Join Papercup’s Amir Jirbandey and his guests Elena Bersadschi (Formerly Deliveroo and now DAME) and Emily Dillon (Snow Peak) to talk about everything content localization – from content creation goals, the challenges they come up against when trying to hit those goals and where localization fits within the whole process.
The guests
Elena Bersadschi was formerly Deliveroo global marketing strategy manager on the rider side and is now head of growth at DAME
Emily Dillion is Snow Peak’s European wholesale manager
Reach is an important goal for localized content, but localization is used to answer diverse business challenges
For Snow Peak, an outdoor gear and apparel brand headquartered in Japan, localization is critical to educating global customers on how its products work. It’s the means by which essential product information, produced in Japan, reaches global markets – which not only affects customer satisfaction but the wholesale team’s ability to sell in its products worldwide.
For food delivery app, Deliveroo – localization is essential to acquiring riders in its 11 markets, as well as retaining them and also ensuring that their level of knowledge around the service meets the expectations of its customer-base. Localization is the means by which the company reaches riders in different markets with messaging that is relevant to them, specifically taking into account cultural differences.
In both instances, replicating the accuracy and relevance of information are the key goals of content localization which feed into the wider business goal of global expansion.
If you have global ambitions, localization has to be at the core of thinking from the beginning
If the original content creation process isn’t scalable, the localization process won’t be either. For brands with global ambitions, it’s essential to be thinking about global scalability from the very beginning. Unpicking an ad hoc process or scaling content creation designed only for a single market will make the localization process much more difficult in the long run.
This podcast delves into both sides of the scenario – DAME is a startup with the opportunity to think globally from the beginning; Snow Peak is a well-established Japanese heritage brand (founded in 1952!) now with an entire global following that it has to educate, inspire and ultimately grow.
Testing is fundamental to the success of a localization strategy
The true potential of a market can’t be realised if content remains in a single language (most usually English), however the infrastructure within companies or the resources they have access to doesn’t always support the localization of all content types for all markets.
For both Emily and Elena, testing is a key workaround for this. Testing the localization of certain content types allows them to understand the impact on business goals and use those learnings to phase the roll-out of the localized assets more widely.
Video will continue to be the number one content type businesses focus on localizing
For Emily – the pandemic forced Snow Peak, and many other companies, to find new ways to reach their target audiences and video has been central to this. The presentation of apparel in B2B sales would usually be done in person at trade shows across Europe, but restrictions meant that the process was instead recreated in video format. It’s likely that is an approach that will endure – if not completely, at least in part.
For Elena, simply, video will become an even more prominent part of the marketing mix following obvious trends in behaviour that say this is people's preferred way to consume content. This isn’t to say that it will eclipse other content types completely, just that it will gain an even greater level of prominence within businesses as a way of communicating across markets.
Predictions for content type most likely to fully pivot to video?
Emily – product instructions and manuals
Elena – short, snappy educational brand videos
Watch the podcast here or if you prefer to read, download the research paper!
