Assignment 2. Global Intellectual Capital - Global Business Savvy Submit Assignment 2 to 3 pages

to be a mainstay of its advertising. Yet Eurostar also stands accused of tar-

diness, particularly in light of issues such as last month's tunnel fire, when it seem- ingly did little to reassure those affected,

Gavin Mackie, managing director of Nl Creative, points to British Airways' "T5 is Working" ad campaign, which sought to change the way the terminal was viewed after a bungled launch. "But Eurostar never launched any reassuring campaign after the tunnel fire." he says.

But perhaps the more pressing issue is that, in two years time, the Channel Tun- nel will open to new franchises. With more competition in future, Henderson says Eurostar must vouch to be the most pre- mium train travel experience with a sense of style and charm. "A mere mention of bullet trains in Japan is met with an air of excitement; Eurostar must bring in the same level of excitement among people to retain the brand it has built," concludes Henderson. •

Facts and figures

Eurostar

• Eurostar began its first high-speed rail service directly linking the UK to France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel in 1994

• Since then, it has oarried over 81 million passengers on more than 230,000 trains. The service began with two trains a day from London to both Paris and Brussels

• Eurostar launches the 'Tread Lightly' initiative in 2006. This means all Eurostar journeys to/from London will be carbon neutral. Eurostar also pledges to reduce its overall carbon emissions by 25% by 2012

• London services move from Waterloo St Paneras in 2007

• From 2010 Eurostar will lose its monopoly of the Channel Tunnel, under EU legislation opening the lines up to competition. Air France and train operator Deutsche Bahn have shown early interest in running services.

Comment Global marketing

Overcoming a little looal diffioulty

When global brand leaders face resistance from local

marketers they need to address a lack of trust and

interdependence between parties, says Helen Duce

G lobal brand leaders have one of the most difficult roles in brand market- ing. Chief executives expect them

to drive above-average growth through increasing glohal leverage, Yet, typical cor- porate structures provide them with no con- trol over the local marketing teams that are expected to deliver the growth. No wonder that many global brand leaders can become too focused on the internal battle with local marketers, as they try to drive global strate- gic alignment across markets.

Over the past seven years we have worked with global brand leaders on improving the effectiveness of theii' global marketing machine. The project. Leading Global Brands, includes conti-ibutions from 120 global brands, 1,200 glohal brand lead- ers and a database of results from over 12,000 global marketers.

The new global brand leaders are typi- cally quite comfortable developing the "what" of global marketing - insights, inno- vation and communication. However, we have found that what keeps many global brand leaders awake at night is the chal- lenge of global leverage, or the "how" of

Disagreements are explained by differences

in vantage points and time horizons

global markefing - working with local mar- keters on executing a single glohal brand strategy, enabling global marketing team alignment, improving speed to market and sharing brand expertise across geographies.

In looking at increasing global leverage, when global and local marketers discuss internal alignment around the brand's mis- sion and objectives, both are often right abouf what will drive success for the brand. The disagreements can be explained by the understandable and necessary differences in vantage points and time horizons.

However, even with the brand mission and brand strategy agreed on, there is often a lack of alignment on what priority proj- ects will best enable the brand objectives. A failure to co-ordinate resources and "secret" regional projects go hand in hand with insufficiently resourced global proj- ects that strike at the heart of the brand's global competitiveness.

The results offen fail to measure up to expected standards of performance, value.

or production for global innovation and increased market research costs because global marketers find local marketing col- leagues "checking" that the global mix will actually deliver in their territory.

Even more importantly, this often leads to unproductive attitudes and actions that quickly spiral downward info a lack of will- ingness to focus sufficient local resources on global projects.

The critical underlying challenge to address is often a lack of real trust and interdependence between the local and global marketing teams. Local marketers often feel misunderstood and even disen^ franchised by global marketers, who may be perceived as lacking understanding of the local market reality and have no profit and loss accountability for actually land- ing initiatives in real markets.

In dealing with this, the biggest pitfall that the companies studied struggle with is the failure to clarify roles and responsibil- ities early on. Many global brand organisa- tions get stuck in a consensus-driven culture and lack fhe courage to properly allocate fuU decision-making responsibility.

Defining the operating model and roles on key decisions is important, but enforc- ing the model and required behaviours is even more important. If behaviours incon- sistent wifh the new operating model are folerated, particularly among leaders, this will cause significant delay and frustration.

Many global brands' operating models have taken innovation and communicaf ion developmenf responsibilities away from the countries and into global brand feams, allowing an increase in the focus on local market activation. This highlights fhe strategic importance of the local market- ing activation role, driving new marketing excellence programmes to increase organ- isational capability in this area. Celebrat- ing the successes of activation leaders will ensure fhaf global-local transitions happen more smoothly and that key local market- ing talent is retained.

Handled well, communication of this transition allows global and local marlteters fo focus an their areas of strength and the contributions they can make to accelerating brand growth through global leverage. •

Helen Duce is executive director of global marketing consulfancy

EffectiveBrands

www.marketingweek.co.uk 09.10.08 Marketing Week : 29