Laura Jones (00:16)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Opinion Party. I'm your co-host Laura Jones.

Jason Gaikowski (00:21)
and I'm Jason Gaikowski.

Laura Jones (00:23)
And this is the podcast that aims to dispel the most pervasive modern marketing myths through the cold, cruel lens of data. And today we're going to be tackling a big one. Some might say world-sized, the myth of a global brand. Now the myth of a global brand. Yeah. Is something we throughout the course of our careers, Jason and I have worked on many global brands, global brands being

Jason Gaikowski (00:39)
World size. Ooh, global brand.

Laura Jones (00:51)
typically branded entities, products, services that are held by some sort of centralized holding company orchestrated by sometimes we might call them ivory towers of sorts, but brands that you need to get your arms and legs and feet wrapped around and wrangle them in on a global basis. And there's a lot of different models for managing global brands.

Some are very centralized. They're run by a very tight core team. Everything comes down from the centralized core team. And it all looks and works together beautifully. That might be a myth, too, as well, by the way. And then there are others that are pretty decentralized but have some best practices, some shared assets, some principles. But one thing actually struck us as very interesting when we started to tackle this topic.

which was that when you look at brands quantitatively through the lens of brand asset valuator, brands can oftentimes look very, very different depending on the market, as you might assume or as you might guess. A brand might be completely oversaturated, commoditized in one market, and might actually be a momentum brand because it's only existed there for a short amount of time.

typically is the case with US brands expanding into global markets. And something that we are always challenged with is how do we accurately represent what a brand looks like on a global level from a quantitative point of view, but then acknowledge that through the cold, lens of data and statistics and just math, which is what happens when you take a bunch of disparate data points and you average them all together.

You sometimes just get something that is garbage in garbage out. And so that's where we'll begin this episode. How do you actually accurately measure and understand and run a global brand acknowledging this tension, this need for wanting global consistency, but also the ability to localize and be very responsive to in-market needs. And with that, Jason, what are your thoughts on this topic?

Jason Gaikowski (03:10)
Well, Laura, you've touched on so many things, right? I mean, I think it's so easy in North America and Europe to miss the fact that Woolworths, right? Dead buried, long gone, not even a commodity brand, an extinct brand in the US. Quite interesting, quite powerful in South Africa, right? The thing that I'm really, really struck by

You know, as you know, a good researcher, when you get a nice pile of data and you got some obvious outliers, right? What's the correct analytical step? You throw away the outliers, right? You throw away the outliers because they really confound your ability to see the pattern. And, you know, I think what we can observe in our industry, even in your tee up, right? This desire for global consistency.

it's really taken at face value. And when you look at the data, what I find really, really interesting is that we may be paying too much attention to outliers, right? So we did this big analysis earlier this year. It involved 17 markets. It involved just over 20,000 brands around the world. And what we were looking to identify is among these brands worldwide,

Who are the most interesting? Who are the most connected? Who are the strongest brand entities worldwide? And what you see in the data is quite interesting. If you ask the question, what are the most powerful brands worldwide? It results in a very different list than if you ask the question, what are the most powerful worldwide brands?

Right, now the difference is, if you look at a brand that almost none of us have heard of, like Brastemp out of Brazil, or Havaianas, if you are a fan of sandals, what you will find is that by any objective measure in the world, these are singularly in the top 50 most powerful brands traipsing the globe. But they're not global brands, they're single market brands.

Right. And when you, when you start to think about this different methodology, what you find is there's only about 30 brands that are going to show up on the list, no matter how you build the list. It's of course, Apple, Google, Nike, Disney, Samsung, right? These are global icons. The real secret to their globality is the mere fact that they're present in many, many, many markets.

but they're not equally strong in each market, Adidas is far stronger in Brazil and in Europe than it is in North America and China. Nike is of course far more powerful in the United States than it is in Australia and Southeast Asia, right? And so what you actually find is no matter how much we talk about global brands no matter how much we talk about

global consistency, there's very little evidence that a consistent global brand actually exists. And if it does, it may in fact be an outlier. Maybe the closest thing that you find is Disney in terms of having a consistent level of meaning and a consistent degree of strength across all of the markets in which it operates. But Google in the US is not the same as Google in Europe.

