Learn from top global experts from strategic branding firm Siegel+Gale in a free webinar as they share their insights on how brands create and deliver messages and experiences across the globe, while protecting the brand as it grows. The webinar will cover: + Why understanding the true drivers of customer choice across markets is essential to positioning a brand for success + How to accommodate local markets, which despite globalization continue to behave in their own unique way + What are the best practices for the technical side of global brand management, which requires a strategic and cost-conscious approach to creating and managing global trademarks, linguistics, and URL negotiations + How global brands are creating customer experiences that tell the story in a local voice, both online and offline

1. Branding in the Global Marketplaceexcerpt from our webinar June 8, 2010 www.siegelgale.com

2. Overview + Ensuring brands are relevant, wherever they are in the world + Global trademarks and the challenges of naming global brands + Creating websites for a global audience 2

3. Meet the panel Fred Burt Managing Director, London fburt@siegelgale.com Jeff Lapatine Group Director, Naming jlapatine@siegelgale.com Thomas Mueller Global Director, Dynamic Media tmueller@siegelgale.com 3

4. Making brands relevant across the globe Presented by:Fred Burt

5. When the world is so complex, being global is hard. 5

6. Designed to simplify choice + How do customers make choices (really make choices!)? + How do they rate brands in these choice terms? + Where are opportunities to be more of the “brand of choice”? 6

7. Naming 7

8. Language 8

9. Tonality “Good morning,how are you today?” + In US = polite, enthusiastic + In Germany = intrusive and over-familiar 9

10. 1. Look for universal drivers of choice 10

11. 4. It’s complicated enough, so keep it simple 11

12. Global trademarks Creating names for the global marketplace Presented by:Jeff Lapatine

13. What makes creating global trademarks so hard?

14. 1. Is someone else already using the name? + In general, we need only worry about trademarks in the same class. So, Infiniti Solutions, a company that makes circuit boards, needn’t worry about the trademark for Infiniti, the car brand. + But even in the same class, the same name may be registered by different applicants. + This becomes a question of “degree of possible confusion.” 14

15. 2. What about different spellings? + The rule of thumb is that if two names sound the same, trademark problems can arise. + But names with different spellings do often live in the same trademark class. + For example, both Veriti and Verity are registered as trademarks in the electrical and scientific class. Possibly these companies reached an agreement. 15

16. 16 3. Big fish/Small fish? + Should a big company just use the name it likes and not worry about lawsuits from a small player? Some argue that big companies can ignore smaller fish in the pond. + With the Internet, the global pond has gotten a lot bigger. And smaller fish may look for a big pay day. + Trademark attorneys have become more conservative regarding this issue.

17. 4. What if the name isn’t registered? + Even here, the situation is murky. + You don’t have to formally register a name to have trademark protection. Establishing that you use the name in the marketplace may be sufficient. 17

18. Without an online preliminary check, the cost and time requirement of a global preliminary search can be exorbitant These costs are incurred for each name that is searched!

19. Global URL issues

20. The gorilla in the room + More than half of the names we screen are not available as trademarks. + Less than 10% of these names will be available as a dot-com URL.

21. Non-Latin domain names can bring even greater costs and risks + The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since its beginning. + Previously, the only possible characters were the letters “A” through “Z” and the numbers zero through nine. + Now 100,000 additional characters from a slew of languages will be available.

22. Linguistics

23. Is the name appropriate for global markets? 23

24. How do you decide which countries to test? + Will this definitely be an area of global expansion? + What languages are spoken in the country? (census as a tool) + Where have previous products or services been launched? 24

25. In sum Trademark search and availability, URL registrations, and linguistic considerations make securing global names very difficult. 25

26. Websites for a global audience Presented by:Thomas Mueller

27. Keys to the successful creation of a global website Examine what can be localized and what aspects must be globally controlled. Don’t underestimate the time, cost, and importance of proper localizing and translating. Don’t forget about the brand. Establish a governance structure. 27

28. What can be done locally? + “To create sites that delight local audiences, web designers must act in accordance with linguistic and cultural preferences”. + Establish a clear set of user experience criteria into “must have” requirements. Content & navigation User interface & look and feel Performance & trust + Leverage global best practices, such as presentation templates and info graphics. + Mix with local assets, such as photography, video, and localized content. 28

29. What should be handled at a global level? + Technology and operations need to be streamlined— create one central platform with decentralized access for content creation and ongoing management. + Gather globally and locally shared user needs and business requirements. + Develop universally relevant content strategy for key audience segments to ensure messaging consistency. + Establish universally applicable voice principles to guide local content creation and translation. + Create universally needed common building blocks (templates). 29

30. 30 Invest based on revenue and growth potential—top eight country sites at Hilton International account for more than 50% of the company’s revenue. Focus your resources on areas of greatest return. (Source: Forrester) Invest based on revenue and growth potential – Top eight country sites at Hilton International account for more than 50% of the company’s revenue. Focus your resources on areas of greatest return. (Source: Forrester)

31. Translation can’t be an afterthought + Focusing on a scalable, globally and locally relevant content strategy is critical at the earliest stages of every international initiative. + Set up a content steering committee with the right mix of global and local stakeholders to build a shared vision early and enable planning for execution at all levels subsequently. + Translations traditionally take place downstream in the authoring process. 31

32. 32 Sixty-four percent of internationalized sites appear in four or more local versions, managed 69% of the time with multiple distinct content management systems. (Source: Forrester)

33. Don’t forget about the brand! + Managing a global web presence means maintaining the right level of oversight on your brand and messaging. + Establishing a governance structure to set a framework for a global web presence is critical to successfully managing the brand and overall user experience. + Rogue sites are a serious problem. They are created when companies fail to implement effective policies and governance and they tend to damage brand consistency, voice, and user experience. + To mitigate this and proactively manage brand and experience, the governance team should establish and distribute localization guidelines with templates and relevant assets—create a brand site. + Usefulness of guidelines needs to be evaluated on a quarterly basis and new content needs to be presented, reviewed, and approved. 33

35. Do we have a strong content strategy in place?

36. Do we have a global governance team set up?

37. Are we aligned with IT around a centralized CMS?

38. Are we creating guidelines and usage examples globally and sharing locally?

39. Do we have a brand site in place?

40. Do we have localization, not just translation, partners in place?34

41. Thank you. + For more of our ideas, opinions, and thought leadership visit our blog: www.siegelgale.com/ideas + Follow us on Twitter @siegelgale