Global Strategy: Roll It Out
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Saturday, 01 March 2008
Global Strategy: Roll It Out - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Food for thought on international product rollouts from our global strategies expert, Don DePalma.
I’m always impressed by the construction projects showcased on National Geographic’s “MegaStructures.” The conceptualization, design, and construction of the English Channel Tunnel, islands in Dubai, and impossible bridges around the world are enough to amaze most people. These incredible engineering projects, though, mirror less ambitious but no less impressive manufacturing feats that produce everyday objects—and the masses of documents that describe how to operate and fix them in dozens of languages.

Take a simple product like an Apple iPod. Order one on the Web, and track its progress to your front door. You’ll find out that it’s designed in California but sourced out of Shanghai from a supply chain that stretches across Asia.

Even more impressive is the manufacturing of an auto, an assembly of thousands of parts. The Chevrolet Malibu was built on a “platform” it shares with Saturn in the US and General Motor’s Opel and Saab European subsidiaries. GM’s manufacturing plants rely on a global supply chain for components ranging from tiny screws to entire interior assemblies.

Words, words, words
Equally impressive but far less visible is the development of the mountains of supporting collateral (diagnostic tools, service manuals, owner manuals, brochures, advertisements, and television commercials) that accompany any new-car release. They educate mechanics and prospective buyers and entice people to lay out cash to buy them.

Creating all this information proceeds in tandem with product engineering as technical writers and editors match functions with the words that describe them. Some of this information travels along a parallel supply chain from the suppliers; much of it is developed by the final manufacturer that has to market, sell, and service the cars.

Teams of technical writers, editors, and reviewers employ technologies like document management systems, workflow, and writing tools to make sure the information they publish is correct, current, and internally consistent.

As this product documentation and marketing collateral gets written, globalization means it must also be translated and adapted to the markets where the products will be sold. For example, Chevrolet dealerships in the US, Canada, and Mexico sell the Malibu. The manuals must be translated into French and Spanish, the marketing messages must be tweaked to reflect local preferences, and the troubleshooting chapter has to deal with realities of markets with different climates, roads, and usage conditions. The translation and product localization activities get even more complicated with cars like the Opel, which are sold across many countries in Europe.

Our research at Common Sense Advisory shows that nearly 90% of companies outsource some or all of their translation work. Whether the work happens inhouse or at a language service provider, the translators will employ tools like translation memory to leverage previous work, terminology management software for glossaries, and workflow for translation management.

Serious secrets
Sometimes global product roll-outs involve some tricky logistics because product details (or even the existence of a product) need to be kept under wraps. Last summer’s debut of the last Harry Potter novel is a good case in point. Rowling’s publisher, Scholastic, struggled to keep the plot a surprise even as it printed 12 million copies for the US market alone.

Non-American editions in English for other markets, translations into other languages, and the huge infrastructure of printing, warehousing, and then distributing the nearly 800-page book meant that thousands of individuals orchestrated this publishing event for months in advance. Scholastic isn’t alone in facing this problem: anyone dealing with innovative intellectual property, designs, or movie plots has the same concerns.

It’s not easy keeping secrets about new products. Most companies are pretty “leaky” when it comes to information about future releases. Taking our friend Harry Potter as an example. Journalists and readers discussed the book in the print media, online, and in the blogosphere, wondering aloud who was likely to get killed, when, and by whom.

Harry’s not alone. At the end of 2007, Apple settled a long-running dispute with a rumor site that regularly preempted big announcements from Steve Jobs. Google oozed with details as its Android phone platform neared its announcement date. And from the first day that auto manufacturers start testing mock-ups of their latest cars, they must deal with paparazzi that stand in the shadows of their design centers and the famous Nürburgring test track to photograph the next generation of their products.

In some cases, the loss of secrecy doesn’t matter. Despite leaks about the iPhone, Apple and AT&T still sold enough handsets to make an impact on their quarterly earnings. That’s not so with more pedestrian products like clamshell mobile phones, printers, and MP3 players. When a new version comes out, the product currently in the market immediately loses some value and becomes a candidate for sale on eBay and Overstock.com.

For example, once Apple’s iPhone2 becomes available, who will buy the original that it released in 2007? And if news of the next release of an HP photo printer says that it doubles print quality and uses less ink for the same price as the current model, the value of today’s product drops precipitously. It’s in the best interest of Apple, Hewlett Packard, and every other manufacturer of a product to keep the lid on information about their products. Otherwise, information leaks could quickly render worthless an entire warehouse of goods.

Think globally
Marketing and brand managers face a tough problem in limiting what they say so that consumers don’t stop buying current products while they wait for the new one. Most companies don’t have the luxury of worrying about a product release to a single country. Rather, they typically roll out products in several countries (sometimes dozens) simultaneously. This multinational reality means that they must produce marketing information, roll-out plans, product collateral, and Web site content for each product.

Then they must coordinate the translation, posting, and switching on of their multi-channel communications, marketing, and sales channels across a wide array of countries. Just one un-translated product sheet could hold up the release across 25 countries in Europe. Or if one country jumps the gun and announces the product prematurely, current products on sagging store shelves suddenly lose a lot of value.

And unlike the editors and marketers at Scholastic who have worried about the Harry Potter seven times in the last 10 years, marketing and brand managers at multinational consumer-facing companies deal with this problem repeatedly as they relentlessly send newer versions of products and replacements into the channel.

Looking forward to the increasing globalization of products, companies, and markets, brand managers should definitely begin to think about how international roll-outs in many different languages will affect product strategy. For most companies, this will force changes in the people they deploy on global product roll-outs, the processes that underlie content development and translation, and the technology they use to make it all happen.

Don DePalma is the founder and chief research officer of the research and consulting firm Common Sense Advisor and author of the premier book on business globalization, Business Without Borders: A Strategic Guide to Global Marketing (Wiley, 2002).
 
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