Google in Europe is far less trustworthy and trusted than it is in North America. And so certainly the data suggests to me that no matter how much we may think about building global brands,

The reality is brands really show up in a local way. You can see this in the United States. In the Southeast United States, there's a rich and interesting brandscape of local regional brands that outperform the national leaders in the US market. What you can observe in Latin America is the most powerful, healthiest, strongest, high-velocity brands.

Laura Jones (07:18)
Hmm.

Jason Gaikowski (07:44)
are probably not the global entries, right? Some of them, yes, generally no, right? The number one beer brand in Latin America is in fact not Budweiser.

If you go to Mongolia, you're going to find Tiger and you're going to find Chinggis Beer absolutely dominant local entities. So my take on the data is, yeah, brands are local. And brand battles, brand growth is won and lost at a local level. And occasionally, we have an outlier.

And so I'm really, really interested to get into this conversation with our, with our guests who's traveled the globe building brands and building business with our friends at General Mills. And so

going to hand the mic back to you, Laura, and let's kick this party off.

Laura Jones (08:36)
Yeah, welcome Peter Everett to opinion party. So great to have you.

Peter Everett (08:41)
Hello, thanks for having me on.

Laura Jones (08:44)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna give our listeners just a little bit of background and why we've invited you on today. Peter, you have extensive global experience, as Jason mentioned, working for companies the likes of General Mills.

And you've overseen marketing strategy across Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, pretty much everywhere in the globe. So I can't imagine a more perfect person to have on our podcast today talking about this global brand conundrum. You've been responsible for driving brand growth and relevance in very diverse and complex markets and navigating cross-functional teams, backgrounds, languages.

And I'm just really excited to hear your take on this. So let's kind of get into it. I know that you have a background in international business. And what was most surprising kind of coming out of that academic world and getting boots on the ground in these markets? What didn't they teach you in B-school?

Peter Everett (09:57)
Well, let me answer it with a quick story. So one thing that, one thing they don't teach you, and I think speaks to the topic of what we want to talk about today. So quick story. So I was in France, we were working on a breakfast cereal that was supposed to be positioned or is positioned against weight management. And we, you know, I'm American, I'm bringing an American lens. I was working with some other folks who are British and American. So very kind of Anglo lens to what we were trying to.

Jason Gaikowski (09:58)
Yeah

Peter Everett (10:27)
how we were thinking about how we were going to position this brand. And we're talking to a consumer. So this is in Paris, right? Center of Paris, beautiful, near Montmartre, all that. And we're having a one-on-one discussion with this consumer. And so it's weight management, right? So as an American, I'm thinking about carbohydrates and proteins and fat levels and, you know, et cetera, kind of breaking my food down into this like scientific way of thinking. so we had the interviewer, one of the questions we had her to ask was,

There's a series of questions about carbohydrates. Like, how do you think about carbohydrates? Which like, if you're an American thinking about weight management, this makes a ton of sense. We had this whole series of questions we were ready to ask. And the interviewer asked the first question and it was something about like, what's your opinion about carbohydrates or whatever, like really generic broad question. And the woman respond, responds, what's a carbohydrate? And that was when I realized like, wait a minute.

there's a completely different way of thinking about this that reflects a lot of French society, French culture, how the French think about food that was completely different from the way an American thinks about this or maybe an Anglo consumer thinks about it. So at that point, was like, left turn. Let's find a different way to talk about the benefit. The benefit was still super relevant, right? But the way we were going to talk about the benefit turned out to be quite a bit different from what we were thinking about.

Laura Jones (11:54)
Yeah, what did it end up being? I'm curious. I would love to live in a world where I don't even know the meaning of a carbohydrate.

Peter Everett (12:00)
Right. Well, I so I would say, first of all, the part of the inside of that was for a French consumer, French consumers, this is going to be a gross stereotype, but generally don't break their food down into macros and scientific bits and blocks, right? The way I think Americans tend to do. So for her, it was more about whole foods, wholesome foods. It was more about the ingredients we were using. It was more about, you know, is it going to satisfy me because I'll enjoy it for breakfast? And then

that'll keep me going until lunch or until whenever my next meal is. So it's just a much more holistic way of thinking about it and a different, we ended up coming up with a completely different way of communicating the benefit of that so that it connected with her. And it worked, but it's just a very different set of, we ended up in a very different place from our assumption when we started.

