The Global Marketer’s Guide to Localisation and Translationfleurwillemijn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/... · The Global Marketer’s Guide to Localisation and Translation There’s

Copyright © 2016 Contently. All rights reserved. contently.comby Matthew Cowen

The Global Marketer’s Guide to Localisation and Translation

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Table of Contents

Introduction 4

I. Building a Localisation Strategy 6

II. Managing the Global Newsroom 11

III. How Local Should You Go? 17

IV. Speaking the Right Language 21

V. Creating Local Content With Local Talent 24

Conclusion 28

Cover photography by Gregory Reid

Illustrations by Lina Yu

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“ If you add up all our own platform eyeballs, it’s much larger than any publisher out there.” — DAVID BEEBE, VICE PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL CREATIVE AND CONTENT

MARKETING, MARRIOTT

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Over the past few years, content marketing has evolved rapidly within global organisations. In many companies, content has transformed from an experimental initiative siloed within small teams in individual markets to a large-scale, cross-departmental global effort.

Marketers within global brands face unique challenges when it comes to managing content. They need to balance relevance and engagement on a local level, and maintain a consistent brand purpose and personality across all regions. And they must do so within a budget that covers all potential markets.

In a region such as Europe, with more than 50 countries and 200 languages, it’s often unrealistic to make entirely new content for each market. That makes the ability to localise global content assets an essential part of a marketer’s skill set. But how can you do so in a way that genuinely addresses the priority issues in each market? How do you maintain the brand’s voice across all markets and languages? And how do you avoid sounding like an imposter inserting themselves into a community they don’t really know or understand?

Introduction

We inevitably see content performing better when it’s originated locally or adapted for the local market.”— ANNE-MARIE MCCONNON,

HEAD OF MARKETING,

BNY MELLON

“

Introduction 5


Developing the right approach to localisation involves answering a number of strategic questions:

• Which markets require localisation and can deliver a return on the investment involved?

• Is translation enough—or does content need to be conceived and created locally?

• How do you balance local content initiatives with global content standards?

• How do you identify global content assets that can work across markets?

• Is translation a necessary step in establishing local relevance, and can it be executed effectively?

Answering these questions is becoming an essential part of the global content marketer’s remit. Anne-Marie McConnon, the head of marketing at BNY Mellon, summed up both the challenge and the opportunity of localisation for a global organisation:

“We inevitably see content performing better when it’s originated locally or adapted for the local market. One thing that always brings that home to me is when we publish our global market outlook at the end of each year. This is a genuinely global piece of content with worldwide themes, but we still find audiences in different countries engaging with very different elements within it. To understand their particular interests, you have to look at the key cultural drivers within each market—and you need in-market expertise for that.”

In this guide, we’ll look at how some of the world’s leading content marketers manage their global content marketing programme and deliver the localised content their audiences demand.

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There’s no standard approach to localising global content because there’s no such thing as a standard global brand. All brands deal with different audiences in different sectors of different markets. As a result, global brands need to focus on their concrete business objectives and set realistic expectations to produce or adapt content locally.

ADAPTING YOUR APPROACH TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Most often, your audience will dictate your approach to localisation. When you’re engaging an audience of small- and medium-sized business owners, mastery of local language is essential. That’s why, for instance, around 90 percent of HP’s content used in EMEA is produced within the market where it’s distributed.

I. Building a Localisation Strategy

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In areas like asset management, on the other hand, stories and themes that emerge in one market will often be relevant to others. Accordingly, a centralised content team working closely with in-market experts is the best approach.

“We believe that localisation is an imperative, but we also globalise that local content where we can,” BNY Mellon’s McConnon said. “We’ll produce content that’s initially for Italy but then find that we want to use that in the U.S., for example.”

WHERE SHOULD DECISION-MAKING TAKE PLACE?

For some global brands, content decision-making happens centrally; for others, local teams judge the right mix of content for their audiences, picking and choosing from

global assets and locally produced stories. That’s how Coca-Cola creates localised editions of its Coca-Cola Journey content hub.

“Part of our goal as a team is building out the Journey platform and launching sites around the world,” said Jay Moye, global editor-in-chief of Coca-Cola Journey. “We’ve got a target of 40 localised sites by the end of this year, but the decision and investment comes from the market itself.”

We provide a digital playbook—a Journey bible. It’s not super prescriptive with lots of do’s and don’ts. But it captures our vision and mission.”— JAYE MOYE, GLOBAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF,

COCA-COLA JOURNEY

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http://www.coca-colacompany.com/

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Moye’s priority is to inspire local content initiatives, providing guidance but also “freedom within a framework” that allows markets to reflect their own particular culture. “We provide a digital playbook—a Journey bible,” he said. “It’s not super prescriptive with lots of do’s and don’ts. But it captures our vision and mission.”

