Global package, global brand

In 2003, McDonald's announced that all of its restaurants -- 30,000 in over 100 countries -- would soon be adopting the same brand packaging for menu items. According to a company press release, the new packaging would feature photographs of real people doing things they enjoy, such as listening to music, playing soccer, and reading to their children. McDonald's global chief marketing officer was quoted as saying, "It is the first time in our history that a single set of brand packaging, with a single brand message, will be used concurrently around the world." Two years later, the company appeared to backpedal when it announced plans to localize nutritional value charts on its packages.
To the extent that international brands appeal to global tastes, worldwide packaging strategies might be expected to show signs of convergence, especially as consumer tastes around the world become more homogeneous. But there is little evidence that this is happening.
Computer manufacturer HP strives to convey brand personality on packages that may need to accommodate text in as many as eight local languages. Fast-moving consumer goods companies, for their part, have hardly been more successful in finding global solutions to their packaging needs. Unilever standardizes some branded products while localizing others. Procter & Gamble adjusts branding strategies across borders. P&G markets its brands in Asia under the company brand name, but in Europe and the US, the product brands are not blatantly branded as P&G brands.

Much of the reason is that, with the notable exceptions of a few mono-brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, few international brands address the same markets wherever they are sold. Mark Kennedy, chief strategy officer at the brand consulting firm Landor Associates, is of the opinion that the term "global brand" is actually a misnomer when applied to most brands marketed by international companies. "There are very few truly global brands -- brands that occupy a similar space in multiple markets from the point of view of who they are targeted against and their level of premium-ness in that market. Do they do the same kind of job in all the markets they are in? If they don't, I'm not sure they are global brands," he says.
Professor Kees Sonneveld of Victoria University in Australia is president of the International Association of Packaging Research Institutes. Sonneveld agrees that the future for global marketing involves greater product and branding differentiation -- at the local rather than the global level. "[W]ithin countries, markets are becoming more and more differentiated," he says. "Not only by age and social sections but also in terms of cultural diversity, that is, ethnic groupings. In fact, most consumer markets around the globe are moving towards becoming multi-sector markets with the sectors decreasing fast in size. How far are we away from marketing packaged consumer products that are designed to meet the needs and requirements of a particular single individual?"

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