Laura Jones (12:52)
Yeah.

Jason Gaikowski (12:52)
You

know, if I connect that to what I think we can observe in the data and also just what we often experience with clients is it's so easy at HQ to have a set of theories and models and perspectives that, like you assume, you can just export to the rest of the world.

Peter Everett (13:15)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Gaikowski (13:15)
and really lose sight of the fact that like the mental models, the cultural norms and expectations, and even the relationships that individuals have with different categories, different brands, different classes of food are so foreign to your own that if decisions are made from a distance, you are highly, highly likely to miss the mark.

Peter Everett (13:42)
Yeah, and there can be a fundamental assumption that you make without even realizing it. And when you put that assumption in some form in front of a consumer, you realize quickly like, this doesn't make any sense. also, it highlights the need if you're on a global team to talk a lot with the local team, right? To understand, and sometimes those assumptions, if you're only doing it on Microsoft Teams or on Google Meet or whatever, sometimes those assumptions are a little difficult to uncover.

because they're implicit for both parties, but the assumptions might be completely different. so doing it in person helps a lot. Doing it with consumers helps a lot. But you got to have those discussions to make sure you identify what those implicit assumptions are.

Laura Jones (14:29)
Yeah, and you know, let's back up for a minute, because we've been jumping right in talking about global brands. But you know, what is your definition of a global brand? What's been your experience on working on brands that are available in multiple places in the world? Is that just the definition of a global brand, or is there some other layer on top of it that designates a global brand?

Peter Everett (14:55)
Well, for me, a brand is a promise, right? To the consumer or to the customer, the brand is a promise of something. It can be an experience. It can be a food that does a certain thing. It can be a bike that does a certain thing. Whatever that is, the brand is a promise. So for me, a global brand is a brand that works across a lot of different countries and represents basically that same promise.

in all those countries. your provocative idea around myth of a global brand starts to put us a little bit in the space of like, maybe global brands don't exist. I think a global brand exists if it represents basically the same promise across all those countries, knowing that there's inevitably going to be nuance and difference from one country to another.

Laura Jones (15:46)
Yeah, what aspects would you say are critical to keeping consistent across multiple markets to really truly define that promise?

Peter Everett (15:57)
I would say that the job that the brand does, so like Snickers is one that I love, right? It's a really good example, I think, of the brand promise is really clear. The insight that backs up the brand promise is really clear. And I think it's generally consistent across all markets. But then the way it shows up in the market can be quite different, right? Like the core product is basically the same, but...

pack sizes and formats are different, but then they also have lots of line extensions that are different from one country to the next. China versus France versus the US, that brand does show up a little bit differently from market to market, but in a way that the core promise is still the same. And then it's adapted a little bit with maybe some extra juice, let's say, that helps it to be more relevant to the local consumer.

Laura Jones (16:46)
Yeah, definitely. And I imagine a good amount of research, of data, of testing kind of goes into finding those unifying elements. Can you walk us through just kind of some best practices for how to get to that? imagine, you know, align something that you're probably referring to as like that, you know, critical piece that is that universal insight. How much, explain to our audience just how much work.

that is and not only how it is to develop it, but to keep it fresh and consistent.

Peter Everett (17:20)
Well, I would take that at two levels. I think the first level is really understanding the category and the consumer really well. Because the way that a local consumer in Australia versus the US versus Poland, let's say, are going to understand the category and how that category fits into their lives and the incumbents in that category is going to have a huge impact on how they think about it.

Laura Jones (17:27)
Hmm.

Peter Everett (17:46)
And so it starts with understanding that, you know, we can talk about some good stories in that space if that's, if we want to go there. But you got to understand the category and the consumer before you even get to the brand. Right. And then if you want to bring a brand, you know, if, if, if, if we're talking about global brands and you want to bring an existing brand to a new market, it starts with understanding that category and the consumer. And then it's really getting into, okay, at the category level.

