A generation ago, there were only a handful of global brands. But now commerce and consumers have become more international in out-- look, it seems as though every major manufacturer of branded goods sees the world as its oyster.

The most visible effect of globalisation has been in the name changes brand owners have implemented as they try to standardise products across borders.

Consumers have seen Unilever change Jif to Cif, Mars substitute Snickers for Marathon and Procter & Gamble turn Oil of Ulay into Oil of Olay. That these FMCG giants were prepared to risk short-term consumer confusion suggests they have an eye for the big picture.

When Jif was rebranded as Cif in the UK last December, brand owner Unilever explained that the product needed a global name. The moniker couldn't be swapped to Jif in other countries because the letter 'j' is harder to pronounce than `c' in many languages - a quirk that was captured in humorous TV ads that backed the change.

When it sought greater global unity among its brands, Mars changed the name of Marathon to its international Snickers label in 1988. So as not to negate previous advertising equity, the bar's packaging design remained essentially the same, with only the name changed.

Global plus-points

Aside from potential production and marketing cost savings, such decisions are born out of a recognition that consumers travel extensively and consume global media, a trend that has been accelerated by the internet revolution.

Against such a background, it is inevitable that NPD should increasingly have a multi-country launch as an objective.

Yet while the rationale behind such an approach is the same as for the standardisation of brand names, introducing an international dimension to NPD undoubtedly adds to the complexity of the process. But how do you prevent it from becoming unworkable?

"You have to have the full integration of international teams," says Claire Nuttal, senior consultant at brand consultancy Dragon."And you have to follow up so you don't get the `not invented here' syndrome.A lot of companies we have worked with have found that a real problem."

RDSi's head of international research,Wendy Mitchell,believes that such situations- whereby a local team passes off a problem by claiming it had nothing to do with a product's development - can be avoided by involving advisers from those teams early on in the project.

"In our experience it works best when one country champions the development of the product,working closely with a special project team that is involved throughout the NPD programme with relevant personnel from other countries.

"In this way, local country differences are acknowledged at the outset and constructively built into the NPD programme, avoiding the tense situation where a new product is in danger of falling at the first hurdle when exposed to the other countries and cultures because they have not taken potential differences into account."

Getting the balance right

But including local teams in this way calls for a neat balancing act. If not all the countries where the product is to be marketed are involved, brand owners may encounter resentment from local subsidiaries at having a product imposed on them.

On the other hand, striving for full participation from every country into which the product will be launched -- when the intention is to launch in more than two or three - is equally undesirable.

?What If! co-founder Matt Kingdon says the biggest danger he has found when involved in global NPD projects is "energy leak" - loss of momentum due to having to gain input and approval from people scattered around the world.

Kingdon believes there is a strong case to be made for small teams with a great deal of autonomy.These should have a single senior sponsor within the client company, thereby allowing for an efficient decision-making process.

When Unilever Bestfoods Europe put together a multi-disciplinary project team for the development of its Culinesse brand (see box, page 40), it created a small core product development team to progress the process quickly, while multi-country research ensured the product had a relevance and value tomore than one market.

Although brand names are important at launch,they often become less critical as time goes by, as witnessed by the high-profile name swaps of Jif, Marathon and Oil of Ulay.

Sadolin: packaging was altered in Scandinavia -where the brand is called Pinotex--to reflect the pale colour of the area's woodlands

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Chicken Tonight: Unileverbrand's format had to take into account the different ways people cook chicken in the US to those in the UK

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Oil of 0lay: change to global name risked short-term confusion for long-term consistency

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"What those brands have in common is a powerful identity," says PI Global executive creative director Don Williams. "Successful global brands often feature abstract brand names, as well as identities that are single-minded and memorable, but not literal.

"Abstract names and identities facilitate flexible global adaptation as they avoid cultural prejudices. The stronger the brand identity, the more able it is to integrate cultural subtleties."

When PI Global launched a new identity for Akzo Nobel's leading international woodcare brand, Sadolin, it adapted the brand's new dark wood house-shaped icon for the Scandinavian market by employing a pale wood background for Pinotex, the sister brand of Sadolin in the territory, where pale woodlands are the norm.

"The brand identity was distinctive,memorable and strong enough to adapt.All other elements of the identity and pack graphics could consequently remain identical across the brands," says Williams.

Pinpointing universal needs

One approach used by Siebert Head when working on international NPD involves drilling below cultural and economic differences between countries to examine whether a product can address universal needs and so yield a common brand, positioning and product.

"These needs transcend cultural differences and appeal to all," says brand development director Simon Sholl."The great global brands- Coca Cola, Nike, McDonald's - all do this."

Shrewd research usually lies at the heart of successful NPD. It is even more important when a multi-country launch is the objective.

Corporate Edge Research managing director Kate Hamilton warns of dangers of `concept drift' - ideas that appear clear in one market or culture can be perceived differently in other cultures.

For example, she says, a researcher or client might say their product is like a Mercedes. But while Mercedes is seen as an upmarket brand and is associated with quality German cars in the US, in its native land, the cars are widely used as taxis.

And in Japan, although Mercedes vehicles are a byword for European quality, they are also known to be the car of choice for the Japanese mafia -- the Yakuza - an association that many marketers might nnnot think desirable for their products.

So marketers can never afford to presume that a concept is universal and must ensure that local cultural variations are taken into account.

