How To Build Brand Value For Your Business Across Cultures

 

The new book, Brand Global, Adapt Local: How To Build Brand Value Across Cultures, is an informative and essential guide for leaders, marketers and brand strategists navigating the
complexities of global business. 

The book provides
strategies for building branding trust across cultures and driving sustainable
growth in international markets. It’s filled with eye-opening, revealing, and entertaining
narratives explaining how learning to work across explicitly different cultures
helps expand the understanding of our own world. 

“As the world becomes
more interconnected yet culturally distinct, the ability to
master cultural intelligence has become essential for brands
that want to remain relevant and thrive,” explain the authors Katherine Melchior
Ray and Nataly Kelly. 

“If a
brand wants to thrive in an international market, it needs to understand the
different consumers and the nuances of the cultures in which they live. The
best brands in the world do this by remaining relentlessly curious about their
customers and their markets, immersing themselves in the culture and embracing
new and different ways of seeing, understanding and being. First impressions matter, and
unfortunately, many companies rush the process and leap straight into execution
before first understanding if their strategy is right for a new local market.” 

Drawing on decades of
experience at global icons like Louis Vuitton, Nike, Shiseido, Hyatt,
and HubSpot, the authors break down the science of adapting
brands to culture to craft marketing strategies that truly connect with
consumers around the world. 

More specifically, they
offer their veteran global branding experience to teach marketers: 

How companies like
Salesforce, Nestlé, Tommy Hilfiger and Goldman Sachs have successfully localized
their marketing strategies to avoid costly mistakes, where 70% of global
brand failures stem from cultural misalignment. 

The Cultural
Intelligence (CQ) framework that helps leaders anticipate consumer behaviors and
collaborate effectively with global teams to adapt marketing strategies and
build authentic connections ahead of the curve.  

How top brands leverage
cross-cultural strategies to transform deep consumer insights into products tailored
to market-specific preferences, language, cultural symbolism, and
storytelling.  

The neuroscience of
consumer trust: How brands can leverage shared values,
communication, and strategic brand positioning to forge stronger relationships
across markets. 

The Brand Fulcrum: How brands grow
to reach disparate consumers while maintaining their authenticity and cultural
relevance. 

 

Katherine Melchior Ray

Nataly Kelly

The authors share these
additional insights with us: 

Question:
For a business leader wanting to grow his/her brand globally, what are a good
first few steps to take after reading your book? 

The Authors: The first step is to
shift your mindset: instead of thinking about scaling what works at home, start
by listening to what matters in your target markets. Our book offers tools to
do just that—such as the C.A.G.E. framework to analyze new market challenges,
how to leverage cultural intelligence to understand local needs, and the “Freedom
within a Frame” concept to manage global consistency with local
relevance.  

Once you’ve read the book,
we recommend business leaders:

Lower
the waterline: Look
beyond surface assumptions and dive into local cultural values. Talk to
employees, customers, and partners on the ground—not just in headquarters.

Audit
your brand promise: Ask whether your brand values are universal—or if they
need to be expressed differently across markets.

Build
the right bridge: Establish a clear framework that gives local teams freedom
within a global structure. This enables innovation without losing brand
consistency. 

Question:
Thinking about your global experiences, what are the largest challenges a
business leader is likely to encounter when initially building a global brand?

 

The Authors: One of the biggest
challenges is overcoming what we call proximity bias—the assumption that what
works in your home market will work everywhere. It’s natural to default to
what’s familiar, but it often leads to expensive missteps. Avoid becoming one
of the 60% of companies that fail to generate more than 3% ROI when
entering foreign markets knowing that 76% of global consumers prefer to buy products adapted to their
culture.  

Once you’re aware of their
needs, another major challenge is building trust in a new cultural context.
Trust isn’t transferable; it’s built locally, market by market. That means
adapting not just your marketing but your product mix, customer experience, service
standards and tone. If a global leader expects the same playbook to win across
borders, they’ll miss the opportunity to connect and risk being ignored.  

Question:
Why is your book’s 2025 release particularly timely? 

