The Power of International Creativity

Marketers - especially agency professionals - often believe global advertising lacks the depth, resonance, and craftsmanship of beautifully executed local campaigns. It’s like comparing a stay at the Hilton to that charming boutique hotel you fell in love with on your last trip to Montmartre. Or choosing Keeping Up with the Kardashians over an exclusive Lars von Trier screening at Sundance.

However, the reality is far more nuanced and, dare I say, often the opposite of what conventional wisdom suggests.

Why International Brands Can Grow Faster 

Through decades of rigorous analysis of more than 30,000 campaigns, Accelero Group econometrician Paul Dyson famously demonstrated that brand size is the single most important driver of advertising profitability. International brands tend to enjoy a unique advantage over smaller, local competitors; they can extract higher profit from the same advertising investment simply due to their scale.

This isn’t about ad quality - it’s about how larger brands benefit from greater fame, familiarity, and positive feeling. Advertising then becomes a multiplier of these pre-existing strengths.

So, how do brands become international? By expanding into new markets, of course but maintaining consistent Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs) across regions is just as crucial.

These assets -brand cues, characters, mnemonics, storylines, and creative styles -help ensure recognition, regardless of location.

And recognition is good for business.

Why Global Ideas Are More Profitable

Creative quality is the second most important driver of advertising profitability. But isn't creative quality highly subjective?

At Publicis London, we assess creative quality through its impact. Specifically, how advertising can generate fame and positive feeling for a brand - both key drivers of long-term, profitable growth.

To quantify this, we developed the Move Index, a proprietary tool powered by YouGov and Kantar's largest global panel datasets. Covering up to 80 markets, this tool benchmarks brands against competitors, tracks their evolution, and assesses their advertising growth potential based on their current position:

Small and local brands have untapped growth potential. By building fame and positive feeling, these brands can grow within their current market and expand into new ones through common DBAs and comms platforms.

Challenger brands are characterised by low fame but relatively high feeling, often amongst a small cult following. They can maximise their impact by investing in broader media exposure and leveraging DBA-led creative platforms to maximise recognition.

Legacy brands enjoy high fame but struggle to evoke strong, positive feelings amongst a broad audience. They need to strengthen their appeal through right-brain storytelling and cultural relevance.

Brands that move the world are widely recognised and evoke strong positive feelings amongst a mass audience. These brands are uniquely positioned to drive long-term, profitable growth through their communication platforms.

Take Heineken, for example. Over the past decade, this iconic beer brand transformed itself by leveraging a global creative platform and activating it locally. Through a seamless blend of scale and local nuance, it has evolved into a brand that truly moves the world.

Brands can maximise their fame and feeling by sharing a creative communications platform across markets and utilising consistent DBAs. This makes them easier to come to mind, more familiar and ultimately more likable.

Global ideas make every local marketing effort contribute to a larger, cohesive brand strategy - creating synergies that benefit all markets.

The Holy Grail: Global Fame & Feeling, Local Relevance

The world’s most successful brands are built on global ideas:

• Coca-Cola’s Christmas truck is an iconic holiday symbol - even in countries like Japan, where Christmas isn’t traditionally celebrated.
• Snickers’ “You’re not you when you’re hungry” campaign resonates across 58 markets.
• Nike’s “Just Do It” has inspired athletes in 190 countries for over three decades.

Global ideas transcend cultures and demographics. They become so  intertwined with their brands that they can become more distinctive than the logos or products. But rolling out a one-size-fits-all campaign worldwide isn’t a silver bullet.

Global teams have a broader view of the business and are excellent brand guardians but local markets are often closer to their market challenges and audiences. That’s why the most effective global campaigns result from seamless collaboration between international and regional organisations.

The beauty of a strong global idea is its flexibility -it doesn’t rely on a single execution to thrive. Instead, it can be adapted and amplified across countless cultures, markets, and contexts.

Adding to the feeling. Adding to the fame.

What This Means in Practice 

Despite the debates on LinkedIn, modern marketing evidence is overwhelmingly clear. From foundational research by our partners at the IPA, Binet & Field, and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, to evidence from System1, Kantar, Accelero Group, and Magic Numbers, one truth stands out:

Brands that operate across multiple markets, with shared DBAs, tend to benefit from increased fame, feeling and ultimately, business growth.

We know this to be intuitively true. The best ideas have always travelled the world, from popular culture to art and business. 

Global ideas should, therefore, be seen as the highest, not lowest, form of creativity. Advertising constructs, styles, sounds, and characters that form the backbone of global campaigns can become powerful DBAs, driving exponential growth.

However, making international work happen is often fiendishly difficult. Large organisations, burdened with complex structures and numerous stakeholders - often with conflicting priorities - can make finding synergies a marketer’s nightmare. This is why people skills are more critical than ever, and navigating delicately between global and local interests is essential for success.

Beyond politics, the real challenge for us marketers lies in finding the right balance between scale and local relevance to maximise long-term profitable growth. We need to ask ourselves:

• How far should global ideas stretch? 
• When should local markets take the lead?
• What’s the optimal balance for different brands, categories, market maturities, and socio-economic contexts?

There’s much more to explore and we will continue to do so. In the meantime, our collective understanding of brand growth and the realities of international organisations can help brands become more effective and enable local businesses to scale globally.

Creating ideas that, quite literally, move the world… and your bottom line.

If you found this interesting, and would like to explore how Publicis London can help you increase the impact of your brand, please feel free to reach out - [email protected].

Authored by Diego Chicharro, Head of Effectiveness at Publicis London. Publicis Groupe UK are Partners of The Marketing Society.

Published on 21 March 2025