Upcoming Webinar: The New Global Enterprise

Posted on February 28, 2011 by John Yunker

On March 15th I will be participating in a half-day online forum sponsored by the American Marketing Association and Localization World:

The New Global Enterprise: Core Competencies for Localizing Marketing Communications

The agenda includes three speakers, followed by a Q&A session:

An Introduction to Localization Strategies For Marketers – Willem Stoeller PMP
Secrets of the Best Global Websites – John Yunker
Localization: Translating Marketing Communications for Global Markets - Inna Geller, Geller Translation Solutions, LLC
Ask the Expert” Panel Discussion – Moderated by Ulrich Henes

For my presentation, I’ll be drawing new data from the 2011 Web Globalization Report Card.

Best of all, the event is free. I hope you can join us.

Global by Design turns 1,000

Posted on February 18, 2011 by John Yunker

In 2002, I launched this blog.

It was the first blog devoted to web globalization. In fact, I don’t believe there were any blogs devoted to translation either at that point in time. So I really wasn’t sure where this whole blog thing would lead me. Perhaps I’d lose interest along the way.

Evidently, I didn’t, for today marks blog post #1,000.

I’m not the most prolific blogger to be sure (and I relied on a handful of guest articles along the way).

But it has been an exciting journey. I took a few minutes to page through the archives and I’ve included below a number of posts that jumped out at me (NOTE: a lot of the news links are broken):

There is No Such Thing as “Rest of World” (2003)
Pull-Down Menus Are A Global Problem (2004)
120 Million Internet Users In China in 2005 (FYI: There are now more than 400 million Chinese Internet users)
eBay Going Global: International Revenues Rule (2007)
The Localization of iPhone (2007)
The end of translation as we know it (2007)
Is Facebook “translation worthy” or just plain cheap? (2008)
Google Translate is growing up
Flags and languages don’t mix (2008)
Google international revenues surpass domestic (2008)
Will Facebook become the world’s largest translation platform? (2008)
Twitter and Web Globalization (2009)
Google Translate: Now in 51 languages (2009)
Translation crowdsourcing is the new black — and you can tweet me on that (2009)

In 2002, China had fewer than 100 million Internet users. Machine translation was more of a punchline than a business tool. And at the time you could count on one hand the number of web sites that supported 40 or more languages. Today, there are more than 23 such web sites.

I also took a stroll through Google Analytics. Though I didn’t have analytics in place during the early years, here are the three most popular blogs since 2005:

Thanks for reading over the years — and all your input and comments!

Local by design; global by accident

Posted on February 2, 2011 by John Yunker

When I first visited Japan, I was struck by the range of local products made by the Japanese subsidiary of Coca-Cola, like Georgia Coffee (in a can, no less).

This phenomenon is not unique to Japan.

Consider the recent AdAge article: In China, Multinationals Forgo Adaptation for New-Brand Creation.

According to AdAge:

In China, which overtook Japan in 2010 as the world’s second-largest economy, U.S. and other multinational marketers are going a step further by creating new brands specifically for the needs and desires of Chinese consumers.
Levi Strauss & Co. launched a more affordable brand, Denizen, for China last fall, and General Motors Corp. and other automakers are designing entry-level cars such as GM’s Baojun, going on sale later this year. The trend is also moving upscale, with Hermes’ new Shang Xia lifestyle brand. And PepsiCo is tapping the Chinese taste for green tea with Spritea, sold only in mainland China.

Brazil is also mentioned in the article; Coca-Cola and Pepsi have launched guarana-based drinks for the market.

The decision to develop local brands is not one made lightly. The expenses can be significant, but so too can the rewards. And this is where things get really exciting; there is no reason why locally created brands (like Spritetea) can’t one day be exported to other markets.

After all, Georgia coffee is now also sold in Singapore, South Korea, India and Bahrain. Perhaps someday we’ll see it in the US.

When I think about the globalization of brands in general, very few were “global by design.” Sometimes global success is by design, but more often it is by accident.