SUMMER • 2016 | STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE

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Better Together..

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By Markus Saba, and David S. Thompson, CA-AM

We’ve all seen it before. Walking through an international

convention, you see a product booth split into two–the same brand with

two campaigns, one for each partner. At another booth, you notice the same

brand also has two different campaigns, but this time it’s one approach for the

US and one for the rest of the world. And then there’s the more extreme case of

the brand that uses multiple names and logos across the globe!

Best Alliance Practices for Building a Global Brand

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Align on brand objectivesAt the outset, alliance partners need to align on the details of some basic objectives of a global brand, in-cluding:

One global brand: Build a global brand and campaign in which every affiliate or country is fully aligned and bought in. One brand that is effective in every market maximizes the brand opportunity and minimizes costs and duplication. (Talk to your partner about what “one global brand” looks like to them, and align on a com-mon view.)

Customer-focused brand: Build a global brand that reso-nates with all of your key stakeholders. In pharma, this is usually physicians, payers, and patients. (While this of course would vary by industry, the concept is the same: Identify your intended marketing targets clearly.)

Ownership: Build a global brand that both alliance partners own equally. (This final step is all about ex-ecuting an aligned global brand strategy. Be sure that you and your partner have a clear and agreed-upon plan of execution.)

Without a doubt, building a global brand is a complex, difficult, and time-consuming endeavor. Gaining alignment across countries and functions is no small task, and the challenge is amplified when more than one company is involved. In fact, the risk of failure increases ex-ponentially when the work is performed in the context of an alliance, and the partnership’s suc-cess often hangs in the balance.

Success is made even more difficult given the conflict inherent in most alliances: One firm is the asset originator, and the other firm is the “bought-in” partner. This usually results in one group leading and driving the brand-ing process, and the other group objecting, challenging, and approving the process. While this sounds suboptimal, the conflict created by objecting, challenging, and approving is not necessarily bad if it results in improving the global brand. Said another way, value is created by conflict when it objects, challenges, approves, and improves the global brand.

Based on many years’ experience in managing alliances, we see four key inflection points that must be addressed as companies come togeth-er to co-market an alliance product. While value can be increased or diminished at many stages of the global branding process, paying close attention to the inflection points covered in the following paragraphs will improve the odds that your global brand will be enhanced by the partnership.

Global team transfers: In creating your global launch team, strategically assign global marketing personnel from your key markets that are designated to be the launch leader in their home markets. For example, our global team consisted of two individuals from the US affiliate who were tapped to be the US launch leaders. This approach also is extremely helpful in countries that typically exhibit high sensitivities and marketing nuances.

Wave I leaders and the global launch team should meet frequently (monthly and then eventually weekly) and communicate often. Workshops provide great oppor-tunities to seek input, gain alignment, listen, and learn from each other. Wave II countries are “informed” at this stage (quarterly and then monthly). You will need to reach out and communicate often enough so that Wave II countries are not surprised, and so that they have the opportunity to provide feedback. Wave III countries should be updated on an annual or bi-annual basis.

While the following items don’t fit into a neat category, here are a few additional tricks of the trade:

n Co-locate when practical, and when that isn’t feasible, use technology to see each other face to face as often as possible.

n Develop a theme that helps team members connect to each other and to the brand.

n Work with your affiliate leadership to identify the talented employees that will move with the asset from global development to the affiliates as the brand launches.

n Rotate the location of live meetings to ensure that travel and jet lag are shared equally.

n Run a few training and on-boarding sessions up front to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Align on waves for global launchThe first and most important step is building your alli-ance launch team, which should be done in such a way as to win the hearts and minds of a cross-functional and cross-geographic group. The team’s main purpose is to obtain local market insights and ensure global alignment. We cover all of the following elements when launching in waves:

Launch order: Prioritize the launch order based on sales potential, market opportunity, regulatory timing, pric-ing, and access.

Group launches: From this prioritization, group affil-iates into three waves of launches, ensuring that your first group (Wave I) includes the key countries that make up roughly 80 percent of your worldwide business or opportunity. In the case of a typical pharmaceutical asset, these countries might be the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, and China. (Waves II and III are often grouped in descending order of sales potential.)

Wave I team members: After you’ve chosen your Wave I affiliates, formulate a cross-functional team. In a phar-ma alliance, this team would comprise members from affiliate marketing, medical, and PRA (pricing, reim-bursement, and access) from both firms. Ensure that you have equal representation from both firms.