Let's talk about penetration and repeat. Let's talk about both for the category as well as for the key brands. Let's talk about distribution. know, all the, all the core lessons of marketing apply, you know, the four P's and all that, that all applies. but then it's about building a, a story for that market of where your brand can differentiate versus the incumbents can bring new real value versus what the category already provides for consumers and start to build a plan that's probably a little bit different.

for that country than what you've done in other countries in order to build a successful brand for the first time in a new market.

Laura Jones (18:50)
Sounds like there's some good stories there. Can you tell us one?

Peter Everett (18:53)
yeah, sure. So one that I worked on, was like near and, I mean, near and dear to my heart and, and, know, nearly broke me. we were, launching Yoplait yogurt in China. so I had never been to China. had spent a lot of time in Europe and a lot of time traveling to other markets, but had never been to China. And, I got there, with a mandate to like build the factory, figure out the product portfolio, figure out how to position this brand.

and make it super successful. And when I got there, the factory was like literally a concrete slab in the ground. And it was like, okay, so imagine some walls over here and then let's take it from there. so we did just what we said, right? So we spent a lot of time with consumers while we were working in Harham building the factory. We also spent a lot of time one-on-one with consumers, just getting to know how they thought about the category, what role the category played, and even just how they consume the category. So like one really

Simple example, in China, most of the yogurt that people consume is actually drunk, like they drink it, rather than eating it with a spoon. And so a lot of times that's like through a straw or in a bottle. Okay, so consumers have a completely different expectation of what yogurt should look like. It should be thin, usually it's thin. It should be drinkable, et cetera. And we spend a lot of time with consumers one-on-one digging through that.

Then as we built the concept of what we wanted to launch, what we thought we wanted to launch, obviously you move from like asking them a lot of questions to showing them a lot of prototypes. And as we're showing them a lot of prototypes, we're having those same one-on-one conversations with consumers, but trying to get feedback on what do you like about this? What's different? Does it really bring something new to the category? And then once we felt like we had something good there, then we tested it quantitatively as well with consumers. One of the biggest surprises for me at the time,

when we did some of that quantitative testing was also testing on pricing. where the test told us we should price this thing was like super high for the category, like three X the category average for a yogurt. And we ended up pricing it at something like two and a half X the category average, because we didn't have the guts to go all the way to three X. And it flew, like when we launched it, it flew, right?

Jason Gaikowski (21:14)
you

Peter Everett (21:19)
All of my assumptions about the US kind of yogurt category and the French yogurt category, we had to really rethink all of them from the ground up so that we could create a successful launch, it was super successful. Within the first year, it was a significant player in the market.

Laura Jones (21:34)
Yeah, it sounds like you managed to come up with a concept that demanded incredible pricing power. What was driving that, do you think?

Peter Everett (21:42)
So the first thing we did was, again, understanding what the consumers cared about. One thing consumers really cared about was milk quality. And I don't know for the listeners how much they know or what their preconceived notions might be about how Chinese consumers think about food. But one thing that was a surprise to me was Chinese consumers knew a lot about milk quality and they knew where the milk was coming from and they paid a lot of attention to it. Because there's been

know, concerns in the past around adulteration of dairy products and things like that, right? So keep people really tuned into this in a way that Americans or Europeans are mostly not. We went deep into that. built a really strong relationship with the dairy partner. And we were the only brand that was a hundred percent fresh milk, which I don't know if the, you would know that, but most yogurt is not made with a hundred percent fresh milk.

And we pounded that message super hard. That was like part of the core differentiation. one of the things that worked really well there was we had a point of difference that was really meaningful for the consumer. The consumer understood it. And because we were a startup, we could kind of build the model however we wanted to build it. It was going to be very difficult for our established competitors to come mimic that benefit because they had already built their supply chains around, using a lot of milk powder.

So we did a few things like that, right? That helped us a lot. We had a very strong ingredient story and quality story that helped us be successful early on.

