GlobalComm Growth Strategies

If you’re like me you’ve been ignoring your 401(k) statement for quite a while now. During tough times like these often ignorance is bliss. But as growth strategists, we can’t ignore what’s going on in the economy if we want our clients to not only survive the current conditions, but thrive.

A recent presentation at a Global Economic & Investment Forum I attend looked to the past for insight into the future. One conclusion was the possibility of today’s market recovery resembling the times following the 1973-1974 recession. During that time interest rates were high and the fear of inflation led commodity prices and land values to shoot up. The aftermath of the spending for the Vietnam War and the Great Society, along with OPEC gaining strength weighed the economy down for years. Finally, in 1980-1981 Paul Volker broke inflation with sky-high rates and the U.S. Dollar rebounded. So, it wasn’t until a long 9 years later, in 1982 that the S&P 500 finally pushed above and remained above its pre-recession high from 1973.

We might see similar things this time around but current budget deficits and the global nature of the economy change the dynamics in a serious way. Nouriel Roubini, the thoughtful yet persistent bear of the past couple of years, has some thoughts that are provocative as opposed to the old news about banks that we’ve all heard. Roubini and Ken Roboff offer a more broad perspective on the impact of our actions to address the housing, corporate and financial crisis. Future inflation, government borrowing, taxes and the value of the dollar are somewhat easy to predict, but it is more challenging to contemplate how currencies, commodities and foreign markets will react in this environment.

How does all of this information help us position our clients for success? While the specific tactics for each need to be defined, the governing strategy seems clear:

First, if we expect a drag on growth in advanced economies such as the U.S. and EU, business leaders will look to emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil for expansion. For global communications this increases the importance of an infrastructure to quickly create, localize and deploy communications to new markets for product introductions.

Secondly, at a time when cash is king, the flexibility to capitalize on currency exchange rates will provide an advantage. I don’t know that I want to square off with a CFO in a discussion of fundamental factors that determine currency values. But I do think any CFO can embrace a strategy and platform that enables them to switch product and service providers anywhere in the world with little or no cost or downtime.

A recent conversation I had with a Sourcing Manager with one of our multi-national clients centered on this topic. One of the established products this company manufactured and serviced was gaining success in new areas of the world. Support documentation for the product was complicated, took a long time to produce and was expensive to localize for each new global market. One solution to lower the cost was to take advantage of technologies and services provided in a country where the exchange rate was more attractive than their current arrangement; effectively producing over 20% savings immediately with no other effort. The amazing part of this story is that the efficiency would be gained not by moving the work from the U.S. to India, but from Europe to the U.S. due to the relative weakness of the U.S. Dollar to the Euro. So, if we follow the money in this real-world example, a company looks to new markets for growth, in this case the Middle East, and benefits from low-cost providers in regions around the world (surprisingly in the U.S.).

So as we navigate our clients through these tough times it’s good to know we have options on the sales/growth side and the expense/cost side. My hope is today’s recovery doesn’t take 9 years. There’s no doubt that when it does recover, though, the world economy will look very different than it ever has. As global communications strategists we are at the center of it all of and our ideas help our clients thrive today and position them for continued success in the future.

Swim with the Swimmers, Bike with the Bikers and Run with the Runners

When I’m not solving the world’s global communication problems, I like to swim, bike and run. I have completed over 25 triathlons including two Ironman races. Please don’t think this means that I am particularly talented or fast at any of the activities. One of my best friends though, Andy Rumsey, is a gifted and accomplished triathlete. In 2007 he qualified for the Ironman Championship held annually in Kona, Hawaii which places him among the best endurance athletes in the world.

Triathletes have somewhat of a ‘jack-of-all-sports, master-of-none’ reputation. This is true because most train in a way that makes them adequate triathletes able to finish a race, but not great swimmers, bikers, or runners. Swimming for example is a highly technical activity. Great swimmers will devote years to training many times a week, year round doing specific drills and sets to develop their stroke. Triathletes like me are really only interested in being efficient enough to swim the race distance without exhausting ourselves before the bike and run portions. To battle this Andy employs a training tactic he calls, “swim with the swimmers, bike with the bikers and run with the runners”. By training with the best of each sport he sharpens his technique and speed; a strategy that makes him elite at each discipline.

