Building Brands across Languages, Cultures, and Markets

SPECTRUM™ GLOBAL BRAND AUDIT
NAMEBRIDGE® GLOBAL NAMING SOLUTIONS
GLOBAL DESIGN SERVICES
TEAMBRIDGE® EMPLOYEE TRAINING FOR BRAND AWARENESS

How "global ready" is your brand? Are your brand´s attributes, positioning, and equity optimized for the various local cultures and markets around the world? Is your company´s brand proposition for Springfield the same one you´re offering in Shanghai?

The SPECTRUM™ Global Brand Audit assesses the "global-readiness" of your brand and your organization´s ability to support the brand, across a number of key indices.

HOW IT WORKS
We start by understanding your brand´s core attributes, separating global attributes from those that may require localization. In each case, we take great care to respect your brand´s integrity and protect the core attributes that represent the brand essence.

We then gain an understanding of your target markets, consumers, cultures, and create a Brand Value Map® to find insights shared by multiple cultures and markets, and insights unique to specific cultures and markets.

Using the map, we work with you to ensure you have a global value proposition that is supported by effective local positionings for each culture or market.

THE RESULTS
The SPECTRUM™ Global Brand Audit provides you with several key deliverables:

1. a final report that benchmarks the "global readiness" of your company and its ability to deliver on your Brand Promise in the world´s local markets
2. a gap analysis that identifies areas in need of improvement in order to function in a globally effective manner
3. a Road Map for exactly how to develop your global brand strategy
4. How to make your documents translation-ready

and for your end users and customers…
a meaningful brand experience with your product or service, in any language, market or medium.

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What´s in a name? From a branding standpoint, everything

NameBridge® is a creative market research service that field-tests and validates names across languages and global markets.

We "test-drive" your proposed brand names in target cultures and markets and provide answers to critical questions such as:

1. What other words does your brand name sound like?
2. Does the name have positive or negative connotations in the target culture?
3. What synonyms or antonyms come to mind?
4. Are there other associations in the national culture that, good or bad, may influence the perception or viability of the brand?
5. How easy or hard is the name to pronounce for speakers of the target language?
6. If given several names, which one(s) rate highest?

You´ve probably heard the famous case of the Nova, or perhaps other global naming disasters. With NameBridge®, you receive both quantitative and qualitative research that scores and validates your proposed brand names based on actual in-country name testing by native-speaking professionals.

NameBridge® also offers these related services

Global Name Creation
Searching for that perfect global name for a new brand, product or service? We can work with you to create original brand names that will resonate globally and convey the brand attributes that you want to associate with your product or service.

Naming is a complex and tricky business, especially names that work across many languages. Our NameBridge team thinks and creates globally, so we can help you communicate locally.

Logo, Packaging, and Tag Line Testing
How global-ready is your logo, package design, graphics, or other visual design elements?

How effective is your company´s tag line or other brand identity pieces?

NameBridge® tests and validates a wide range of marketing communication elements, both linguistic and visual, using native-speaking, in-country professionals.

The results speak for themselves in each of your local markets.

Global Trademark and Copyright Clearance
Through our global network of legal and professional counsel, we research and clear prospective brand names for global trademark and copyright purposes, ensuring that your validated names are free and clear in your target markets.

From concept to copyright, NameBridge® provides a turnkey service for global brand naming and registration.

• SPECTRUM® Translation and Content Management (TCM) Audit
• Establishment of Language Databases and Multilingual Workflows
• Content Management Implementation and Optimization

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If you work in global communication, you probably produce communication materials that cross a range of customers, markets, media, and possibly, languages. The need for an integrated strategy that brings together design, workflow, and content management cost-effectively is more critical than ever.

Global design encompasses all aspects of designing print or online materials for use across many languages or markets, and calls for expertise in two broad areas:

• Culturally-specific design aspects:
  colors, symbols, graphics, and their effective usage in each market so as not to offend or miscommunicate;
• Technical design aspects:
  fonts for various languages, layout and copy placement, accommodation of text expansion for certain languages, printer requirements, and many other considerations.

Your company´s design and branding standards, stylesheets, and workflow must integrate in both technical and cultural aspects, and we can help.

Our Global Design work includes:

1. Multilingual layout and production services
2. Custom workflows for multilingual catalogs, brochures, inserts, etc.
3. Multilingual websites
4. Online catalogs
5. Multilingual labeling

Our Global Design Team brings together both creative talent and production services to support a wide range of print and online marketing and communication materials.

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Human Resources is increasingly recognized as a critical strategic partner in building and protecting a company´s competitive edge. Both customer-facing and "back-room" staff have much to contribute to successfully positioning and projecting a company´s brand, provided they understand the key role they can play.

The training and team-building necessary to carry out employee training for brand awareness is challenging enough in a single culture, let alone with a diverse employee base, or across a workforce that spans national or cultural borders.

TeamBridge® helps develop, train, and align diverse staff to understand and represent a company´s brand globally and locally.
Through customized TeamBridge training, employees from sales staff to help desk, administrative to IT, learn to embrace, project, and "own" the company´s global brand.

TeamBridge Global Training Programs include:

Brandbassador™ Training Program for Brand Awareness.
Your retail and customer-facing staff—sales associates, customer service reps, help desk people—are the face of your organization and the key to customers´ brand experience. Are they projecting a consistent, positive global brand that is also localized to the particular culture or market? Are you leaving that "balance" of global brand and local brand experience up to chance, or are you training and managing your staff to support it consistently as "Brandbassadors"?

Brandbassador Rewards™ Program.
A performance-based rewards program that we customize to the local cultural value system, existing compensation framework, and job-based metrics architecture. Program development consists of three main steps:

• Establishing program goals and metrics
• Developing rewards program, tied to goals and compensation
• Training and promoting within staff

TeamBridge for Managers™.
How does one manage people across cultures effectively? How can managerial "soft skills" (also known as Emotional Intelligence) be developed and leveraged in a shared environment in global teams with diverse backgrounds?

Imagine a diverse, global management team consisting of, say, VPs from Chicago and London, managers from Frankfurt, Paris, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai, and a technology team based in Bangalore. TeamBridge for Managers™ helps create a shared business culture that serves as a common space for interaction along several key functional axes:

• Time (deadlines, schedules)
• Authority (peer-to-peer, managerial, direct report)
• Human interactions (agreement, disagreement, conflict resolution)
• Communication (listening, speaking, reading, writing)
• Communication tools (email, phone, direct vs indirect, etc.)

The result? A shared managerial platform, with improved performance both within your enterprise and with customer interactions, including:

• Stronger, tighter communication
• More effective uses of communication tools, including email, Web, and conference calls
• Deeper consensus attained
• Stronger awareness of the company brand and strategic goals
• Deeper appreciation of the strengths of diversity, differing opinions, and differences within a common set of objectives.

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