how it’s impacting across every industry and every sector from not just marketing, but all sorts of different areas. But if we look about, if we look at production just for a second, ’cause that’s really the point about what we’re really here today to, to discuss, , AI. As you’ve said, as we’ve both said, is, is useful to really be able to get through a lot of work, quickly to, to start to produce assets. But again, it’s about looking at it in a slightly different way. We talk about the world of creative production. A lot of the way that the AI trained adaptation tools work is that the language can become very generic, very low is common denominator. The imagery can also become very generic and very stock if you like. And whilst you can pre-program a lot of that in, what you can also lose in that process is that idea of distinctiveness differentiation. Don’t just think about the outputs that the, the brand or the business are, are putting into the campaign or the content piece. Think about what the impact’s gonna have on the audience,
and that is where you have to get the balance right. You have to have both sides of things. Looking at it from. Not just a simplification and an automation point of view, but thinking about it from a creative point of view as well, is this piece of content or this campaign gonna actually have the desired impact?
And, response that we want it to.
I think that goes back to something you mentioned earlier, actually, Austen, where you were mentioning about this kind of, you have a core grab brand kind of message that sits above everything and then you have this kind of more local, culturally relevant messages. And I think that, that kind of core brand message is not a one size fits all message that can work across markets, and you need to have those kind of like adaptions that work in those markets.
So how do you think that kind of AI and automation , can feed into that really? Or do you think there still needs to be that creative that human insight that is still kind of like. Slicing open the, the brand message and pulling out something that is, is relevant to each market.
Well, to, paraphrase a colleague, a quote, one of my colleagues always uses and she knows who she is. It depends, it really does depend on what the particular brand is looking to do. It’s a topic that is very easy and it could take up any number of different podcasts than this particular one. The punchline I’m getting to is that you have to understand how both of them work side by side. Automation often driven by AI is really helpful to produce a lot of stuff, but you always, you can’t forget that. is still a creative process.
There still a craft to it. You still need to have the ability and the processes in place to review a lot of the work to make sure that it is fit for purpose. That’s always the headline that we come back to on this kind of stuff,
because that’s what is gonna help generate the most impact from the work , as it goes live.
I guess , when you mentioned those kind of like the processes if, a brand were to decide to revamp their production processes. How do deal with legacy processes?
Yeah, I mean, this is part of, again, going back to the topic we talked about in onboarding a little bit earlier. Well, it’s often about, , effort from all of the stakeholders to change the mindset about how they go about. Adaptation work. , the classic model is that you’ll have a, HQ or central marketing function, and then you’ll have different marketplaces or different sectors that they’re operating in with either individuals or teams or with their own different setups or. Well, yeah, very decentralised is the point that they’ve got different ways of working. They have different, , agency relationships in each of their marketplace. They’ll have, sometimes they’ll be creating their own, , country specific content that goes against often what the head office are trying to do. I mean, these are very common legacy issues that we see. Time and again with clients just because as our business has grown and it’s expanded, it’s gone into new marketplaces and they’ve just gone on with getting stuff done. think, a lot of the time some of these need to be unpicked. I. Because they have different setups, they have different feedback loops, they have very complex, decentralised process, and we’ll put some assets on the screen as well, so you can start to get a sense of what a typical one can look like.
But , for us, a more optimized setup for adaptation and customisation, is a simpler one with a centralised approach that allows for the the needs of the different markets to be managed and delivered. But it also gives that single point of contact for all of the stakeholders across the organization. There’s an a central sort of coordination approach, can act as the brand police as well. A lot of our clients use that exact phrase when they talk to us. It’s like, we’re distributing our marketing into, 60 markets in 30 languages. You know, we can’t possibly keep track on all of that. We need, another set of eyes and ears of our, , within our organization who are able to monitor , and track and, and ensure that, certain no-nos about the brand on, slipping through the net.
So these are, really important . Giving the local marketing teams that, facility to, to liaise with a team who can then speak with headquarters and, you know, work out what the best way to move forward is. Just saves an awful lot of time and money, uh, rather than back and forth.
So that’s, I suppose, the sort of third key element of what we’re.
It sounds to me like, the kind of, the issue when it comes to legacy processes is like having silos. There doesn’t seem to be much kind of communication going on between those kind of processes. And that’s where those kind of, there’s inconsistencies in the brand execution kind of occur because there’s not some kind of centralised, overview.
There’s nobody there. Like you say, there’s no brand police giving them the kind of the. The the signal say, no, no, don’t do this. Yes, do this. And what are the kind of benefits do you think that people get from having that more centralised approach?
The obvious things, it can save time, it can save money, it can speed up the creative and production process. We talk to the clients all the time and some of the biggest pressures that they face is around requirement to have always on content and that their lead times and their ability to react to changes in the marketplace, , are measured now in, well not months, but in weeks and days.
Only a few years ago marketing plans would’ve been. Produced in the sort of autumn, reviewed, refined, and then, they would’ve gone out to the marketplace in the new calendar year and, and implemented their sort of marketing plan on that, that world disappeared a long time ago. You know, given the proliferation of channels, given the dynamics of a market, the headwinds that a lot of them are facing, whether it’s economically and other factors as well, means that fear average sort of marketing. Manager and and senior marketing executive, they’re always in a position where they’re having to react a lot quickly, a lot more quickly, sorry, to changes in the marketplace.
So those lead times of years ago where you would have months and a year to implement plans don’t exist.