This strategy works for global communications too, just replace swimming, biking and running with creating, localizing and deploying. Many companies today, whether it’s a marketing agency, language service provider or print vendor, are trying to be a jack-of-all-trades by providing products or services that are supposed to handle the entire global communication lifecycle. Agencies are being urged to elevate their game. The results, as you can imagine, aren’t championship level.

Multi-nationals, whether they know it yet or not, need to transform their business model to deliver excellence and value along the entire global communication supply-chain. The challenge they face is connecting all of the key stakeholders around the world to facilitate the type of collaboration I’m describing. To do that, they need process and technology experts that enable them to partner with companies great in each discipline. As Tom Friedman sums up nicely in The World is Flat: “We (society) are taking apart each task and sending it around to whomever can do it best”.

The organizations we work with who have jumped in the water are realizing amazing results: acceleration of cycle times, reduced costs, improved productivity and a level of localization in each market that is beyond their wildest expectations. The common triggering event for each of these companies was to change the way their global communication supply chain worked to let the partners they value do what they do best. Technology lets them do this.

Andy is having a great season again so far this year, has set a personal best in a half-Ironman distance race already, and if he keeps this pace will certainly qualify for Kona again. His experience is a valuable lesson. No matter what advances are made in technology, equipment and techniques, he is able to quickly and easily adopt them because his strategy enables him to compete with the best-of-the-best.

Localization of Green

This time of year my wife, Ann, our 3 daughters and I enjoy the short walk from our house to the Farmers Market on Main Street. The market is sponsored by an economic development board on which Ann sits. It draws farmers and shoppers from 3 neighboring counties; traffic that benefits the local Main Street merchants. Of course the other benefit is we have access to organic fruits, vegetables and meats which are locally grown and raised.

My wife, somewhat unknowingly, is capitalizing on the recent trend of viewing business development through a green lens. Two clients I have the pleasure of working with, FedEx and GE, are in the headlines recently for embracing environmental imperatives to drive economic outcomes.

FedEx founder Fred Smith should be applauded for putting his company out front. In 2004 FedEx teamed up with the Environmental Defense fund to launch a hybrid delivery vehicle which is 42% more efficient and produces 90% less emissions than conventional diesel-powered trucks. Today FedEx uses 300 of these trucks even though each costs about $30,000 more than their diesel counterparts and the business case is difficult to make unless fuel prices are in the $4-$5 range.

In a similar way GE will extend their decade-long effort into high-tech batteries. This time though, Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, is interested in benefitting from New York state grants and federal stimulus package dollars totaling $55 million to help offset the $100 million price tag of their proposed battery plant. These batteries will power hybrid locomotives but hopes are they will find other uses such as boats, cars and trucks. Perhaps this will lead to improved hybrid vehicles for FedEx that deliver environmental and economical returns.

I think Smith and Immelt would be proud of their companies’ efforts to make their global communications green too. Each is harnessing print-on-demand technology which provides significant reductions in paper, transportation, emissions and power usage. True, a successful global print-on-demand program requires the right blend of technology, processes and expertise; a balance that can be difficult to create. The good news is that the business case on-demand printing makes is too compelling for business leaders to ignore.

This convergence of environmental and economic concerns seems to be leading to financial support of the important green movement people like my wife are so passionate about. To my family, we enjoy the walk on a Saturday morning and even more, we enjoy the terrific locally grown fruits and vegetables.

Trade Surplus

When I was in high school over twenty years ago Martha Layne Collins was elected the first, and to date the only, woman Governor of my home state Kentucky. I remember what an exciting time that was and one of my good friend’s mother jumped for joy when she heard Collins had defeated baseball legend Jim Bunning by over 100,000 votes (10%).

