Global brands need to promote themselves in different markets and sometimes the same campaign that’s translated in every language they need to address audiences seems like a great idea. But good translations – when good means you use the correct equivalent in a given language – is not enough to effectively communicate brand values, a campaign’s quirky message or a product’s benefits.

The next step to render a campaign local and to make it work for a certain culture is to adapt it. Translate, then adapt. It’s a two step process, but the latter seems to be forgotten way too often. Sometimes it’s budgetary constraints, sometimes it’s because people think it would sound cool and trendy, other times it’s just because people lack the experience of localizing global campaigns. Continue reading

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Guest blogging is one of the best ways to get a blog or website known and target new audiences, we all agree with that. Welcoming guest posters is also a great way to provide fresh content to your readers and target the crowds the invited author already appealed to. By analyzing these two sides of the guest blogging scene, you can easily tell this is a win-win promotion practice.

No wonder it has spread throughout the blogosphere and it has created a need for the proper tools! A while back I wrote about the launch of My Blog Guest, a place where guest posters and blog owners could meet, connect and see how they could help each other out. It looked promising and I decided to try out Ann Smarty’s project and see for myself how it worked. Continue reading

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If you want to create any kind of marketing literature, from personalized emails to brochures and flyers with samples attached to it, you must have a target in mind. That target is the public segment you want to address. That group of people needs to be properly selected and the message you want to convey needs to be build around their set of ideas, principles, likes and/or dislikes.

Now that you have your targeted audience and the envelopes you want to send out are ready, you need some contact details of real people matching the image of your prospect customer. Now, if you’re product is rather expensive and you want to select middle and top managers from local companies, that sounds like a great idea. But make sure they fit your initial profile! Having the money to buy your product is not enough

Let me introduce you to the real-life failure example that triggered this post. Vichy thought to send out samples of its newest products to all women managers in Bucharest (or maybe in other cities as well). So I got one of their nice envelops with nicely printed brochures and samples of a new foundation and cream. All nice up to now.

And the weird part kicks in: I AM 26!!! I really don’t need samples of a very effective anti-wrinkle product. Really! I might be worried about preventing wrinkles and fighting some small ones annoying me, but really, seeing the photo of a 50 something woman who’s in their main target won’t help make my mind about purchasing Vichy products! I’ll just think you’re not paying enough attention to what you’re doing or that those in your MK team handling this project suck. Or that you’ve selected a cheap subcontractor to get the contact details and that shows. If Vichy’s really, really lucky, I might give the samples to my mom. Then again, I might not.

The bottom line here: keep your audience in mind throughout every step of your marketing action. Just thinking of a great concept and writing the texts to suit your target won’t do much if you then get lost on the way and the message gets to someone who’s not even close to your intended public.

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