Glocality – The Quality of being Glocal*
Global Brands Made Locally Relevant
Unn Villius, Sibylle Eibl, Vistatec
Global Marketing
Global marketing needs to resonate with local audiences. Powerful messages in one language do not simply translate into another. Marketing content that appeals to people’s emotional responses requires more than translation – transcreation and local language copywriting.
Transcreation
Global Positioning – Local Relevance.
Transcreation is a localization methodology that preserves the intention of your message and protects the global positioning of your brand while giving brand communication local relevance across cultures. Transcreation is conceptually true to its source, but deviates from the text structure, sentence segmentation, word choices, layout and design. Creative marketing assets such as taglines, SEO keywords and Meta descriptions are best transcreated.
A telling example is a campaign by Intel in Brazil: the original English “Sponsors of Tomorrow” was rendered as “In love with tomorrow”. The transcreated message stayed true to the values expressed in the original and played on Brazilians’ openness to adapt new high-tech products and technologies. Had the tagline been translated directly into Portuguese, it would have implied that the brand had not yet delivered on its promises*
In transcreation special attention is paid to cultural, social, ethnic and political considerations to deliver the intended impact. Transcreation ensures local relevance of marketing communications, maximizes return on globalization investment and promotes your global brand.
Copywriting
Global Engagement – Local Authenticity.
Copywriting is a powerful tool to create unique and hyperlocal content for targeted customer engagement. In-market copywriting transforms your creative strategy and content briefs into content that creates compelling and relatable experiences for local target audiences.
Copywriting creates original content that speaks to your regional buyer personas. Following the creative strategy and brand guidelines, in-market copywriting incorporates local knowledge, trends and insights to create hyper-local content for maximum engagement.
Marketing Assets
Marketing assets that need to be uniquely market-specific to promote your brand, products or services, are best created as original copy. Take the example of promoting a social media platform as a marketing tool in different countries and regions by sharing local success stories. Imagine that a local business in the north of Sweden has come up with a compelling recipe for mass-producing fermented herring, which has been marketed to great success on social media. How the regional customer base was enticed to buy this particular variety of canned fish is unlikely to resonate outside the specific market.
In Switzerland, you would need to write up a different local success story. Other content examples for copywriting include brand and product names, slogans, or blog articles. Targeted copywriting enables you to communicate with your customers hyper-locally and positions your brand as involved in the local community.
* The quality of being glocal. www.slator.com, “Mastering the art of transcreation” by Ruth Wyatt. September 16, 2015