3 PM and Marketing Mistakes in Global Campaigns: Lessons from Pepsi, Tesla, and Lowe’s

Making mistakes is all part of being human. What’s less excusable is stumbling into pitfalls that can be sidestepped with a bit of forethought and coordination. It’s like filling a room with banana peels, then putting on a blindfold and expecting to get out unscathed.

In a marketing context, slip-ups are particularly costly. Brands can be brought down by mistakes that look minor on paper, and it’s no good shutting the gate once the horse has bolted – or the campaign has gone live.

It’s better to nip snafus in the bud early on, which is where effective project management enters the fray. So, without further ado, hold tight as we discuss some potential missteps that any marketer can make and what can be done to steer clear of them.

Source: Photo generated by the author using AI – Microsoft Designer.

1. Ignoring cultural nuances in global campaigns

When brands expand globally, they often forget that what’s appealing in one market might offend or be completely irrelevant in another. This has a multifaceted fallout, with short-term image problems compounded by long-term effects on brand perception.

Case Study

Cast your mind back to 2017, when Pepsi launched an ad featuring Kendall Jenner at a protest. It was meant to resonate universally but ended up being labeled tone-deaf and offensive because it trivialized social justice movements.

At the time, MarketingWeek published research in response to the ad that found that 42% of marketing professionals were convinced the brands on their books weren’t up to speed with the level of diversity expected by modern audiences. At this point, just 13% of marketers were from minority backgrounds, which goes some way to explaining scandals like this.

Cut forward to 2024, and things look a little better. Data from the Association of National Advertisers indicates that 30.8% of industry pros are from minority backgrounds. The bad news is that this is lower than the diversity levels found in the previous year, which sat at 32.3%. Since the population as a whole is 42.2% diverse, there’s still ground to make up.

From a project management perspective, it’s important to remember that:

• Different colors, symbols, and even humor hold unique meanings.
• Holidays and events vary, so timing is crucial for relevancy.
• Language subtleties can change a message’s impact significantly.

Localizing Content

Localization goes beyond bluntly translating text. It’s a process of adapting your entire strategy to fit regional contexts. This includes:

• Visuals: Use images reflecting local customs, fashions, and environments. What works visually in one country may not work elsewhere.
• Messaging: Align messages with regional values and societal norms. What hits home with Western audiences might miss the mark or cause backlash elsewhere, and vice versa.
• Platforms: Social media usage varies by region and even by country. For instance, Facebook is all-conquering in the Philippines with an 87.45% market share but holds just 16.35% of the market in Thailand, where X rules the roost with 71.97% instead.

These three things have to form the foundation of your campaigns if you’re aiming at a global audience – or even one that isn’t limited to a single region. Outline potential problems when putting together a project plan, and schedule regular reviews as progress is made to check that localization efforts are proceeding as intended.

Source: Pepsi’s S’mores Collection, 2022.

Taking Advantage of Tools for Cultural Insights

One reason marketers used to make culturally insensitive mistakes is that even with a thoroughly diverse team, it’s not feasible to grasp every nuance across every market.

Luckily, you can now adopt AI-powered tools like Google’s Market Finder to quickly gather insights into different niches. These platforms provide data on consumer behavior, popular search terms, and competitive analysis specific to each region you’re targeting.

Of course you need to recognize the limits of AI, rather than trusting it blindly. This means continuously validating any automatically unearthed findings with real-world expertise. This is part of including AI in project management effectively, rather than going all-in without really understanding the potential drawbacks.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

There are a few other ways to put cultural awareness at the heart of project management. To do this consistently:

1. Engage Local Experts: Collaborate with marketers who understand local tastes innately.
2. Conduct Thorough Research: Analyze successful campaigns within those regions as blueprints for your strategies.
3. Test Small First: Pilot smaller versions of campaigns before moving forward. Collect feedback early on from target demographics within new markets using focus groups or online surveys tailored to them.

Ignoring these steps invites risk. Once done, reputational damage is hard to reverse, and this won’t only hurt how your brand is perceived by customers. It can also increase recruitment costs by 10% since top talent will need extra incentives to join organizations with a sketchy public image.

2. Overlooking scalability in project planning

It’s surprisingly easy to find yourself halfway through a project only to realize it can’t grow as your audience does. This is inevitable when you overlook scalability early on. It comes about when projects start with short-term goals without considering long-term growth, which limits potential and causes headaches down the road.

Case Study

Each year, retail brands ramp up marketing efforts ahead of Black Friday. Last year, sales reached a record of $9.8 billion, a year-on-year rise of 7.5%. This creates opportunities to shift more stock in 24 hours than in an entire month—however, many brands crack under the pressure of serving a sudden influx of customers.