The Authors: In 2025, the business
landscape is more global—and more fragmented—than ever. AI is accelerating
content production, personalization, and scale, but it can’t replicate cultural
understanding or human trust. At the same time, we’re seeing a rise in nationalism,
shifting consumer values and identities, and economic uncertainty.

Brands can’t afford to be tone-deaf. Brand Global,
Adapt Local arrives at a moment when global marketing needs a reset—from
cookie-cutter campaigns to culturally attuned strategies. As the world becomes
more interconnected yet culturally distinct, our book gives leaders a path
forward: how to build their brand on a global stage while also flexing its
identity intelligently in each market. It’s not just about going global—it’s
about doing it in a way that’s both scalable and deeply culturally relevant. 

Question: How do brands build trust with
consumers in markets where they are the outsider? 

The Authors: Building trust in a new market takes
time, but smart brands use a “sidecar strategy” to accelerate the process. This
means forging local partnerships, alliances, and brand ambassadors to gain
credibility with consumers who may not be familiar with your brand. 

Many American companies assume their
reputation carries weight globally, but in reality, trust must be earned one
market at a time. It’s called a “halo effect.” In reality, the halo is faint,
if it exists at all. 

Having the right partnerships with
people, brands, and organizations that consumers already trust can fast-track
the process for a foreign brand. Salesforce, for example, built strong
government and business partnerships in Japan to overcome skepticism toward
Western companies. Airbnb took a different approach in Germany, acquiring a
local competitor to establish an instant foothold. The key? Going local early.
The faster a brand integrates with trusted entities, the quicker it builds
credibility. 

Here are Ten Lessons for Building a
Global Brand in the words of the authors: 

1. Master the Art of “Freedom Within
a Framework”: Balance universal brand values with local market needs. The
best brands set clear guide rails such as brand values and logos while
empowering local innovation in services, products, channels, and messaging. 

2. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is Your
Competitive Edge: Understanding how culture shapes consumer behavior helps
brands capitalize on emerging trends before competitors. 

3. Think Global, Win Local:
KitKat’s success in Japan with over 300 unique flavors proves that local
adaptation drives global growth and brand value.

 

4. Move First, Lead Markets: Pioneer new territories to set
industry standards on your terms. 

5. Innovation Thrives from Foreign
Ideas: Leverage insights from other industries to disrupt your own. Create
seasonal magic turning local celebrations into iconic brand moments. 

6. Storytelling Builds Trust Across
Cultures: Culture is where brands create meaning. The strongest brands
craft narratives about universal values that resonate in local culture to
create emotional connections and lasting bonds with their customers. 

7. Balance the Brand Fulcrum: Integrate
opposing themes of tradition and innovation. 

8. Trust is Earned, Not Assumed: Brands
offer trust, which relies on subjective values, and which is exactly why it’s
so difficult to build a brand across cultures. Keep your promises, as trust
takes time to build, but a moment to destroy. 

9. Cultural Humility: Lead with
empathy and openness to drive performance in new markets. 

10. Global Success is a Series of
Local Wins: The best brands listen, observe, and iterate to meet evolving
consumer expectations in different regions.

___

Katherine Melchior
Ray lectures
on international marketing and leadership at UC Berkeley, Haas School of
Business. With twenty-five-years spent building the world’s best consumer
branding across continents, she brings expertise from her time as a senior
executive at Nike, Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hyatt, Shiseido, and
Babbel. She has guest lectured at Stanford, Wharton, Brown, and Portland State
University.

She can be heard on various podcasts and blogs related to global marketing and
leadership, culture and diversity, women’s empowerment, and the future of work. 

Nataly Kelly is Chief Marketing
Officer at Zappi, based in Boston, MA. Previously she served at HubSpot as Vice
President of Marketing, Vice President of International Operations and
Strategy, and Vice President of Localization. Kelly also served as Chief Growth
Officer and Vice President of Marketing for two other software start-ups in the
MarTech space, and previously held the role of Chief Research Officer for CSA
Research, where she oversaw the company’s subscription-based market research
practice.

She is a seasoned business leader, international business expert, and
longtime Harvard Business Review contributor on topics of
global business and international marketing. 

Thank you to the book’s
publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.