Having a much more centralised model will allow that to happen much more quickly. It will also, and it takes time by the way, it doesn’t happen straight away. It often can take quite a few years for everybody to really get the benefits from it. But the other big part of it. And the other big advantage for a lot of clients with that centralised model is going back to what we talked about at the start. When you look at the ingredients for any customisation and adaptation program, we can list out all of the key things that you need to have in place.
The idea of, you know, the sort of input from each other market places, the understanding of the different nuances, but that point that we made around understanding the difference between global and local, and one is brand and one is activation. They can do slightly different things and it, they don’t have to be matching luggage and that’s okay. When you start to get into that mindset, you are re redefining the role that each of them plays. One is about long term, values, brand awareness metrics. The other is often more about shorter term revenue generation. The centralised model that we’re showing on the screen as well, that we’ve just shown on the screen will. Help facilitate that much more readily because everyone can then start to see how they’re part of the pie, they’re part of the business can really sort of benefit. And that that point about benefit really leads on a, I guess to the last sort of area that we really put a lot of effort into that. We’ll help make adaptation and customisation much more successful in the longer term. And that’s , impact and effectiveness can only be measured by data. We can all sit here and talk about what we liked and what we didn’t like, but it’s irrelevant. You have to go on data, having those KPIs dialed into the process, , from the beginning is key. Now they can change, whatever the benchmarks are or whatever the targets are, they are likely to change. But you have to start somewhere. You have to think about what are those sort of key list of KPIs that you need to be measuring, and that’s, you know. Thinking from our perspective about, how long and how much did it take to adapt and customize the content.
So you put a marker down to say, well, this is how long it took and this is what we produced, and therefore, you know how you can improve, how many rounds of event events, sorry, did we have to go through to, to get the work approved? You know, what were the total number of assets produced?
For each market by media type, how much customized assets were produced, what was the performance of each of those, content and how did it fare in each market, ? And that’s where you really need to have the media side of it. So again, thinking about what we talked about earlier with the strategic and the creative approach. It’s having the media side of it as well as well. I mean, we sit here and we know that more and more assets are being done digitally and socially compared to say, more traditional channels, television, but there’s still some markets where, , outdoor is a massive. Player in the market. But if you’ve got a HQ marketing lead talking about digital and social assets, but someone in a local market is saying, well, that’s fine, but most of our, media mix is dominated by outdoor for argument’s sake, then you’ve got a tension This is the tensions that we’re talking here, and that has to be resolved. And that’s why you need to understand, how many different assets you’re producing and what types of media. Time to market from briefing to execution. Absolutely key. How many people are involved to produce the assets.
From our perspective, we’re always thinking about, well, how can we get the work out with the minimum number of people? Because , people equals time and time equals money. So how can we reduce that? Brand tracking. We talk about this interpolation between, the brand and the sort of local market, , the sort of brand and , the tactical needs.
Well, brand awareness has to be, , tracked in, in various different ways. And then also you have to have sales
and market share uplifts by market, , and then you’ve got the more qualitative measures as well. Which assets are worth producing in certain markets or not to sort of arrive at that core level of material.
So that’s just a very quick run through of some of the, the key sort of metrics and data that you need to have in place. But that, I guess, is the sort of fourth big pillar that we would look to see in any plan that’s gonna help improve it over time.
Awesome. So I, I think that if there were three core takeaways from this whole session, Austen,
what would it be?
Trying to boil it down to three things, but absolutely true. There’s often a tension between global and local marketing, that’s just the reality of life and. People will say that it doesn’t really exist, but we know that there’ll always be points of difference.
Not, negative, but they just see things in a slightly different way to how, another market may see it. And that’s just human nature. So use that tension to reframe how best adaptation, how to make adaptation relevant. By understanding that role that each has to play. So that’s back to that point of don’t just think about, well, we want it like this, and you want it like that. Think about what’s the role that each side of it can play between global and local. That’s the first one. Second point, I guess, getting adaptation right requires careful planning, from how your local teams are onboarded to planning it in as early as possible in the creative and the media process. Think about how can this be planned in sooner rather than left to the sort of last stage or indeed the last resort.
And then thirdly, use the building blocks that we talked about to manage, deliver, , and measure adaptation. From how it’s managed efficiently.
And we talked about, things like, digital asset management, how you can use automation in the right way alongside human creativity, how you can start to overcome legacy sort of ways of working. But in and finally incorporating measures and KPIs and data from the start. That’s the sort of the key bit that’s gonna help anyone in the longer term deliver. Adaptation in a much more, not just efficient way and optimized way, but an effective way that’s actually gonna make a difference to their bottom line. That’s the three things that we can really summarize from all this.
And I think that if I were a client and I listened back to this podcast and I listened to all the things we’ve talked about, I would of course, first of all find them very useful. However, I would be thinking that this is extremely complicated. There are any number of moving parts, a number of different factors and variables that go into creating an a, an effective process when it.
would you take that fear away from a potential client looking to move into adaptions with a production partner?
We share how we’ve done it for other clients. Every solution will be different depending on who we’re talking to. But we’ve got enough experience over 27, 28 years now actually within SPRING Production to understand what is gonna make, what is the most relevant way to look at this? What have we learned from doing this with other clients, and how can we use that and adapt that and make it work for you? That’s a very simple answer to that by showing you how done it with us.
And I think with that I would be very, very happy. So I think that probably concludes our podcast for today
and I’ve been Jack and that’s been Austen. And uh, we’ll see you all very soon for another episode. very much for tuning in.
Cheers. Thank you.
Bye-Bye.
