Building a global brand, while ensuring messages are tailored to each locality, should be the priority of any global marcomms team. Financial Promoter sits down with Alastair Fairbrother and Katie Ramsden from Allianz Global Investors to discuss how the integrated team faces the challenge head on.
Juggling local and global priorities is a challenge for most marcomms teams.
But for a company the size of one of Europe’s largest financial institutions, the distance between head office and those on the ground can seem immense, meaning local customers may not feel part of the brand’s global vision.
Yet, investing in marketing to local communities can lessen the distance between the consumer and head office, and enables the targeted audience to see the brand as an extension of their community.
Going “glocal” is a trend that has attracted attention in marketing in recent years. It can be defined as the adaptation of global products for the local contexts into which they are used and sold.
The term was coined in 1980 in the Harvard Business Review by sociologist Roland Robertson, who wrote that glocalisation meant “the simultaneity— the co-presence—of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies.”
Since joining Allianz Global Investors in 2014, Alastair Fairbrother has seen the organisation expand and morph into what it is today: an established investment manager with operations in Europe, the USA, and APAC.
At the end of September 2023, it had €516bn in assets under management. In 2012, it had just €279bn.
Fairbrother’s role has changed along with the company’s expansion, moving up from head of UK communications to assuming the global role, with the additional responsibility of “positioning” in early 2023.
“For me, global is interesting,” says Fairbrother. “It means scale. It means opportunities. It means collaborating with colleagues from different cultures, different perspectives.”
Katie Ramsden, who joined the company five years ago, heads up marketing for Northern Europe and global clients, with a focus on the UK, Nordics, and Benelux.
The integrated marcomms function at AllianzGI – with around 150 employees – provides the team with the space to learn and grow, either in a formal role or through a project basis, says Ramsden.
“I believe we should always look for the opportunity to learn and expand our horizons. For me, to take on the global client role gives me the opportunity to consider what clients need locally, but also how that also translates on a global basis,” Ramsden adds.
Together, Fairbrother and Ramsden look after global communications and localised marketing, as well as brand design, corporate sponsorships, and AllianzGI’s corporate sustainability work.
The company went under a significant global restructure in early 2023, which has increased collaboration between teams.
“The new structure has helped us blend global priorities with the local needs of clients,” says Fairbrother.
“I have been here for a decade and this is the most open collaborative way of working I’ve seen within our function.”
The client perspective
2023 research by Hubspot suggests it costs between 5 and 25 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.
In a financial sector where every penny or cent counts, that’s an important metric. To be successful in a competitive industry, AllianzGI brings its customers to the heart of every conversation, says Ramsden.
“It’s our job to rationalise with other stakeholders and represent our clients across the business, not just for the assessment of value, but really to bring that client perspective to the business.”
AllianzGI has developed “global investable themes” – including disruption, navigating rates, and sustainability – that embody the structural shifts driving investment opportunities and risks for clients, now and in the future.
The themes outline a centralised model from which to base AllianzGI’s marketing and communications.
The investment firm’s “embracing disruption” campaign highlights the opportunities that rapid advancements in technology, changes in consumer behaviour, and shifts in business models can bring to the world of thematic investments.
“The strapline for the campaign is ‘change multiplies opportunity.’ Clearly, if change is happening, innovation is happening,” explains Fairbrother.
“We want to help clients understand what that change means and show them the best ways they can capture the investment alpha arising from disruption.”
In a business littered with hundreds of products, the centralised themes, which are adopted across all departments and at board level, help to provide a focus for the marketing and comms teams.
“The themes are a way of helping us focus our efforts on content production and creation. They act like a glue that we can help relate what we’re doing to.
Otherwise, it would be easy to just get lost in the thicket,” Fairbrother adds.
To be a best-in-class marketing and comms function and, crucially, a growth engine for the business, you need to embed the client perspective into your organisation, according to Fairbrother and Ramsden.