By the end of 2016, Coca-Cola Journey will feature 40 localised sites in six global regions.


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DO YOU NEED TO BUILD MOMENTUM GLOBALLY BEFORE YOU START LOCALISING?

Marketers looking to distribute content globally are often driven by the need to build momentum in local markets. Many adopt a phased approach. They launch a global content platform first, to develop a foundation of content, and then progressively launch in local markets over time.

Here’s a quick checklist of considerations as you decide on the right balance of global and local content:

• Does your sector and target audience have an interest in global themes, or are they focused primarily on local issues?

• What capabilities does your local market teams realistically have? Is locally created content an option, or do you need to plan to produce content globally, then adapt it locally?

• Do you have genuinely global content assets that all markets will have a natural interest in?

• Do you need to establish the value of content at a global level before encouraging markets to take ownership of local content initiatives? If so, it may be best to take a phased approach.



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In the spotlight:Nikhil Kalanjee, digital marketing and social media lead at HP, describes the key

considerations for his brand in developing a regional content strategy for EMEA:

“We’ve always felt that our approach to content has to be local because of the audience we’re going after. We are talking to SMBs and, whereas you might get away with a degree of standardised content in English for enterprise-level businesses, our segment is very diverse and impacted by local issues.

“We have an EMEA content framework that’s based on our business needs and objectives for the region as a whole. Local teams within our key markets take that framework and work with their choice of content partners to tell stories with a local flavour.

“When building up our program, we ran more centrally led processes because we needed a degree of consistency—five different interpretations and executions of content marketing would have been very messy. However, having built up to a certain size and shared understanding of what we are going after, we’ve been able to restructure to be more country-led.”

Full disclosure: BNY Mellon and HP are Contently clients.


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A successful global content program requires transparency and visibility. Teams across the globe need an easy way to see what content is available to use and which content initiatives are under development in different markets. A central repository for content enables global marketers to direct their resources more efficiently, whether that’s sharing the editorial expertise of a central team staffed with journalists, ensuring that the content they invest in meets different market requirements, or elevating local content ideas that merit a wider global audience.

The structures and rhythms for sharing information vary according to the size and nature of the global content team. Weekly emails, regular conference calls, content management systems that enable markets to pick the most relevant global content assets to localise—they all have a potential role to play.

II. Managing a Global Newsroom

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For instance, Genpact, a global business operations leader, uses Contently’s content marketing management system to provide access to content across 25 countries and several continents and to run all content through a centralised workflow. This ensures that the company’s messaging is consistent and aligned.

“Even though we’re a large company, the different operations, different regions, and different lines of business all use the same guidelines,” Amrita Thapar, Genpact’s content leader for marketing, said in an interview with Contently. “Otherwise, you won’t recognise a piece of collateral from Genpact Australia as being from the same company as Genpact North America. We are so diverse, one of the things we constantly need to do is actually make sure that everybody conveys the same message.”

THE CHANGING FLOW OF CONTENT MANAGEMENT

In the early stages of a content programme, the flow of information is often outwards. Central teams spread the word about upcoming content and encourage local teams to adapt and amplify it. As global content programmes develop, the emphasis shifts to providing guidance on building local content skills and capabilities, or using centralised editorial teams to create content that meets local market requirements.

Even though we’re a large company, the different lines of business all use the same guidelines.”— AMRITA THAPAR, CONTENT LEADER

FOR MARKETING, GENPACT

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https://contently.com/solutions/

https://contently.com/solutions/

https://contently.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ContentlyCS_Genpact.pdf

https://contently.com/strategist/2015/09/23/genpacts-content-leader-dishes-on-how-to-run-a-newsroom-that-spans-25-countries/


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In mature content programmes, the flow of content ideas is often two-way, with content developed in local markets being elevated onto global hubs and shared more widely.

When Coca-Cola Journey first started expanding to local sites, local markets often repurposed content that was created by Moye’s in-house editorial team and Contently freelancers for the U.S. site. But as Journey’s international sites have developed, more and more content is created locally.

LEVERAGING IN-MARKET EXPERTISE

As BNY Mellon’s McConnon explains, the most important element in delivering locally relevant content is market-based teams with an ear to the ground:

“We have a matrix structure: a central content team of editors and journalists who know how to capture an audience’s imagination and who work very closely with our regional content hubs. We have marketers on the ground who are able to adapt content to meet local clients’ needs and work with local compliance teams to ensure that we’re always adapting to regional legal requirements as well. A lot of the content ideas that we develop come from the local markets themselves.”


