A recent article in Advertising Age entitled “MillerCoors thinks globally, but gets intimate locally,” contrasts the global strategies of SABMiller and A-B Inbev in marketing their global beer brands. SAB Miller believes, according to the article, that the key to winning the global beer battle is by pushing local brands and appealing to a home country’s customs, attitudes and traditions. Conversely, although A-B Inbev markets many of its local country brands with a similar strategy to SAB Miller, they will be introducing the Budweiser brand in new markets globally, hoping to duplicate the strategies of other successful global brands like Coca-Cola and MacDonald’s. However, unlike Coca-Cola and MacDonald’s, Budweiser faces marketing challenges which include a global no-growth beer market, requiring that share gains will be at the expense of other brands potentially including their own. In addition, they face at least two cultural risk challenges facing all global brands:

1.Local market creative adaptation

From a marketing perspective, the beer industry understands that advertising messages need to be adapted locally, even for a global brand. Coca-Cola and Macdonald’s learned the lesson the hard way having rolled out initially with homegrown advertising messages directly translated into the local language. It was only after a period of stagnant growth that these brands started creating locally produced advertising executions. Further, in the instance of MacDonald’s, menus changed to meet local tastes.    It should be noted that adaptation in and of itself is a limitation because a brand’s image and personality is formed in its home market, which may or may not translate well to other markets.  This can be further exacerbated as the home market marketing personnel, who are responsible for brand messaging, can continue to maintain a proprietary ownership of the message, and exert a parochial influence on local market personnel. To minimize these potential conflicts, a non-parochial overseer with global responsibility needs to be assigned.

2. The world is flat

What is communicated locally can be viewed globally. This presents a particular cultural risk to global brands wherein an advertising message created in one market designed for that market, may prove culturally sensitive in other markets.  This is not as much of an issue with a local brand, but when the brand is global, the message is seen as being endorsed by the brand globally. A number of global brands have experienced cultural backlash as advertising in one market, even behind a globally approved theme; have proven toxic in other markets when executed.  To guard against this, protocols for global executions need to be established and monitored.

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About the author

Jack Brown