Global brands. Local execution. How do smaller companies win?

The dynamic in global CPG firms are now well established. Invest in the biggest global brands where centralised planning around NPD and advertising can achieve scale and cost efficiencies. But let operational companies in each market focus on executing plans with local retailers using “localised marketing” including the full range of category management work.

But among these biggest companies, there is an emerging problem. Who is thinking about growing the category and the three-way win (brand, retailer, shopper)? The local people working with the retailer “thinking category” no longer have the levers to pull (they don’t control NPD or marketing plans, and sometimes don’t even have market research budgets). The global people are a long way away from the retailer and the store (and the shopper?)

I don’t yet see the arrival of many “global category strategists…”

The beneficiaries of this undoubtedly will be tier 2 local companies that can work much more closely with retailers to come up with win-win thinking. If you can control all the levers in a country, you are much more likely to win retailer backing at the expense of more distant, global brands, unless the latter spend more cash of course.

Partnering with Shopper Intelligence removes these barriers and enables a global company to understand the shopper across multiple countries.