From frustration to 270% growth: How cultural alignment boosted growth in Japan

The challenge

Bureau van Dijk is a global financial database company, but as often is the case in Japan, their marketing was running its own race. The company's global leadership were growing frustrated with the lack of consistency with global brand guidelines and materials while the Japanese side felt the global approach didn't meet local market needs and was forced on them.

Key insights

After spending time and building relationships with the local teams and leadership it became clear there were two main communication gaps to be bridged.

A lack of investment in marketing had left sales guys running their own shows. With no established model to work with global guidelines or established communication discipline, this caused a lot of confusion and missed sales opportunities.

The Japan team were working very hard but language skills and cultural factors like reluctance to self-promote meant no one was recognized for it outside the local market

My approach

I attacked the first problem by working with local sales leadership to establish formal structure around marketing responsibilities and activities and created yearly campaign plans for events, digital, content localization of white papers, webinars and blog posts. At the same time I started building up PPC and social media campaigns to boost awareness and drive demand in new channels.

I also published news in English about Japan team wins on the company intranet portal and presented learnings and results from Japan in global marketing meetings to give the team more kudos and exposure.

The results

• Rebuilt trust and alignment between global marketing and Japan sales

• Launched structured, measurable marketing programs designed for local needs

• Increased lead generation by 270%

• Improved internal collaboration and communication flow

• Maintained global brand consistency while making campaigns locally relevant