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TAKING THE LEAD CENTRALLY

When local teams are not yet in place, a central content team might need to take the lead.

“We have a global content team based in London and commission content from there,” said Madeleine Little, JLL’s director of global communications and content. “We liaise with our regions and aim to encourage ideas from teams within different countries, but when you’re building a global content programme from scratch, that doesn’t necessarily happen overnight.”

Often, a central team is able to invest in content and formats that are difficult to create on a local level—a video documentary series about startups, for example.

“Sometimes, the risk and investment related to experimenting with a new type or format of content needs to be borne centrally,” Nikhil Kalanjee of HP said. “We have an open dialogue with the countries, always asking for feedback on whether new types of content will fit their market, and there is always the option to say no.”


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As you determine how to structure your global newsroom, consider these seven checkpoints:

• Decide where the drive for creating content naturally comes from. Do local markets have the appetite and resources, or does a global content team need to provide momentum?

• Match editorial resources to your localisation strategy. Do your markets need editorial expertise on the ground, or could it be embedded in a central team?

• Clarify where decision-making happens. Either empower local marketing teams to sign off on content within an agreed editorial framework, or build a framework to incorporate their feedback into a central approval process.

• Make sure compliance teams are in the loop, and build in time to adapt global content to local legal requirements.

• Establish clear lines of communication with your markets, whether that’s through technology (a central content management system), weekly emails, or regular conference calls.

• Share a central content calendar with local teams to ensure the assets you’re investing in are suitable for different audiences.

• Make sure you have visibility of local content initiatives that could be elevated to a global level and shared more widely.


We liaise with our regions and aim to encourage ideas from teams within different countries.”— MADELEINE LITTLE, DIRECTOR

OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS AND

CONTENT, JLL

“

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In the spotlight:Jay Moye, global editor-in-chief of Coca-Cola Journey, explains the structures that his team uses for managing content globally:

“We keep the process of managing our content very simple. Every Monday, we send out an email to our local editors and their teams mapping out what we’re planning to publish. On Fridays, there’s a follow-up email rounding up everything that’s been published on our global site with live links. It’s pretty straightforward for them to scan the headlines and see if there’s something interesting that they want to grab for their readers. We use a central content management system where we can flag content that’s globally approved and ready to roll out—and where our editors can access the global content they’re interested in without having to email Word documents back and forth.

They can go in, grab and use the content as it is, or choose to translate or edit locally.

“On top of this, there’s a monthly planning call with all of the markets, where we can share calendars and content ideas, providing all of our local editors with a menu to choose from. We try to pull the stories that our markets are creating locally into this planning process as well.

“We can’t police content across every market—there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do that. We have to empower and trust our local colleagues to stay true to the Journey voice. And we also trust them to work with local legal folks on liability, and with the local marketing team on brand alignment.”

Full disclosure: Coca-Cola and Genpact are Contently clients.

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When an organisation rolls out a global content asset, it has a big question to answer: How much localisation is required to engage audiences across your different markets?

Here are some of the approaches that global brands are taking in answering that question.

III. How Local Should You Go?

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UPDATING THE DATA POINTS

“ When we localise a region-wide content asset, we always try to go beyond just translation, looking for local data points, examples, and stories to add in.” —NIKHIL KALANJEE, DIGITAL MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA LEAD, HP’S PRINTING BUSINESS, EMEA

MAKING GLOBAL CONTENT SOCIAL

“ Many of our stories are genuinely relevant to readers around the world. Our sponsorship of the Olympics, for example, is a genuinely global property, and we’re currently working on creating content that we can syndicate out to all our international editions. It’s the same with our World Cup sponsorships or our major global ad campaigns. This content has legs beyond one or two countries. It’s down to local editors how they maximise that value by socialising it for their markets.” —JAY MOYE, GLOBAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, COCA-COLA JOURNEY

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RE-ENGINEERING AROUND LOCALLY RELEVANT ANGLES

“ There are global content themes in account management, but what financial advisers in Spain think is appropriate and relevant content for the fund sector can often be very different to what advisors in London are interested in.

“ We empower our regional marketers to make decisions on distributing content, amplifying it, and maximising engagement, and that includes taking the initiative on localisation. That’s where a lot of our localisation happens—they’re not just translating content but re-engineering it to bring out the most relevant local angles.” —ANNE-MARIE MCCONNON, HEAD OF MARKETING, BNY MELLON


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In the spotlight:Madeleine Little, director of global communications and content at JLL, explains how she

balances the local and global in her content strategy:

“At the same time as we’re aiming for greater localisation, it’s also important to recognise the value in having regional and global oversight in picking out key trends and themes for our content. We’ll often find that similar ideas for stories will be pitched by different markets, and it’s good to have a centralised function that can join up the dots to produce a wider, global piece with more depth, and ensure that we’re not repeating ourselves.