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Agree on a branding and advertising agency of record

Agreeing on an advertising approach is often a high-ly charged event. Established relationships, preferred vendors, and budget impact are just a few of the reasons emotions run high. Ideally, you should do ev-erything you can to establish and use a single agency between the two firms.

In the case of advertising, experience has shown that it may be necessary to combine agencies and require them to share processes and resources when working on an alliance asset. While more complex and per-haps not as efficient, such an innovative approach can result in more effective and more creative brand building. In the past, we have had as many as three different agencies work together with a unified pro-cess within an alliance.

While each agency will tell you that they would be more than happy to collaborate, you need to take special measures to ensure that the intent and spirit are genuine. The selection process should begin with aligned objectives and criteria within the alliance. From that you can jointly develop a list of potential agencies and begin the pitching process. One note: Ask your Wave I team to compile the list of potential agencies, actively participate in the pitching process, and jointly make a Wave I agency decision. In that way, the members of the selected agency or agencies effectively become part of your Wave I team.

Involve local affiliates in global brand buildingOne of the most difficult aspects of a global brand plan is gaining affiliate buy-in. This is especially true when alliance affiliates, for any number of reasons, show less interest in the process than one might reasonably expect. In the face of such a wide range of potential reactions and attitudes, how do you ensure affiliate engagement?

We have always found that if affiliate personnel have some “skin in the game,” they seem to have a more vested interest in ensuring success. This engagement is achieved when people feel that they have been heard, when they feel that the global team has been responsive, and most importantly, when the affiliate members are actively in-volved. The highest levels of engagement are achieved when people are involved early on in program develop-ment and have an active role in decisionmaking.

We do our best to achieve engagement simply by dividing up the work and assigning champions for the various streams of work. The Wave I group first makes a list of

the Top 10 deliverables necessary for an affiliate to suc-cessfully launch the brand. Once that list is made, we go through a process in which each affiliate chooses and owns at least one of the main deliverables. (While the budget needed for the development of that deliverable is held by the global team, it is assigned to that deliverable and the affiliate who will champion the work.) A key expectation is that the group leading the workstream is expected to obtain input from the other Wave I affiliates, with the expectations that 80 percent of the deliverable will be used by all of the Wave I, Wave II, and Wave III groups. The remaining 20 percent is localized based on customs, regulations, language, and so on.

In this process, the global organization helps in three ways. First, the global team owns and champions several deliverables themselves. Second, the global group facili-tates shared learning and communication and provides expertise and coaching to each affiliate. Third, the global team referees, adjudicates, and resolves any conflicts in an objective manner, keeping the brand’s success as the primary objective.

Key to the process’s success is that each affiliate has a vested interest in providing input to the other groups, because affiliates quickly realize that they will all need to use the programs and materials being developed. All groups want to ensure that the people developing the solution have a clear understanding of what is required for success in their own local market.

This alignment has a wonderful effect, and it tends to promote the feeling that one good turn deserves another. It makes each affiliate much more open to listening and learning from other affiliates as they make progress on workstreams.

Teams also learn about the market conditions in other countries, many times enabling them to see more simi-larities to their own markets, resulting in a more global solution. When market research is being conducted in one affiliate, for example, all of the Wave I countries are strongly encouraged to attend, listen, learn, and provide input. In the end, you will know if you have implemented this part of the process correctly if, at the global launch meeting, most of the presentations are given by the Wave I affiliates, not by the global brand team.

To recap, building a global brand within an alliance can be easier and more productive if you align and focus on the processes surrounding four value inflection points in the global branding process. First, clearly and joint-ly define the alliance’s brand objectives. Second, define and agree on the launch order. Third, jointly select your brand’s advertising agency. And finally, make sure that marketing leaders from each geography and each alliance partner will participate in the global brand design. This process of gaining alignment and building trust increases the odds that your global brand will be made more suc-cessful through a well-run alliance partnership. n

E D I T O R I A L S U P P L E M E N T E D I T O R I A L S U P P L E M E N T

Markus Saba is the Senior Director of Global Marketing for the Diabetes Business Unit at Eli Lilly and Company, an Adjunct Professor at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and on the Board of Directors at Easter Seals Crossroads.

David Thompson, CA-AM, is chief alliance officer at Eli Lilly and Company and is a member of the ASAP board of directors.