How to make central and local marketing teams work better together - Brilliant Noise

How to make central and local marketing teams work better together

By Brilliant Noise, May 2022. 6 min read. Posts

Less waste, more wins.

Let’s be clear: when central and local marketing teams don’t work together, no one wins. There’s wasted content, inconsistent branding and duplicated effort. The bottom line? Squandering time and resources is disastrous for everyone.

Brands face the same problems. In sectors ranging from finance to FMCG. Central marketing teams hold the reach and resources to scale campaigns; local marketing teams hold the insights and in-country consumer knowledge. Yet the potential for success if teams unite is huge.

For more effective content, and a smaller carbon cost, we need to find solutions. At Brilliant Noise, we help brands cut waste, duplication and carbon by transforming global content operations – freeing up time and budget.

The Problem

When working with brands including adidas, Amex and BMW, on average we find that only 30% of content created centrally gets used by markets, which means an expensive 70% gets wasted. Instead local teams create their own content, reflecting their audience, culture, needs and seasonality. This doesn’t simply waste content, budget and time; it affects brand and messaging consistency.

Yet local markets hold powerful insights: their knowledge is the secret to creating content that people will really engage with. They have an intimate understanding of their audience and can react quickly to trends or shifts.

How do you ensure local markets are heard and can use and adapt central assets? We have some ideas.

The Solutions

Start from the top

Local stakeholder voices must be heard from the get-go – this will shift the assumption that central assets won’t be relevant for them and ensure their needs are understood and applied to central branding. It’s down to leaders to open up those clear and strategic lines of communication between central and local marketing teams.

Co-create content

Central marketing teams have the resources to scale the initiatives and ensure brand consistency. Local teams have powerful insights and local knowledge. Enabling collaboration and building trust between teams ensures brand consistency, efficiency and local relevance.

Agree on one goal

Having a common aim will help unite teams and open up opportunities to share needs, opinions and helpful insights. This means creating collaboration spaces, holding forums and encouraging feedback to energise those conversations.

Build the right processes

Better ways of working aren’t achieved by conversations alone; teams need the infrastructure to act efficiently on the information shared. And even when local marketing teams are given the agency to speak up from the start and feed into asset creation, there are more opportunities to make sure that content is used.

Design adaptable content

Another way to cut waste is to build central assets with local adaptation in mind. A modular approach to content creation gives communications the best chance to stay consistent. When assets are designed to flex, local marketing teams won’t feel compelled to start from scratch in order to make locally-relevant content.

How we do it

The Brilliant Noise way

We can help you transform your marketing operations.

  • You’ll increase the value of your campaign assets.
  • You can improve operational efficiency.
  • You’ll increase trust between local and central marketing teams.
  • You’ll be able to develop a better measurement system for content.

We live by the mantra: create once, use everywhere. A lot of assets get remade just for the sake of being remade. Real creativity lies in the ability to do more with your existing resources and realise the potential of what you already have.

We’ll develop a content playbook that equips markets with the tools to personalise their content while staying aligned with core central branding. We’ll then ensure all high-performing content is tagged for reuse and optimisation. This way, everyone’s happy: the markets, the audience, the planet. Check out this blog post to get into the details of reusable content strategy.

With a test-and-learn approach to improving efficiencies and creating new content models, we’ll also build internal capability as we go. The end result is faster marketing operations and better, more consistent in-house creative.

We’ve helped global brands like adidas, BMW and Nestlé to reduce, reuse and revamp their campaign content to drive growth. If you want to be more efficient and sustainable with your marketing operations, get in touch.