How Do You Maximize the Value of Global Branding?

An Ask the Expert feature with The CementBloc

It took many years for the pharmaceutical industry to fully embrace global branding. Marketers believed that healthcare, more than anything else, is local. But now as The CementBloc has shown, that information flows freely across borders and audiences via the Internet, even healthcare has gone global.

“We know that our clients value the senior attention that they get at smaller agencies. So we restructured recently to continue to grow our organization horizontally rather than vertically”

Large, international networks banked on the notion that “big pharma” needed big networks to pull off global branding. They invested heavily in building a “bricks and mortar” presence worldwide assuming that clients needed boots on the ground in every market to effectively implement global branding. It turns out that there is a wide range of needs when it comes to global branding, so we’ve turned this global paradox on its head.

The CementBloc has been working on global branding assignments for 8 years. The needs of the global brand development team are very different from the needs of the major markets which are different from the needs of secondary or tertiary markets. Our job is to help our clients fully maximize the promise and the value of global branding. We work closely with our Indigenus network to deliver value across the brand chain.

First, we assemble global teams early on. We enlist our Indigenus partners to fully vet the promotional and creative strategies and to participate in concept development. How does this add value? It minimizes the “not invented here syndrome” and maximizes the universality of the communications. Brand teams no longer worry whether ideas will “play” in key markets because our Indigenus partners have “green lighted” them. Local markets no longer shake their heads over concepts that don’t resonate.

Global teams feel they lose control over their brand once the brand kit is delivered. Major markets need to expand beyond the core materials and this is where global brand consistency is at greatest risk. The Indigenus teams, however, have an ownership stake in the campaigns they are now implementing locally so interpretation and consistency are no longer problematic.

Structured growth

Our model has proved successful and has fueled rapid growth for our agency. We’ve seen uncontrolled growth derail other agencies, and we did not want to fall victim to our own success. We know that our clients value the senior attention that they get at smaller agencies. So we restructured recently to continue to grow our organization horizontally rather than vertically.

The CementBloc now consists of three agencies focused on healthcare professionals (The CementWorks, The IronWorks, and The StoneWorks) and one agency focused on patients (The CementBond). The partners and senior executives of each agency provide closer supervision of their teams and are heavily involved with clients on a daily basis. We freed them from managerial headaches by centralizing shared services such as project management, graphic and editorial services, HR, IT, etc, under The CementBloc. And this has inspired yet another value innovation for our global clients.

Our recently formed Global Resource Center provides an effective and efficient solution to secondary and tertiary markets that rely on global brand kits to drive their promotional platforms. We customize core materials to meet local needs, ensure culturally sensitive translation, modify graphics, and deliver print-ready files to local vendors. And we do this more economically than a local “bricks and mortar” agency could. That creates value not only for the smaller markets but also for the global team because we can ensure that consistency of branding hallmarks and messaging is maintained worldwide.

Finally, we build a global brand repository for every brand. Email alerts let marketers know when new materials are posted, and these materials are shared in real time to maximize the impact of innovative thinking while minimizing the time and resources to distribute them globally.

We may not be the biggest agency, and Indigenus is certainly not the biggest network, but we think big and we challenge the status quo. And that’s exactly what most global clients are looking for.