Global brand as a marketing strategy is built around the idea of creation of a single global strategy that can be replicated in local markets. One story that can be literally and figuratively translated in multiple languages so that it will resonate and engage consumers around the globe. A true global branding campaign execution is a highly complex organizational endeavor which brings together countries, vendors and partners working as virtual teams that span both geographical and time zones in intense time sensitive coordination and communication tasks.

 

Benefits of global branding such as communication effectiveness through consistency and risk reduction through scaling individual market successes across multiple countries can be offset by complexity costs of organizational structure and its misalignments. Intended lower marketing costs are annulled by higher structure management costs.

 

Thus, in relationship between headquarters and countries, tight alignment is a pre-requisite for achievement of business goals. And alignment without proper information distribution is impossible. Therefore, Nike in 2014 decided to launch a digital brand newsletter that would connect its geographically dispersed team across Europe and keep it updated on a weekly basis about the digital brand, sales, and per country, per channel performance. Newsletter was a place to highlight performance, provide per country overview but also to feature digital exclusives and upcoming trends.