Ready for Global Advertising Research?

It's no secret that globalization is a powerful trend: major marketers are either moving rapidly in that direction or have been established globally and refining their practices for years. If opportunities exist to extend your brand globally, then there may be potential to leverage the brand's creative in other countries too, creating economies and benefiting brand equity. It follows then that opportunities to leverage your advertising research across markets with coordinated multinational studies also exist.

Coalescing the combined insight and creativity of your company, such that that you use a strong idea from one country effectively in another country, yields tremendous cost savings. But is your brand ready for global advertising research? Consider the following:

• How similar are the consumer needs between countries?
• Is your product used in a similar manner in these countries?
• How does the marketing context differ? Competitors, local regulations, brand history?
• Can you be sure that a strong advertising idea from one country will work in another country? Do symbols and images work in the same way?
• Does the product fit into consumers' lives in the same way? (For shaving razors maybe, but for salsa perhaps you should have a closer look.)

Also, think about how you use information, or how you would like others in your company to use information. Advertising research plays an important role in decisions affecting local advertising and media strategy, as well as commercial development and production. Often the information essential to decision-making in one country can inform your efforts behind the same or a similar brand in another country or countries.

Often exporting your creative means fine-tuning your global offering to the local market, requiring that your research partner has the flexibility and experience to support both your global and regional efforts. Thus to assess your advertising globally requires research not only suited to your local country needs (and budgets) but also comparable across countries.

If you operate in a matrix-like organization that seeks to utilize information at multiple levels (or if that is your objective), you should be sure that your research partner understands your needs and can provide the kind of support you require when and where you need it.

• Seek a partner that understands your needs and can adapt its organization to fulfill your requirements. No two companies are organized quite the same, so your service needs certainly have unique dimensions.
• Look for the kind of experience necessary to ensure that your partner will help you understand results as a coherent story that incorporates the key insights from the study.
• Find a firm that can efficiently share knowledge within its organization and yours in support of your strategic needs. How good are they at conveying information and ideas to the key teams or people that need it?
• Seek a partner with a demonstrated ability to execute a uniform approach to your studies and maintain quality in your key markets so that results can be examined across countries with total confidence.

A successful global advertising research partnership helps you capitalize on the global opportunities to build brands for the long term while driving sales today, achieving both objectives in a cost efficient way. Is your brand ready to go global?