This was a lesson that Lowe’s learned in 2018, with site performance issues forcing it to suspend online sales at a point when they should have been racking up rapidly. While this puts it in a better position to remain resilient in future periods of peak activity, it illustrates that scalability has to be baked into marketing projects from the get-go.

Here’s why:

• Short-term fixes often fail under increased demand.
• Planning for expansion from day one saves future costs and stress.
• Scalable solutions are more sustainable over time.

Incorporating Scalability in Tech Stack

Your tech stack must handle growth seamlessly. Opt for platforms known for their robust scaling capabilities:

• Cloud-Based Solutions: AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure allow easy resource scaling based on traffic surges. This flexibility ensures your campaigns remain accessible regardless of load spikes.
• Modular Software Design: Use APIs and microservices architecture to add features without disrupting existing systems.
• Industry-Specific Tools: Adopt solutions that are made to meet the needs of organizations in your niche if possible. So, for healthcare businesses, cloud-based practice management solutions will work better than generic alternatives, allowing you to thrive when marketing campaigns send a deluge of new customers your way.

Budgeting with Growth in Mind

Focusing solely on current needs often leads to budget shortfalls when your project outgrows initial estimates. Your focus should be to anticipate growth and plan financially for it. To do this:

• Predict future needs. Consider where you want the project to be in six months, a year, or even five years. Look at historical data from similar projects or industry reports to forecast potential growth.
• Allocate flexible funds. Create a budget that includes flexible funds specifically earmarked for scalability. This might cover additional server capacity, marketing efforts to reach new demographics, or hiring extra team members during peak periods.
• Monitor continuously. Regularly review budgets against actual expenditures and adjust projections accordingly. Scaling often involves unexpected costs, so keeping an eye on financial health helps mitigate risks.
• Invest in training. Allocating part of your budget toward continuous education and training programs focused on scalable technologies like cloud computing will ensure that your team is equipped with the skills needed for future demands.

3. Underestimating the Importance of Cross-Departmental Communication

Marketing teams often work in isolation, focusing on their specific goals without syncing up with other departments. This silo mentality can lead to disjointed strategies and missed opportunities. In fact, a PwC report indicated that this is a problem for 55% of businesses.

Case Study

Tesla is relatively unusual as a company because its leader, Elon Musk, is also one of its main marketing tools. Unfortunately, this regularly leads to unforeseen snafus, placing other departments within the organization in a difficult position.

The Cybertruck is a product that exemplifies this issue. While it may be outselling its rivals 2:1, it is also a case of marketing efforts being prioritized over elements like the realities of engineering and sales.

While an entry-level model costing a hair over $60,000 was initially promised and helped generate more than half a million pre-orders, this vehicle is still absent from Tesla’s lineup as a vehicle that can actually be ordered. So sales teams are stuck trying to convince customers to fork out either $80,000 or $100,000 for the higher-performance, higher-spec models being built.

This is an example of how:

• Siloed efforts result in inconsistent messaging.
• Lack of coordination wastes resources and time.
• Teams miss out on valuable insights from other departments.

Building Integrated Strategies

Integrated strategies help avoid these snarl-ups. Such integrated strategies ensure all departments contribute towards unified goals:

• Joint planning sessions: Regular meetings that include representatives from marketing, sales, product development, and customer service can foster a collaborative environment.
• Unified KPIs: Establish common key performance indicators (KPIs) across departments. For instance, i) marketing focuses on lead generation, ii) sales tracks conversion rates, and iii) customer service measures satisfaction levels post-purchase.

All these metrics should align toward achieving broader company objectives such as revenue growth or market share expansion.

Take Apple’s launch strategy, which is the polar opposite of Tesla’s. Their product design teams collaborate closely with marketing and retail staff to create seamless launch events that generate buzz while ensuring everyone is prepared. This means store employees know key features inside out, and advertising campaigns are synchronized around the world, building anticipation globally and locally.

Of course, Apple’s record in marketing is not perfect, with the apology it issued following the recent iPad Pro campaign being just the most recent instance of imperfection. But even in this, it was clear there was a unified idea behind the project, and that’s to be admired.

Final Thoughts

Hydra-like problems can blight project management in a marketing context. Cut off the head of one, and two more will sprout from the stump.

However, with an eye on the kinds of challenges that contemporary brands face and regularly overcome, this quest to conquer the monsters you face stands the best chance of succeeding.

To do this:

• Get serious about cultural sensitivity and use a combo of automated tools and human expertise to perfect localization.
• Build scalable campaigns and apply the same approach to the infrastructures they need to keep their promises.
• Prioritize cross-departmental communication so that collaboration does not become a stick in the spokes of your promotions.

With all that under control, you can turn your attention to the nitty-gritty of creating great marketing campaigns that people will talk about for decades to come.