Thinking Global, Staying Local: Priorities for Global Campaign Planning

Sophie Morson | SVP Strategy, Precision AQ International

You've run the pitch. 

Two of the agencies rocked.

The team you picked are smart, invested, and energetic. All you’ve got to do now is onboard them, and they’ll work with you to elegantly deliver a global campaign that shifts the needle around the world.

You will have one powerful global brand identity and proposition that HCPs will connect with on a deep and familiar level to drive rapid adoption. Your marketing budgets will be optimised, and your local markets will deliver so much more for less.

Or not.

What we often see instead is a reluctance from local markets to adopt global campaigns and materials,
disengagement between the global and local marketers, and global campaign assets that never see the light of day.

Where does it all go wrong?

While a consistent global strategy is key, a one-size-fits-all approach must be challenged—fortunately, that doesn’t mean that crafting the right strategy is challenging. 

The secret lies in doing the groundwork first.

Often, a campaign is designed for the United States,  then handed to a local team in another country who are instructed to make it work. And they do, to a degree. They translate it. They make it compliant with local regulatory standards. They may even change some of the imagery. But the campaign doesn’t have the impact that it did in the US, and everyone is frustrated.

 

Better upfront planning could have changed everything.

Start by Identifying the True Priority Regions

As the global team, you may be tasked with serving every single market. But that doesn’t mean you should invest equally in all of the world’s 195 countries—or provide every market with every single asset. You need to pinpoint the opportunities. Which regions provide the biggest commercial opportunity?

We were once working on a rare disease gene therapy at a global level and noticed how vastly different local commercial budgets were across markets. We asked the client how those budgets had originally been set, and how often the budget ratio between markets was reviewed. We were brushed off, with a jokey ‘don’t ask difficult questions’. We persisted and eventually were given approval to delve into the details. What we uncovered shocked everyone.

Resources were certainly not optimised. Sales targets were not appropriate. Huge opportunity was left untapped. The US had by far the biggest budgets, yet 90% of US patients were already on therapy or in trials, so for them, retention should have been the focus. Conversely, Portugal had less than 2% of appropriate patients on therapy—and over 30 times the US patient population living with this rare genetic disease.

It was a complex landscape, but by analysing published data and local marketers’ intelligence, we identified clear opportunity and new areas of focus to drive rapid brand growth.

You may decide that your targets are the US, Europe, and Asia. Yet, within each of these unique regions lie vast differences. Europe alone is a collection of 44 individual markets, each with their own populations, access requirements, healthcare systems, regulatory guidelines, cultures, languages, and etiquette. Be clear on exactly who you are catering for, before you start thinking about how best to serve them.

Provocative as it may seem, it’s also possible that a global campaign is not the best approach. Even if 90%
of your revenue will come from the US, why ignore the other 10% of your opportunity? Consider whether a
US/international split could be the most effective approach—or even if the global team should provide insights, strategic foundations, and analytics frameworks, but leave the regions to execute separate campaigns that are appropriate to their local markets.

Partner With Your Local Peers

If no one asks you what you want or need, then sends you resources that have been developed without your input, aren’t appropriate for your customers, aren’t linked to key deliverables in your local plan, and will require effort to localise, how likely would you be to use them?

Although decisions might be being made at the global level, the regional or country commercial leads are your customers; their situation needs to be heard, understood, and supported.

Build Truly Modular Content

Every agency says they create modular content. But do they?

Recently, a newly hired strategist who had come from a large network agency told me how they had had an epiphany moment. They had always created global campaigns that included modular assets. Then one day, they realised that modular assets are not the same thing as modular content.

A modular asset would be something like a ‘plug-and-play’ email series which a local market could use or not. Modular content would be individual elements that can be swapped to make a campaign as easily usable as possible by as many countries as possible. For example, if only 30% of your markets are able to include claims rooted in data that are only published as a poster, and not in a peer-reviewed article, keep that content discrete versus weaving it throughout your materials.

When mapping your content, also consider local communication channel preferences—the same specialists may get information from completely different channels in, for example, France and Germany, so don’t waste time and money creating global tactics that won’t be used or noticed.

A word about complexity: Large markets are often blessed with large commercial and sales teams, who are busy months (and even years) before launch building customer relationships and shaping the market. But in smaller markets, a single, newly appointed commercial country lead and a lone sales rep may be trying to cover 6 markets across a region. By creating critical items in a variety of formats—e.g., a high-production-value MOA video and a simple MOA infographic—you can be sure that each territory has the assets it can deploy most effectively. 

Ensure That Big Thinking Underpins Every Aspect of Your Campaign

In short: When working on a global campaign, you can’t just do the big thinking, pass it along, and hope it will work. It won’t. In fact, the real ‘big thinkingʼ starts with understanding the full scope of the market challenge.

▶ Dig into local country and regional differences—from regulatory and legal stipulations, to healthcare systems, to language and culture and even channel preference

▶ Ensure that your global positioning is robust enough to work in all of your markets. Building levels of flexibility into your positioning can help you achieve this, even when you have different indications or competitors in different markets

▶ Engage with local markets early on, considering their needs when the global strategy is being developed, as opposed to simply consulting when it comes to local delivery

Based on those deep insights, design a campaign rooted in achieving behavioural change, while being flexible enough to work in a variety of access or competitive situations. A truly global campaign creates a brand connection that stretches far beyond a single image, experience, or interaction. It may look a bit different around the world, but it is still recognisable—and it still inspires reassuringly similar feelings, no matter what that tactic is or where it is deployed.

And remember, your job doesn’t end at campaign launch; leverage robust analytics reporting to inform ongoing local and global campaign optimisation.

Ready to try? Then buckle up—we are right by your side.

At Precision AQ, we understand how to think globally and deliver locally. With 15 office locations around the world and 100+ brand launches under our belt, we pride ourselves on our global strategic expertise, rooted in inclusivity and market insights. Get in touch to find out more about our successes in this area and how we can help advance your global marketing.

Contact Steeve.Lamontagne@precisionaq.com or visit precisionaq.com/en-gb.