Jason Gaikowski (23:15)
You know, here's a couple of things that, or a handful of things that jump out at me from your story and your experience, Peter. Number one, don't make promises that your supply chain can't deliver. Right? And I, what I, what I observe oftentimes is marketing and brand decisions are perhaps too often made without really understanding what supply chain is and is not capable of.

but perhaps more, more on point, what you're describing globally recognizable brand at the top level competing and winning with a fundamentally different product, right? Yogurt you drink versus yogurt you eat with a spoon. a fundamentally different kind of pricing strategy, right? Two and a two and a half X, two and a half X competitive benchmark.

You're probably not winning with that strategy in the US or Europe. And a profoundly different point of differentiation, right? Than what you would find. And so, you know, what that suggests to me is even under the umbrella of globally recognizable brand on the ground and China to compete and win.

It was really about tapping into the local realities and local competitive opportunities. I wonder how that lesson scales to other categories and other parts of the world.

Peter Everett (24:54)
Yeah, I think that's well said. And it's an interesting case because it was a global brand, but we did a lot to adapt it locally, I think every brand, regardless of the brand, you're working on cars or whether you're working on technology or whether you're working in food. You need to figure out where you stand on that spectrum of globally consistent, globally uniform all the way to

something that's locally, it's going to a lot from one market to the next. I think every category is a little different. A lot of that has to do with history too, right? Like you think about yogurt, yogurt is a category that has a lot of history in different markets. And in China, it has a lot of history too. In France, it has a ton of history. that's why it has developed the way it has in that country. When you think about tech products,

you know, lot of those categories are brand new or they didn't exist 10 years ago. So there's a chance it doesn't always work out that way, but there is a chance to have more homogeneity in some of those categories depending on how the, depending on how the competition evolves.

Laura Jones (26:03)
Yeah, fascinating just to hear that you literally built the supply chain from the ground up. And I'm curious about just maybe some of the dynamic in between the role that you were playing in the local market and any tension or kind of, can you just describe the relationship in between you in that market being given a very clear mandate, build this thing and make it fly off the shelves?

But then what the expectations might have been from other, what we'd call the global marketing team, kind of those sometimes viewed as the brand guardians that want everything to just look and smell and act very consistently because that's really what builds a global brand. So did you experience any of that at all in that role or maybe in any other roles or have had various experiences with that push in that poll of global and local?

Jason Gaikowski (26:41)
You

Peter Everett (26:59)
Laura, I don't know what you're talking about. mean, between a French head office and a Chinese local operation, you think there was tension? mean, I can't even imagine, you know, how that how that could happen. Right, exactly. No, I mean, lots of opinions, for sure. Lots of different points of view of what the brand should, how the brand should show up. There was a lot of debate in that particular case on the Yau Tla example. There was a lot of debate on the color red.

Laura Jones (27:01)
Eh.

Jason Gaikowski (27:03)
Hehehehehe

It was all the same playbook, it smooth sailing every day.

Laura Jones (27:12)
Right?

Peter Everett (27:29)
how much red should we have versus how much red should we not have on the packaging and, strong views on, on, on all sides of that question. but I mean, to the, to the credit of like, I think both sides in that situation, the one thing that we were always really clear on was like, okay, what's the core promise of Yoplait and what's the, you know, the, the Yoplait proposition is generally about taste in all markets. Like it's the.

It's the delicious yogurt, right? Like there's other brands that are maybe like really functional and you know, have certain health benefits or whatnot. Yoplait Yoplait is almost always the really tasty one. And so that was consistent, right? So the, the, the core of the brand was, was, was clear, but it, to the credit of the global team, they actually gave us a lot of flexibility. They were probably more flexible than most teams, in, that kind of a space. They gave us a lot of flexibility to.

create something that we felt was really relevant for the local consumer. And if I can let you in on a little secret too, I think part of it is just pragmatic because part of it depends on where the stuff is made. Like if the factory is local, you inherently have a lot more control than if all countries are sourcing from one factory or all countries are sourcing from a couple of factories around the world, right? And in yogurt, because it's a fresh dairy product, you have to have your factory close to your point of sale.

Jason Gaikowski (28:44)
Yeah.