Sometimes research will highlight differences so profound that they rule out the creation of a uniform product that will go down well in all markets.

PSD Design found this to be the case when developing a bright new stationery range for global office products company Esselte.

While some products are able to appeal across nations and cultures, research found that this was not true in the case of children's pencil cases.

In the US, pencil cases had to be bigger to be best, while in Germany, stationery needed lots of compartments and in France, there was a more haphazard approach.

Knowing when to give up

"Expectations of what a pencil case should be are quite varied," says PSD Design director Chris McCleave. "In fact, we found they fitted the stereo-- types of each country. It soon became apparent there was no way we could design a global pencil case.There were too many barriers to adoption in each country."

Such expectations are not the only barrier to multinational NPD in the case of many products.

Differences in physical environments - climate variations and variations in distribution patterns - for example,can have an effect, too.

But it is probably differences in consumer habits that hold most significance. Tom Andrews, consultant at strategic branding agency The Value Engineers, says there are two principal areas of consumer habit.

The first is people's cultural frame of reference.As a specific example,he names Quorn, a brand The Value Engineers created for Marlow Foods, which has now been taken into countries such as the US, Sweden Holland and Belgium.

When the agency attempted to take the mushroom-based meat substitute into the German market, it was confronted with the drawback that in general, Germans aren't too keen on mushrooms.

The other major area of difference comes in habits, and is particularly pertinent to food products.For example, says Andrews, when Unilever was developing Chicken Tonight,it had to bear in mind that in the US chicken is traditionally cooked in the oven, rather than on top of the stove. This had implications for the consistency and ingredients of the sauce itself and for the instructions on the packaging.

"While it is true that tourism,multinational retail chains and ever more pervasive media coverage of international events have created a more homogeneous set of Western consumer values, markets are in general stubbornly resistant to homogenisation attempts by marketers," says Ray Gundersen, managing director ol NPD and brand specialists Butcher & Gundersen.

His agency discovered one such cultural difference while working on an project that involved toys for young children.

Mothers in France, they found, warmly embraced toy concepts for four- to six-year-olds that involved both mother and child in a creative process. Playing together, using imagery,sound and words,were felt to be important as part of a mother's involvement with her child's formative behavioural patterns and a fundamental part of parenting.

Yet mothers in the UK strongly supported concepts for toys that had as many features as possible - flashing lights, automatic sounds, pre-programmed and interactive voices and motion. They apparently saw themselves as too busy to prioritise involvement with their children's entertainment or early education.

While researching new concepts for kitchen cleaners in different European markets, Butcher & Gundersen found that French consumers welcomed with open arms those new bleach-based products. But house-- holders in Germany rejected them to an overwhelming degree.

According to the agency, the clues to these divergent responses lay in national attitudes to the environment: Germans tend to be ecologically vigilant, while the French believe food and wine are more important than environmental campaigning.

Even in this age of globalisation, it remains a tough challenge to develop a product with global appeal.

HOW UNILEVER DEVELOPED CULINESSE
Three years ago Unilever embarked on ar ambitious project to develop a liquid cooking medium that would combine the virtues of cooking oil, butter and margarine by tasting good, browning food attractively and performing well at high temperatures.
From the outset, the objective was to develop a product for launch in numerous markets. But, in keeping with Unilever's decision to concentrate resources on its bigger brands, it was envisaged that this brand - Culinesse should be a sub-brand or descriptor, rather than a major brand in its own right
This also took account of the internationally fragmented cooking fats market. So in Germany, for example, Culinesse has been launched as a sub-- brand to Rama, while in Holland, Blue Band is the product's mother brand.
From inception to execution, the NPD process took two-and-a-half years. A multi-disciplinary project team was put together, led by Unilever Bestfoods Europe senior project development manager Graham Cross and including marketing managers Nico Schlegel and Jorge Lopez.
NPD specialist agency Design Bridge was brought on board early, as packaging was considered fundamental to the product's success.
"Multi-disciplinary teamwork was critical to the successful creation of Culinesse," says Cross. "By that I don't mean just having everyone in the same room regularly. It's about shared responsibility within a team for each others problems."
Indeed, although Unilever worked with naming agencies on the project, it was Cross' own suggestion of Culinesse that eventually won through.
Culinesse has initially been launched in nine European markets: Germany, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, France, Austria and Switzerland.
Unilever used what it calls 'sequential recycling' research techniques during the NPD process. Each minor change to the product and its packaging was researched among new consumer panels as the work went on.
The majority of the research was conducted in just two markets -- Germany and Portugal. Unilever reasoned that if these countries, which have markedly different cultures and preferences in terms of food, both responded well to the brand, it was likely that it had a product with almost universal appeal on its hands.
"After the extensive research that went into its development, we have great confidence in Culinesse," says Cross, who thinks the product has the potential to go global.
Extensive testing was carried out in kitchen environments, with consumers focusing on the product's taste, low spattering, food-browning qualifies and Design Bridge's squeeze-assisted packaging.
"The only way to get real success is to make products that connect with consumers and make a real difference -- and that is what Culinesse does," says Design Bridge structure director Tim Jebb.
"We were the first multi-disciplinary team in this part of Unilever that went from inception to simultaneous execution for a product in many European markets," says Cross. "So we're being seen as a bit of a role model."

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