Are global agencies the right partners for highly localized marketing in unstructured, emerging growth economies?
• Emerging markets have a vast range of religious, cultural, tribal, ethnic and socioeconomic variations that dont fit with the mass media-driven agency model. They also lack formal market structures, pricing policies, service standards, media channels and distribution practices, making each country unique and different. • Localization (products, documentation, marketing consumables, campaign creative, communications, etc.) is challenging, fraught with problems and nuances, as well as tough to do centrally. Knowledgeable, connected, on-the-ground resources are critical to localization effectiveness. Unfortunately, uniform marketing talent and resources are hard to find in large agency networks. • Uniform branding and consistent messaging have many obstacles and barriers considering the viral nature of community markets, fragmented state of media channels, and informal nature of township/village markets and merchant channels. • Mobile messaging and communications are often critical to m