“Our editorial policy is that we don’t actually want hyper-local content because the interest in it is too narrow. It’s when we start to draw out themes and trends that apply across markets that things really get interesting. It showcases our knowledge of the market globally—how everything relates and joins up. Local content does matter, but the local teams in country manage that directly. For a project like Real Views, our focus is on the broader trends and issues.”


Full disclosure: JLL is a Contently client.

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Translating into a market’s local language seems like the most obvious requirement for localising content, but it can also be one of the most difficult parts to get right. For many global marketers, simply handing content to translation agencies and publishing what comes back won’t cut it. Genuinely effective and engaging translation requires a more hands-on approach, and it requires content marketers to allow sufficient time in the content publishing schedule for that to take place.

TAKING OWNERSHIP OF TRANSLATION

“The science of translation agencies isn’t really where it needs to be,” said Coca-Cola’s Moye. “It’s actually tough to find good quality translation, and if you get something back that still needs a lot of work, then it can be more trouble than it’s worth.”

IV. Speaking the Right Language

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The problem, of course, is that simply translating sentences word for word isn’t usually an effective way to communicate the flow and meaning of a piece of content. “It’s really trans-creation that we need, not just translation,” explained Anne-Marie McConnon of BNY Mellon. “There are 37 different languages across our customers, and we have to be able to communicate properly in each of them. That doesn’t just involve translation, but tone of voice as well.”

BNY Mellon does use translation agencies on a regular basis, but it also tasks local market teams with checking that the translated copy is on point. “When you’re dealing with rich content in particular, translation gets more complicated, and an agency can add value,” McConnon said. “But I still use our own in-market teams to check whether a translation really captures the meaning.”

WHY TRANSLATION ISN’T ALWAYS AN AUTOMATIC CHOICE

The challenges of translation, the risks of getting it wrong, and the hands-on approach needed to ensure it’s right are all huge hurdles. That means that many brands are selective about when to actually use translation.


It’s simply not an option for a globally listed corporation to publish poorly translated copy.”— MADELEINE LITTLE, DIRECTOR

OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS AND

CONTENT, JLL

“

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“Translation has to be 100 percent correct. It’s simply not an option for a globally listed corporation to publish poorly translated copy,” said Madeleine Little of JLL. “English is the core language for our content, but it’s good to let the markets take the initiative about when it needs to be translated. Some countries are happy to share in English. Others know that a translation will make a difference. But they also have the local expertise to handle that translation and make sure it’s right.”

PLANNING TRANSLATION FOR RICH CONTENT ASSETS

Judging whether translation makes sense is particularly important when dealing with rich content formats, such as video or infographics, since the creation process is usually more complicated. When you’re dealing with a manageable number of markets, it may be feasible to write scripts and record voiceovers in a range of different languages. On the other hand, when dealing with a major global content asset like Coca-Cola’s

Olympics-related content, it might feel natural enough to go with a single English version.

The translation checklist:

• How much will translation benefit a particular market? Is it worth the time and risk involved?

• Do you have in-market expertise to handle the translation internally? What impact will this have on timeliness?

• Can you source a reliable translation agency with the skills and initiative needed to capture a local market’s tone of voice?

• Who will take responsibility for checking that the translated content delivers meaning effectively?

• If you are planning graphic or video content, will it be more efficient to produce it in different languages from the outset?


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Connecting the right audiences with the content intended for them is an important aspect of your global strategy. Here, everything from audience targeting to leveraging local content comes into play.

LOCAL DISTRIBUTION

Some use geo-targeting to deliver the right version of a content site to a particular market. Others opt for a more organic approach, relying on the emails used to distribute content to subscribers to direct them to the most relevant local site, and allowing for audiences to discover content across other market-specific sites and decide whether it’s relevant to them.

V. Matching Local Content to Local Distribution and Talent


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Timing becomes an issue when markets are producing localised versions of the same core content—especially if several different markets are using the same core language. If your UK team produces a compelling piece of content in English, there’s a risk in waiting a week to produce a separate version that’s been carefully crafted for Australia. The most interested members of your Australian audience will already likely be engaged with the UK version, especially if their friends and connections are sharing that content on social media.

