Companies who practice Standardization achieve brand consistency and economies of scale since all products, social media, marketing communications, etc., are the same. These marketers treat global markets as if they are homogeneous. It is a much simpler way to manage marketing efforts but not necessarily an effective way. Conversely, Localization considers the diversity of international markets and treats each market as having unique behaviors and values due to their culture and surroundings. Companies who practice Localization consider local preferences and adapt their marketing to meet local needs. This is known as an Adaptation Strategy. This strategy is more costly and more complicated to manage but can result in much higher sales, brand effectiveness and market adoption. To see both of these strategies in practice, let’s look at the global company, Johnson Health Tech.

Johnson Health Tech (JHT), is a top global fitness and wellness company based in Taiwan with over $1 billion in sales. Its Global Marketing team is based in the USA (its largest market). The Global Marketing team consists of marketing managers, product managers, industrial designers, website developers and a creative group. All marketing materials for their 33 wholly-owned Strategic Business Units (SBUs) around the world are generated by the Global Marketing team.

JHT is over 45 years old and began as a manufacturer of fitness equipment for other, established brands (Schwinn, Tunturi, Ivanko, etc.). Over the years, JHT began establishing its own fitness brands and opened or acquired SBUs in key markets for growth across Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Because most of the SBUs had been long-standing, successful distributors, they had their own marketing teams and their own way of representing the JHT brands for many years within their markets.

Once acquired, the SBUs were expected to manage their own JHT-branded websites and handle their own translations. The SBUs, however, found it challenging to manage the required website updates for JHT’s 500+ products, and the tone and timing of their translations were not consistent. To get everyone aligned, the Global Marketing team created and managed a new global website platform, handled all translations from a single agency and started with a Standardization strategy, creating assets with content, messaging and imagery that resonated in their market (USA) and then pushed it out to the global SBUs to modify. It was the easiest way to ensure the branding was consistent, and it required the least expense—the same videos, models, products, etc., for everyone.

Over the years, as the SBUs learned the proper ways to represent the brands and were fully onboard with the strategy, it became clear what things needed to be adapted and localized in key markets. The JHT Global Marketing team then moved to an Adaptation Strategy.

JHT’s Move From Standardization to Localization

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When a company adopts an Adaptation Strategy, it must consider the differences between the domestic and target markets’ culture, values and language. As such, translation becomes a major factor. JHT started with a simple, standardized translation strategy—a single agency translated the same copy for all markets, based mainly on the needs of the USA team. When they realized that a transcreation strategy needed to be adopted, they took a hard look at the translation company with which they were working.

There are hundreds of translation agencies out there, all promising the same thing. They offer a mix of machine translation and live translators across many countries with robust translation databases. They always claim to have experience within the relevant industry and give examples of competitors who have had success with them. Yet my observation has been that their staffs move from one company to another and, while they preach the importance of style guides and local glossaries, few of them make it easy to truly execute. JHT found that they simply needed a competent translation agency, whose goal is to continuously improve and has the latest tools and technology to support their customers as their needs change and grow. Once they found a true translation partner, with an engaged account manager and timely, thorough service, there was no need to look further.

Once JHT had the right partner—one that could help them properly tackle the nuances of a transcreation strategy—they needed to look at their internal structure. To truly be successful, they needed a person on the Global Marketing team designated to managing the translations of the various print and digital assets (console strings, owner’s manuals, assembly diagrams, websites), and the SBUs needed someone dedicated to timely review of the assets. It is never just a matter of accuracy; tone is also of great importance, particularly when the audience changes from B2B to B2C. Ideally, each SBU hires an agency to localize content, and their staff person simply reviews it to ensure accuracy, tone and branding are acceptable. Global Marketing must keep track of trademarks, product names and campaign taglines that never get translated and those that only get translated in certain countries. Technical documents sound different than consumer-facing materials and almost always require a different translator. There is a lot to manage if your organization is large, so the following Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) steps cannot be skipped at JHT:

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At one point in the transcreation process, the JHT Global Marketing team relied on the local SBUs to translate and localize all materials. Most would use a staff person who had other priorities, so translations were not provided by stated due dates, and Global Marketing suddenly found themselves managing website content in nearly 30 languages with content coming in at different times. And, oftentimes, website content would need to change before the original content was ever translated and supplied by SBUs. To complicate things further, should the SBU staff person leave JHT, a new person would take over and use a different tone or inconsistent use of words across the same media. The experience was not ideal in terms of branding or resource management.

To improve the timeliness and consistency of the JHT transcreation process, Global Marketing always pushes translations through their main agency first. This allows SBUs to review the marketing content already in their local language and in the desired tone before tweaking things for accuracy and before rewriting content to suit their local market. They are also given the original English content for context, ensuring the correct points are being conveyed. Most teams also use local agencies now to add local content, ensuring the brand guidelines are met and tone is intact. This speeds things up, keeps things consistent, and allows SBU marketing teams to focus on their core job duties. Global Marketing also created a suite of support materials for the SBUs and translation agency (referenced in the SOP 1.8.1), including:

• “Do not translate” lists – these lists were created with each SBU to indicate which taglines, headlines, trademarks, etc., should always remain in English.
• Product glossary – a live, joint glossary via Google Sheets contains product features and specification information by language, capturing how SBUs translate or choose to write about various product features and content.
• Staging and live website links – when website content needs to be localized, Global Marketing provides the SBUs with a direct link to the pages so that they can see the translations in context.
• Brand guides – there is a guide for each JHT product brand that explains the appropriate voice and tone across all customer-facing assets.
• Web glossary – before each major website project, the glossary is updated with terms that may be confusing to translators and local SBUs and definitions are provided.

JHT’s shift to transcreation certainly contributed to the company’s ability to exceed $1 billion in sales in recent years. The improvement in localized, accurate and timely translated content has increased dramatically, resulting in more customer loyalty and greater brand recognition.  In summary, the keys to transcreation success are:

• Forming a relationship with an agency that is a true translation partner.
• Dedicating resources at HQ/Global Marketing and each local SBU.
• Creating and enforcing a translation/transcreation SOP.
• Creating and actively maintaining the necessary support materials, including local glossaries, “do not translate” lists and brand guidelines.
• Increasing communication with local SBUs and the translation agency.

Adopting an Adaptation Strategy and having a robust transcreation plan must become part of the entire Global Marketing team’s culture in order to be effective. The product, marketing and training managers, creative group, web team, SBU staff and translation agency must be aligned to ensure consistent branding, copy and tone are used, digital assets are modified quickly with local content, and projects are audited for continuous improvement. It’s no easy task, but the results are worth it!

ADDENDUM, SEPTEMBER 14, 2024:

It should be noted that, at the time this paper was written, generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT3 had not been actively used. It would be remiss to submit a paper on transcreation without at least mentioning AI. While translation agencies are actively exploring how to best use the technology in their tools, JHT uses AI only to help form content ideas and speed up reviews. It is still not reliable for applying the correct tone or writing accurate brand or product content across languages. As such, our approach has not yet changed.

This paper was originally written in December 2022.

Christa’s comments on the Global Branding & Marketing Certification:

Dr. Nitish Singh covers a breadth of important and relevant topics in his Global Branding & Marketing certification course. Starting with the Basics to ensure students of all experience levels have a good foundation, he moves through the many facets of marketing across varying cultures and consumer groups. He does a great job of breaking down the complexities by using current business examples and keeps things engaging.