The Possibilities & Pitfalls of Reaching Your Next One Billion Customers

Business leaders will often describe the extraordinary lengths to which they’ve gone to capitalise on a new business opportunity.

However, when founding Seven Brands I never expected to conduct customer empathy research under armed escort in war-torn Iraq, maintain client relations over large helpings of hairy goat curry, or to have brainstormed pitch ideas in the Nairobian slums of Kibera in an effort to find the next billion potential customers.

These are, nevertheless, experiences I’ve had. But far from being just quirky experiences, these fascinatingly dynamic and creative environments are brimming with opportunities aplenty for international brands willing to walk the real business tightrope of risk.

Global-facing brands have never had so much opportunity to scale internationally as new markets open up all the time. Yet, there are some clear differences in the creative decisions, and indeed risks, brands and their agencies need to consider to succeed.

"I never expected to conduct customer empathy research under armed escort in war-torn Iraq."

This, though, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. These are, after all, countries and continents rich in culture, societal nuance and – occasionally – political fragility, and this quagmire can be challenging for brands with little or no foothold in the market to wade through safely and scratch-free.

Some creative decisions are fundamental to locals, less so to a CMO trying to streamline a global campaign. For instance, an OOH advertising billboard featuring a joyously happy family may go down well in Alabama. But the billboard could be deemed offensive in conservative Saudi Arabia if the male actor looks directly into the camera thus potentially making eye contact with female viewers.

Above: Jasmine Montgomery, CEO/founder, Seven Brands

The risk, then, tends to be greater the further into the labyrinth of global culture and language a brand goes.

This is often the upshot of a lack of local knowledge in the advertising and marketing teams who adapt European or American strategies to other markets, such as Africa or Asia. This is often due to a combination of naivety and a focus on efficiency. But with brand safety a key talking-point of 2017, this naivety has its costs. Against this backdrop, many seemingly benign aspects of advertising and marketing become your faux ami in this environment.

"A McKinsey survey on the rise of the African consumer predicts consumer-facing industries will grow $400bn by 2020."

Take colour, for example. It’s fundamental to how you communicate the identity of your company, and colour is one of the first things agreed about a brand. But when a colour, such as yellow, simultaneously represents pornography in China and high status in Africa, this basic decision can become quite complex further on down the road.

Or, how about the usage of animals? The kangaroo is a national symbol in Australia, and generally well thought of in the West. Yet, in Asia and Africa they are often considered dirty or even offensive. This perspective throws Deliveroo’s recent rebrand and global expansion plans into new light.

All of this, clearly, requires a level of expertise few global-facing companies have, regardless of prior success in other established markets. It’s why it’s essential to find local partners who are well-versed not just in cultural norms but also in the day-to-day lives of the people in that region. Those local partners aren’t just useful for dodging the occasional faux pas, but also to unearth some valuable insight to a new opportunity – the kind which outsiders simply aren’t privy to.

Fortunately, where there are risks, there are opportunities too. A McKinsey survey on the rise of the African consumer predicting consumer-facing industries will grow $400bn by 2020 shows the extent of this opportunity in Africa alone.

But accessing that growth will require more than plonking your existing brand strategy into uncharted territory, and brands must not lose sight of the fact that the next billion customers are, after all, a melting pot of competing identities, needs and desires. To crack this, brands must go local.