Marriott has tackled this challenge by building content studios, collectively dubbed M Live, in local markets across the globe. These studios monitor “everything from the social media campaigns of Marriott’s 19 brands to real-time booking information to Marriott’s editorial calendar,” we wrote last year. Media agencies are staffed alongside PR and real-time creative teams, allowing Marriott to scale content creation and distribution locally at a moment’s notice. The first

studio was launched in October of last year at the company’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. M Live Asia Pacific opened in late November 2015 in Hong Kong, and M Live CALA debuted in Miami on April 28. A studio in London opened in late July, and another will open in Dubai in early 2017.

“They’ll all be connected to each other,” said David Beebe, Marriott’s vice president of global creative and content marketing. “They’ll all be talking. They’ll be staffed around the clock. You can’t run a global company from Bethesda, Maryland.”


You can’t run a global company from Bethesda, Maryland.”— DAVID BEEBE, VICE PRESIDENT OF

OF GLOBAL CREATIVE AND CONTENT

MARKETING, MARRIOTT

“

https://contently.com/strategist/2015/11/05/were-a-media-company-now-inside-marriotts-incredible-money-making-content-studio/


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LEVERAGING LOCAL TALENT

One hugely effective approach to matching the right local content with the right local audience is to link the process of creating content with the process of distributing it.

In early 2015, Marriott launched Marriott Traveler, an online travel magazine staffed by local talent to provide guides to cities across the globe, from Orlando to Paris to Dubai.

The magazine’s first edition partnered with Contently to leverage local creatives who have strong followings to highlight the best places to visit in the city. Travel vlogger Sonia Gil, for example, created an entertaining series of video guides to cities across the U.S.

“Our content providers are writing with a voice, so you connect with the content,” Beebe said. “There’s a name, a byline, and that makes it more legit.”

Travel vlogger Sonia Gil visits the Voodoo Museum for Marriott Traveler

Full disclosure: Marriott is a Contently client.


https://contently.com/strategist/2015/03/27/contently-case-story-inside-marriotts-ambitious-new-travel-mag/

http://traveler.marriott.com/


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In the spotlight:Leanna Zaborowski, editor-in-chief of Coca-Cola Journey in Germany, explains how local

talent helps the publication reach local audiences:

“Something that we are proud of—and that I think is different than other markets, though global is doing that as well—is that [Coca-Cola Journey in] Germany is really pushing collaboration with bloggers and influencers and other partners to open up new distribution networks for us, feeding opportunities.

“We created different series or columns around blogs that we want to promote, around startups that we like or have an app or whatever—always with the objective of benefiting from their social network. We have established bloggers writing content for Journey, and feeding on their own channels as well. We have brand initiatives in cooperation with bloggers. We always try to think of distribution and to find good ways to grow distribution and the impact of the content. That’s something that other markets don’t really focus on because they have different strategies.”


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LEVERAGING THE POWER OF A GLOBAL CONTENT ORGANISATION

Any guide to running a global content strategy can feel like a list of challenges that you have to meet, headaches that need fixing, and practical issues that you must tackle. But it’s important to remember that localised content presents a massive opportunity. Potential gains include the ability to scale content that resonates in one market to multiply its reach and effectiveness; the credibility boost in showcasing a brand’s in-depth, on-the-ground expertise; and the perspective gained on what issues motivate audiences in different markets. All of these are all invaluable assets.

Brands must also remember the important role that global content can play in ensuring a rich and relevant experience for all audiences—including those without their own localisation operation.

“Producing content that’s relevant to audiences worldwide is an important part of our remit as the global site,” said Jay Moye of Coca-Cola Journey. “When markets don’t yet have their own Journey site, we curate our global site to make sure that there’s relevant content available to them.”

Conclusion

Our content providers are writing with a voice, so you connect with the content. There’s a name, a byline, and that makes it more legit.”— DAVID BEEBE, VP

OF GLOBAL CREATIVE AND CONTENT

MARKETING, MARRIOTT

“

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Marriott’s M Live content studio embodies the opportunity for brands that can balance locally relevant content with global reach and credibility.

“We have the opportunity to become a publisher of content but also own the audience,” said David Beebe. “If you add up all our own platform eyeballs, it’s much larger than any publisher out there. We’ve got a media network just sitting here. We’ve activated it now.”

That, ultimately, is the opportunity and the objective for effectively localised content organisation. Traditional global media brands such as CNN or the BBC gain much of their authority from the number of reporters they have on the ground in different countries, providing immediate local understanding to audiences anywhere in the world. Increasingly, today’s most effective global content brands can provide something impressively similar.

Conclusion: Leveraging the Power of a Global Content Organisation

Introduction 30


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The Global Marketer’s Guide to Localisation and Translationfleurwillemijn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/... · The Global Marketer’s Guide to Localisation and Translation There’s