Peter Everett (28:57)
And, and in, just in practical terms, that gives you a lot more flexibility, then, then, then other categories would, I mean, the other aspect was like, think our, our global team based in France also had seen this category developed really differently, you know, from the UK to France, to the U S to, you know, UAE, et cetera, the category had developed really differently from country to country. And so they recognize that and they knew that, okay, you're going to have differences from one market to the next because.

That's the nature of this category. That's how the category operates. If you think about like cars, for example, I would think there's a lot more tension in the car space, you know, because there's a really powerful reason for them to have economies of scale at the manufacturing level. And those trade-offs, if you make a trade-off, it's a really expensive trade-off. So you've got to be really clear. There's an ROI attached to that trade-off.

Laura Jones (29:52)
Definitely.

Jason Gaikowski (29:53)
It,

you know, it makes me wonder and I have no data on this, but from what you, from what you said, I, I think there's a fair hypothesis that truly global brand strategies that like put a high emphasis on homogeneity.

Maybe in response to supply chain and manufacturing infrastructure decisions that have already been made, right? Like if you've decided that you are going to manufacture in one place and chase the world's demand, your ability to really fine tune your product to individual nuances of each market is pretty constrained.

Right? And so your only viable path may, may be the same promise made in the same way, delivered in the same way, everywhere and everywhere and anywhere. Not because it's the right competitive marketing strategy, because it's just a constraint that's placed upon you by your supply chain.

Peter Everett (30:48)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right, right. And hopefully there's an economic benefit attached to that. You know, like it makes the product less expensive and that trade off is worth making. There's still another layer though that you can customize to the market, even if the product is homogenous from one country to the next. You know, there's still, like in my view, you still have this brand that has a global promise and that needs to be consistent and that needs to show up consistently for consumers. But then the way the local team activates against that.

Jason Gaikowski (31:03)
One would hope.

Peter Everett (31:28)
Again, like think about the laws of marketing, the four Ps of marketing. Our distribution strategy is obviously going to be different from one country to the next. Like how we advertise, where we advertise, even a lot of the communication. Most global brands are operating today where I would say maybe 30, 40 % of the communication is global. Maybe less depends on the category, but.

And the balance is all local, right? It's produced locally. So there's still a lot of opportunity for the local team there to put their stamp on it and to make sure that it's as relevant as possible for the consumer, even if they don't touch the product. So there's a lot we can talk about there too.

Laura Jones (32:08)
And you've hit on a critical piece of this, right, which is having almost a flexible operating system for a global brand that allows the ability to localize, if you will, right, with the ability to have that connective tissue and make that promise, whether it be taste. I mean, I'm thinking of an example I worked on.

the famous MasterCard campaign price less that ran for, gosh, I think it must have been close to 20 years and is still in some iterations, you know, at least strategically rooted. And one of the things that MasterCard did was,

the what matters research, right? So their overarching strategy was the best way to pay for everything that matters. And of course, the priceless campaign was one application of that, but that campaign was a hungry beast and it needed to be fed constantly with new fresh insights and sparks of inspiration and really

Peter Everett (32:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Laura Jones (33:18)
As a strategist, as part of that campaign, we relied very heavily on pretty significant global strategic planning and research infrastructure. Every year there was an annual What Matters research that was performed, a big global study. And we would go in and we would kind of try to unearth and bubble up to the surface what was happening, what was in the pulse, as well as a very connected network of practitioners.

Back in the day, we were doing it all on conference calls. Now, obviously, we're much more accelerated in that connecting way. But it took a lot of infrastructure and work. Having worked with many global teams, are there any ways that you suggest a marketer go about setting up those networks, be it formal or informal, of people all working on one brand for different

you know, the best outcomes, so to speak. there any rituals, practices, cadences of connections, research, things like that that you would recommend?

Peter Everett (34:26)
Yeah.