One of Collins’ accomplishments as Governor was securing state incentives, reverse investments which at the time were rather controversial, to lure Toyota Motors to locate a manufacturing plant in Georgetown, KY. Today thanks in large part to Collins and Toyota Kentucky enjoys a $1 billion trade surplus with Canada. The largest export for Kentucky to Canada is transportation. Toyota is in the headlines these days for more disappointing reasons but they remain an important employer and source of numerous other businesses and jobs created in Kentucky since then.

These were just a few of the topics in a discussion with Consuls from the Consulate of Mexico and Canada hosted by the Kentucky World Trade Center (www.kwtc.org), an organization that Collins is now the chairwoman. KWTC is an affiliate the World Trade Centers Association global network and does great work to facilitate international business and stimulate economic development in Kentucky. I was delighted to see former Governor Collins who is still getting it done and someone who would get my vote today now that I’m old enough to do so.

The future of the way we work

Recent predictions forecast some fundamental shifts underway in the global labor market and suggest significant implications well beyond 2009. Ed Frauenheim, in an article featured at workforce.com details thoughts and predictions from a panel of experts for what the workforce of the future might look like. The top expectation was “an increased focus on infrastructures…to support building strong relationships and collaboration”.


Most clients we work with realize driving growth in global markets and building relationships with key stakeholders is not easy. Managing budgets and schedules in multiple time zones can be equally daunting. To create the leadership position in their relentless pursuit of these global communication imperatives they see the need to build a foundation for world class global collaboration. In doing so, they shape the conditions for what Ed calls a “unified global culture with local strategic and cultural differences” which was the focus of the Global Business category.

At the Localization World conference in Seattle in 2007 I enjoyed a presentation by Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired magazine and the author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business. In his keynote address Jeff described his thoughts on the growing phenomenon of leveraging mass collaboration enabled by the web. The Workforce.com panel identified this process of taking tasks traditionally performed by specific knowledge workers and outsourcing it to large undefined groups of people was identified as well.


To listen to André-Paul Pellet, the Senior Solutions Program Director and Architect at COMSYS Global Enterprise Content Management Practice, an open call such as crowdsourcing will help improve the quality, review and acceptance of localization projects. In our many conversations about the language translation process, Andre’s passion for involving more, not fewer, people is unmistakable as he describes how organizations will ultimately utilize technology in the future to facilitate this new business model.

Developing the infrastructure necessary to meet the needs of futuristic collaboration is a challenge. My prediction is organizations that fail to take the necessary steps to better understand the implications will likely miss out on the rewards of improved performance and reduced costs.

The CMO CIO Gap

Global corporate communications executives are gaining an increasingly important seat in the boardroom. As a matter of fact, 40% these CCO’s now consider the CEO to be their biggest ally in the organization. Research also indicates the CCO’s average tenure is up to 65 months in 2008 compared to 54 months in 2007 thanks in large part the increasing importance of corporate reputation which is anticipated to be the number one communications priority in 2009. One has to imagine that technology plays a critical part of the CCO’s daily activity as social media monitoring and online engagement is often "owned" by the CCO.

The news isn’t quite as good for the Chief Marketing Officer whose average tenure is 28 months. Does this suggest that the CMO’s aren’t getting their technology infrastructure right? The relationship between the CMO and the CIO is one of the most interesting in business today. For a number of reasons there is a natural struggle between the two; a distrust if you will. Some will chalk this up to simply left side-of-the-brain versus right side-of-the-brain. I think it goes a little deeper to the following beliefs:

• CMOs don’t trust the CIO to understand branding and the value of advertising to the larger corporate goals
• CIOs think the CMO is only capable of creative thought and don’t trust them to understand process and logic

The issue though is that marketing needs to embrace technology more that ever. When you know your customer really well, you have the opportunity to change your whole managerial approach. One of the best ways to achieve this is to harness the true power of the Internet to develop superior customer knowledge and drive growth. To accommodate, the CIO and CMO need to collaborate in a more meaningful way. Aligning growth strategies with technical solutions is a great way to kick-start your marketing technology development.