How Can Brands Connect with and Reach a Global Audience? It’s All about Your Point of View.

As seen in Little Black Book Online

Charlotte Mulley, head of planning at MullenLowe explains how brands can connect and reach global audiences and how a point of view is vital.

When it comes to the creation of new and exciting brands, the drinks industry is world leading. Walk into your local supermarket today and there are countless craft beer, spirits and wine brands taking to the shelves and challenging the industry’s established giants.

As fast as some of these brands are growing, they can only scale so much in one market. Eventually they’ll begin eyeing up the growth opportunities further afield. You only have to look at the likes of British craft beer brand BrewDog, which has expanded across Australia, the US and Europe over the last few years, and in February announced plans to ramp up its business in China.

Transitioning from one market to a global audience is far from easy, in the drinks sector or otherwise. FMCG brands of all types often struggle to communicate the heritage and values they’ve established at home in a way that resonates across new cultures and geographies.

So how can brands get it right and drive the international growth they’re looking for?

Identify your universal values
Before you do anything, be clear about who you are and what you stand for and make sure you know your point of view in culture today. Always stay true to that, so the global brand you’re building remains consistent.

You also need to identify the audience who will be key to growing your brand in new markets. Maybe they’re customers of competitor brands, maybe they’re entirely new to the category. Whoever they are, getting on their radar will be critical in driving growth.

From there, you need to carve out a space for your brand among local and global competitors, drive your brand’s fame and embed it into the cultural conversation of your markets. For many brands, that’s where the major challenges begin.

Consumers are more demanding of brands than they ever have been. It’s no longer good enough to sell a good product or service; in the era of TikTok consumers expect brands to entertain them, while also having a positive impact on the world.

So to cut through, brands need to offer something new compared to their category competitors. This isn’t just about product superiority, but emotional superiority; brands need to have a point of view that connects with consumers in a more meaningful way than their rivals. It also needs to connect to their product, so the brand is authentic.

When going global, this means looking at what makes your brand different and compelling from the perspective of each market’s nuances, including any category subtleties, the brand maturity and any cultural differences in terms of attitudes and behaviour.

Ultimately, you need to have a point of view that resonates at a global level, but can still align with local nuances.

This is the same for all brands looking to go global, and in fact, laundry detergent brand Persil (a client of ours) is a great example of a brand that has got it right. Its revolutionary ‘Dirt is Good’ platform has transformed Persil into the number one fabric cleaning brand across the 80 countries it operates in, increasing the brand’s value from €250m to €4bn over 10 years.

That all started with a universal insight that stayed true across all of the brand’s geographies: that a child’s development will always be a mother’s first priority, not the detergent she uses. Based on this insight, the Global Ideas Community at MullenLowe developed a strategy which positioned Persil as the only detergent brand to embrace stains, establishing the brand’s point of view as being that stains are a vital part of children’s learning and development through play.

Not only did this positioning differentiate Persil from the many other detergent brands around the world, it also resonated emotionally with mothers, without neglecting to communicate the functionality of the product. But the real success came through our ability to tailor the platform for local markets and differing cultural norms.

Once you’ve got a point of view that works on a global and local level, it’s down to brilliant creative executions to engage audiences in each market.

Consistency is critical
Then, stay consistent. This is one area where brands frequently fall down – it’s hard to navigate when you have different markets with different needs holding the marketing budgets. But do not underestimate the power of consistency. Long-term memory structures are built up over time through memorable creative and consistent use of distinctive brand assets, whether it’s a swoosh, a character or a colour. Be selective, so everything you do builds on the story of what your brand stands for.

Again, look at Persil. The brand has continued with the Dirt is Good platform for 20 years despite it being a period of rapid change, and its growth has only continued. It’s gained €828m in value over the last three years alone, and the campaign has been awarded over 10 effectiveness awards, including Gold in Best Sustained Success at the APAC Effie Awards and nine Cannes Lions.

Of course, consumers and cultures do shift and so maintaining consumer interest in your brand will require continually iterating to keep its point of view relevant, whether that’s relevant to the broader societal context or to its audience’s passions and interests.

But it’s still important not to forget what your brand stands for. Stay true to that, and the growth will follow. A clear point of view and multi-market consistency has been key to both BrewDog and Persil’s global successes. This approach can be applied successfully by all types of FMCG brands, regardless of whether they sit in the innovative drinks sector or a more static category. So, what’s your point of view?