Well, there are, I mean, to talk about research really quickly, like there are things you should be doing consistently across your key markets, right? So typically what we would do, depending on the business, we would identify maybe five markets globally that we think are reasonably representative of all of the markets. You you kind of cluster them into groups and make sure that there's one market where all the core research goes through each of those lead markets.

brand health tracking, awareness tracking, things like that. You're doing all of that consistently in each of those lead markets. So that as a team, you're all able to see that together. Cause the global team needs to see it, but the local teams also need to see it, right? They need to understand the nuance. And hopefully if they see that their brand awareness is lower than, you know, the country in the next region, they can learn from that and they can figure out what does that mean for us? And maybe there's an opportunity there. The other thing I'd say is like, I don't know, since COVID,

you know, all global travel came screeching to a halt and I think global marketers suffered from this more than, you know, people who work in a single market. because we cut travel entirely for, you know, a year and half or whatever during the pandemic. And then even coming back, I don't think travel is back to where it was. Like generally the sense I get from people is that travel is not where it was previously. And it's great that we can have teams calls and, you know, zoom calls and all that.

But like nothing replaces going to the home of a consumer with a global, you know, global marketer and a local marketer and seeing that together and experiencing that together and having that conversation with a, with a consumer. And then the other thing I'd say, nothing replaces is like going out for a drink afterward and getting to know them personally, right? Like having that personal connection that exists beyond like transactional Microsoft teams calls.

Jason Gaikowski (36:15)
You

Peter Everett (36:25)
And that's where you start to really figure out like, we actually had this, you know, on, on unseen assumption on our side, that was different from the assumption on your side, you know, or you can ask them, if you're the global marketer in that situation, you can ask the local country person, like, what's the thing that really annoys you about the brand or the product portfolio or whatever it is. And my gosh, like sometimes the things you hear, really opens up insight to the business and to the consumer that you didn't even realize.

Again, you're making an assumption about it, but you didn't realize that was a faulty assumption. like having that, having those in-person things really matter. And like on Häagen-Dazs, one thing our team on Häagen-Dazs has done really well for a long time is they, when they do get together as a team, you know, like a, a good chunk of the global team, like the markets plus the global team is they try to do a Häagen-Dazs activity together, right? They try to do something that's kind of luxurious or they go to some place that's kind of trendy and

know, indulge themselves in something that brings the brand to life, brings that brand kind of feel to life. So that as a team, they're all living in that together.

Laura Jones (37:35)
Yeah, great point. Share a drink, eat some ice cream together, participate in the lives of your audience together and connection, right? There really is no substitute for that. So that's really great advice. Yeah, and I was hoping that you'd bring up Häagen-Dazs, because you've done some pretty cool work with that brand, especially in the ways of more...

Peter Everett (37:39)
Totally.

Laura Jones (38:02)
social issues and sustainability. Can you talk a little bit about those initiatives? Some really great stuff.

Peter Everett (38:08)
Sure, so one thing I'm proud of, the work the team has done for a couple of years now on the social side is for International Women's Day every year, Häagen-Dazs has really taken that on and made that an event for the brand. you'll see that show up in the shops around the world, Häagen-Dazs shops around the world. You see that show up on the packaging and Häagen-Dazs has now kind of started a...

bursary program, I guess you could say, where they're sponsoring women doing interesting and creative things around the world. And it's women from around literally any country in the world. They can apply for this. And then Häagen-Dazs supports them with a little bit of a financial stipend that helps them do the work that they're inspired to do. And it can be arts. It can be, you know, in the public sphere supporting their community somehow.

It can be in any space that fits that sort of entrepreneurial vibe that Häagen Dazs has. And it's celebrating the founders of the brand. On the sustainability side, there's been a lot of work in terms of, and frankly, as a global brand, we struggle sometimes to figure out how best to communicate that because there's a lot of work done around sustainability of the vanilla supply. I mean, the vanilla supply coming out of Africa and Madagascar is a big challenge.

And so there's been a lot of work done locally with the farmers to make sure that that supply is done in a sustainable way and it supports them as farmers. Cocoa is another area where like the cocoa supply has been really volatile. And with the climate change that's coming, that's also an area of big concern, right? Because like we all love chocolate and we all want to enjoy our chocolate products, but the...

the cost of cocoa has gone up, but also the sustainability of that supply is challenged by climate change. So the brand is on a lot of things partnering with farmers on the ground in these different markets, in these different countries, to make sure that we can support them in the best way possible.

