4 key takeaways
- Global campaigns need more than translation. Marketing localisation and transcreation adapt global ideas to local languages, cultures and audiences without losing the original intent.
- Poor localisation can come at a significant cost. Unused global assets, ineffective campaigns and missed local-market opportunities can all impact ROI, retention and loyalty.
- Local insight should happen early. Involving local-market experts during campaign development can prevent costly changes later.
- The future is human + AI. AI can bring greater speed and scale to localisation, but human creativity, cultural understanding and brand expertise remain critical to producing work that genuinely resonates.
Introduction
Global marketing is a beast. Marketing teams are running an engine, at speed, with endless redirections along the route. One flagship campaign will land in multiple countries which means multiple languages (challenge 1). That campaign then needs to be optimised for multiple channels e.g. social media, TV, SEO, events, email (challenge 2) and multiple formats e.g. short-form and long-form video, static image, infographics, blogs (challenge 3).
This is why global marketing teams are spending more time adapting campaigns than ever before, and why marketing localisation and transcreation is one of the biggest marketing challenges brands face today.
It’s a pretty staggering fact that 90% of global campaign toolkits are never activated by local markets, research by CreativeX found. Alongside this, nearly half of core global assets go unused, often getting lost in the transition between production and media or between global and local teams.
At leap, our main focus is bringing the marketing strategy and campaigns for global brands to market. We’ve been doing it for nearly 40 years, so understand the challenges global teams face when it comes to delivering global campaigns on a local level.
Within this article, we’ll explore what marketing localisation is, the hidden costs of poor localisation, real-world examples of when it works and how your team can become more efficient.
What is marketing localisation?
Marketing localisation is taking a global campaign idea and adapting it so the local audience feels you understand their market. It’s different to translation, where you’ll literally translate the content and copy into the relevant language.
At leap, we take it one step further and use transcreation. This is about truly understanding the original campaign concept, then going through a robust creative process of translating the content while preserving its original meaning, style, and tone. It aims to capture the local cultural nuances that can make or break your campaign’s impact.
The hidden cost of poor localisation
If you work in a global marketing team, it’s very likely you know the importance of proper marketing localisation. But, there is a big difference between translation and transcreation. Although transcreation takes more time and resources, the cost of not doing it is clear.
It’s interesting to know that only half of organisations make marketing or campaign-based localisation changes while only 29% adapt tone of voice through transcreation, research by Global App Testing’s 2023 research found.
Over half of global teams are taking a huge risk when it comes to ROI, retention and loyalty. Here’s why.
Return on investment
The most obvious reason to invest in marketing localisation and transcreation is that it’s going to make your CEO and CFO happy if you can show them the returns, we all know how much pressure CMOs are facing to prove this right now. When a team does localise their campaigns, reports tell us 96% saw positive ROI from localisation efforts, with 65% reporting 3x ROI or higher.
Retention and Loyalty
It’s pretty clear why your ROI is going to improve. Localisation has strong links to retention and loyalty. There are so many statistics to back this claim up, for instance, CSA research found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. Whilst, 40% will never buy from websites in other languages.
Those customers who experience your brand, campaigns and content in a culturally relevant and language appropriate way are far more likely to buy from you. This doesn’t simply mean putting your website or ad copy through Google Translate. It’s taking the time and energy to understand how your brand and its creative ideas land on a cultural level.
Real examples of marketing localisation that worked
Producing content that is culturally relevant ensures that your audience feels as valued as possible, which helps your global brand speak confidently. Our “think culture first” approach blends creativity, compliance, and local insight so you deeply connect with your audiences.
Never has this been more true than when we approached the transcreation of the campaign tagline for Twix – ’Twix. Two is more than one’.
We approached this task two-fold, beginning with a linguistic and cultural consultation where our in-market language consultants began the process of considering the intent of the line and how that message would be received within their markets, on whether it would be understood, and whether it raised any red flags.
The second element to the task was tackling the transcreation. The focus was not on recreating the line in exactly the same way but more on recreating the intent of the line. This led to a campaign that captivated attention and prompted purchases.
For Vanguard, research revealed significant differences between German and UK investors’ investment habits. We identified the services most relevant to the German market and worked with in-market finance specialists to transcreate campaign copy and voiceover scripts.
The resulting digital banners, brochures and press ads resonated strongly with German audiences while maintaining consistency with Vanguard’s global brand.
How global marketing teams can make marketing localisation more efficient?
Global marketing teams should think about marketing localisation or transcreation early on in campaign development. When a campaign concept is being developed, speak to representatives in the local market to understand how it might be perceived.
That early insight can save a lot of wasted time on planning for a campaign that won’t work, or even worse, retrospectively having to change something, or needing to pull a campaign altogether.
If you feel like you don’t have the expertise in-house to get that insight, speak to a marketing execution partner. At leap, we have over 3,000 experts around the world who specialise in translation, transcreation and cultural consultation. We work with brands to help them understand if their global campaigns are going to work on a local level.
The future of marketing localisation
One of the biggest factors affecting the future of marketing localisation and transcreation is (you guessed it), AI. It might seem like the cheaper, more efficient route to implement AI tools into your workflows in order to translate campaigns.
Whilst we appreciate and advocate for their use, we also carefully consider the pros and cons of using AI to transcreate global campaigns. Find out more about what we think here.
To sum it up, our team recently predicted “The future likely lies in hybrid models, where human creativity is amplified by AI speed and scale. We will increasingly see more prompt engineers and transcreators/copywriters who know how to get the best cultural, tonal, and stylistic output from LLMs, more talent skilled in post-editing AI output to meet nuanced cultural and brand standards and an increase in the use of LLMs as ideation partners for headlines, slogans, campaign concepts, and local influencer-style content.”
If you are unsure if your global campaigns are local-market ready, we can help. Contact us today to book a free consultation.
