Tackling Tumult: Responding to Today’s Marketing Turbulence

Imagine you are reading this in Spring 2024, when the world was calmer, more predictable.  You may not have been as preoccupied as you are now by the general lurch to the right of many political parties and governments around the world, the implications of AI on your marketing practices or teams, the employer brand impact of DEI roll-backs by US business partners or possibly your own company, or the potential imposition of tariffs on your exports.

In this brief 12 months, your world, your organisation and the marketing function have changed rapidly.  Expectations are mounting from stakeholders on your impact on the environment.  How you deploy AI and the ethics around it are under scrutiny in how marketing, sales, customer service and other functions in your organisation get their jobs done.  Globalisation is seen with scepticism with fragmenting markets wanting reassurance that your services or products account for local preferences.

Problems vs. Dilemmas 

So to make sense of this ever-increasing VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment, you may find it helps to frame these developments not as problems but to see them in the widest context as dilemmas which require “both and” thinking rather than “either or” choices.  This opens up a more creative and wider range of options that will typically deliver more profitability.

Usually we see a problem as something with a discrete beginning, middle and end which must be erased, eradicated, fixed, solved.  A problem, such as making changes to your brand’s name to have relevance around the world is readily fixable and once done, typically never recurs.

A dilemma is when you are faced with two competing tensions requiring your focus on both at the same time.  Each ongoing tension influences the other and has clear advantages and disadvantages which must be integrated rather than addressed separately.  Without addressing this “both and” challenge, you will find this issue recurs with much short-term attention and budget wasted in trying to “solve” it.

Unpacking Dilemmas

Let’s take a dilemma you probably will find relevant: the global/local challenge which affects any business that has a website since that global platform lets you engage the world.

While it may seem daunting to integrate these poles, in fact it’s not as difficult as you might think.

The first step after naming the two tensions is to list a few of the pros and cons of each (a 2x2 matrix can help!) in each quadrant which your team can help you list.

Next, develop a long-list of strategy options that get the best of (mostly) both by answering the question “how might we do global and local so we get the benefits of both marketing approaches?” 

Finally, choose some criteria to help whittle it down to a workable few: consider the amount of complexity your organisation can tolerate, the amount of cash required, the breadth of internal stakeholders to be engaged or possibly how much time it would take to change today’s approaches.

You’ll find once you reframe your international marketing challenge as a dilemma, greater success will accrue through organising around customers/clients/consumers who expect mostly the same benefits from your offering while giving you the flexibility (and revenues!) to adjust for country or regional preferences at the same time.

Your ambidexterity will certainly be rewarded as will your reputation as a commercial leader.

Authored by Member Allyson Stewart-Allen, CEO, International Marketing Partners

Published on 26 February 2025
 

Allyson will also be hosting one of our Accelerate Learning Lab workshops - Marketing Globally: Beyond the Copy/Paste Strategy on Tuesday 1 July

10.30am - 12.00pm BST | 1.30pm - 3.00pm GST | 5.30pm - 7.00pm SGT/HKT

Allyson will explain the subtleties of international business cultures along with strategies to ensure you are a more effective negotiator, communicator and influencer around the globe. 

Find out more here.

Insiders Programme

Why not book a powerhour with Allyson for you and your team - bring her into the heart of your business to supercharge your knowledge find out more from what you hear in the Learning Lab.

Watch the video below for more insight on this session and find out more about our Insiders Programme here.