Laura Jones (40:14)
Yeah, that's, I love those examples. Actually, one of the first brands I'd worked on as an intern, the agency had Häagen-Dazs and I thought one of the neat things about that client was they gave the agency a Häagen-Dazs freezer and stocked it with ice cream. And so I had a really, yeah, I had a really fun summer eating just the raspberry parts off of the raspberry sorbet coated ice cream bars.

Peter Everett (40:31)
So you are lucky.

Laura Jones (40:44)
But I digress. Yeah, no, mean, you've pointed on, you've touched on a really important issue too, which is something that is quite universal, like International Women's Day, right? But there's all different cultural nuances or different places in the world where perhaps there's different cultural conversations. And it is an onus on global brands to be focusing on things like sustainability and like,

Peter Everett (41:07)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Jones (41:14)
some social kind of issues in order to really be the beacon that a lot of consumers look up to brands to be. So that's a really exciting work.

Peter Everett (41:22)
Yeah.

And if I can share too, on the International Women's Day, it was interesting example where that idea, this is an example of an idea that bubbled up from a market and it became a global idea. So it started in one market and it started by the team in the Middle East, which like, know, given women's rights issues and all that in the Middle East, it was a really powerful topic for the brand to bring on in that market. And then we realized like, there's a great cause here.

There's a great connection also with the history of the brand. So it's authentic for the brand to be playing in this space. Because Häagen-Dazs was started by a couple, right? was Rose and Reuben Mattus in Brooklyn, New York that started the brand. And Rose was a key driving force behind the creation of that brand. So part of it was celebrating her legacy. And it was a great example of it. It started with a local team's creativity. The global team was...

curious enough and willing to find good ideas in the markets and bubble them up. And then it turned into more of a global activation.

Laura Jones (42:34)
Fascinating. That's right. Cause Häagen-Dazs is a, it's a made up name, right? They made it up to sound fancy. I always, I always love that story. Well, great. Peter, this has been a fascinating conversation about global brands, about your extensive experience working on them. I loved all of the stories that you shared with us. Excellent, excellent tips for marketers building global brands and also just

Peter Everett (42:38)
It is made up name. That's right. That's right.

Laura Jones (43:03)
being better marketers, connecting on a human level with teams, the world increasingly is a smaller and smaller place and the responsibility is on all of us to continue to make it a connected place. So thank you so much for your time and for joining us at a opinion party.

Peter Everett (43:20)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jason Gaikowski (43:23)
Peter,

always great.

Laura Jones (43:25)
Well, that was amazing. I just love hearing stories from other places and other cultures that are so unlike our own, but also so universal. The human experience, just really does remind me of how universal the experience, the human experience is if we just look hard enough, huh?

Jason Gaikowski (43:27)
LJ.

Now for sure, mean, and you know, especially someone that has had the responsibility and the opportunity to get on the ground. I mean, and literally build a brand from a slab of concrete up. Right. think there's like really important and pragmatic lessons there. And some of that absolutely is the universal fruit of digging into humanity. Right. Like have a drink with your local counterpart.

Pay attention to local ideas and look for opportunities to scale them up. Spend time with your customers, even in their homes, to truly understand their needs and what is valuable to them. But then also really invest in localization where it gives you differentiation, where it gives you pricing power, right? Where it...

gives you the kind of relevance that perhaps a homogeneous global offering just can't deliver in order to compete and win.

Laura Jones (44:51)
I love your use of the word homogenous there. Was that a dairy pun or are you just...

Jason Gaikowski (44:57)
God, wish I was that clever, I'm just, I'm just, good God,

Laura, you're the, you're the, you're the charming clever one. I just, I just say random stuff.

Laura Jones (45:08)
Totally not true. But, well that was all good fun Jason, as usual. And I think our time here is about wrapping to a close. So thanks everyone for joining us at another episode of Opinion Party. If you liked what you heard today, please hit that subscribe button.

Check us out at the opinion party dot com if you want more information about brand asset valuators global brand methodology Can go to B A V group dot com there'll be some notes in the the show So if you want to follow up on any of the data check it out there and in the meantime Get out from behind that desk and go see the world Take care

Jason Gaikowski (45:51)
Bye everybody.