Consistent messaging
A report by marketing software firm Alterian titled “What is adaptive marketing?” outlines the demand for a new type of marketer – one focused on predicting the individual customer’s next move.
“It’s not about optimising channels anymore, but rather maximising every opportunity with each individual customer using the full context of their relationship,” the report says.
The team at AllianzGI have embraced the role of the adaptive marketer, with specialist, local marketing experts working with the global team to craft a consistent message across all regions.
“From a global perspective, it’s important to have consistency in our messaging; what the brand stands for, our values as a business, and how we can help our clients,” says Ramsden.
The global outlook helps to retain the consistency in messaging, providing an overarching umbrella of messaging that is later tailored to a regional basis, Ramsden adds.
As a global brand, however, the message is just part of the localisation task. Marketers must ensure all elements of their communications are tailored to their localised target markets, adapting for language, culture, regulation, economy, and social trends and nuances.
The firm’s global investable themes are utilised on a local basis, with localised products – such as OEICs (Open Ended Investment Companies) in the UK – that feed into the broader messaging of solving global themes for clients.
“It’s important for us locally to understand the themes and pair that with a client’s needs and how they’re thinking, and what might be relevant and available in our local markets,” says Ramsden.
When a campaign brief is forming, the marcomms team discuss whether the investable theme is arising from a local perspective, she adds.
“We’re shaping the brief around that, and in return, we can ensure our campaigns are of greatest relevance in our local markets.”
After the campaign is executed, Ramsden’s local marketing team feeds back into the global team.
“We have a continual feedback loop with central content and campaign teams helping us to share how content has been used locally, any feedback from distribution or clients, coupled with keeping a close watch on digital analytics (open and click rates) against campaign KPIs.”
“It’s often the case that materials can be tailored to best meet local client needs.” Feeding the ideas back ensures a closely collaborative marketing function that has a constant feed of constructive information, Ramsden says.
Content opportunities
Content is a marketer’s most effective marketing tool, with 86% of B2B CMOs planning to increase investment in content creation and distribution, according to cloud-based content solution provider Bynder’s “State of content report 2023.”
In the past, AllianzGI’s internal structure meant large, independent teams and a lack of cohesivity between them.
“There was a cottage industry of production, where people would produce either their own piece of content or develop their own tool in one market that was very similar to a piece of content or a tool that was being developed in another market,” says Fairbrother.
Turning those individual cottage industries into a big, centralised factory has been a journey, he adds.
“That means that instead of spending the time and resource in the development phase, where we’re developing lots of very similar things, we’re actually enable to use that finite spend and finite time on promoting the centrally created materials,” he adds.
For example, the organisation holds global events, such as its Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
“In October, around 200 senior investors and distribution colleagues met in Hong Kong. The idea was to get them talking about investable themes, generating insights and ideas for portfolios.
“The summit should really be a content-generating machine for us – it’s not just an event for an event’s sake,” Fairbrother states.
The marcomms team aimed for it to generate unique, targeted, and AllianzGI-owned content opportunities.
It was also an opportunity to shoot videos with some of AllianzGI’s chief investment officers in a natural, relatively relaxed environment.
“When we filmed them, we deliberately thought this isn’t just immediate investment summit related content, it should be more evergreen content,” says Fairbrother.
Creating and reproducing content across a variety of touchpoints creates a consistent experience for a diverse audience – a priority for 95% of CMOs, according to the Bynder report.
These content opportunities, and the key global investable themes that emerge from events such as the Innovation Summit, directly feed into the firm’s outlook for 2024.
Notably, Fairbrother and Ramsden’s teams are led by the overall head of marketing communications, John Wallace, who is part of AllianzGI’s seven-person executive committee.
Having a “seat at the top table” in the boardroom helps to facilitate the marcomms team’s ambitious and successful blend of local and global structures, and ensures marketing is central to the entire business.
This article is taken from the Winter 2024 print edition of Financial Promoter.
Want to hear more from Alastair Fairbrother? Find him on the stage at this year’s FP Live! on 18 March. Click here to buy tickets.