Recently in Globalization Category

This post was written by Aquent's Alex "Anytime/Anywhere" Weaver. This is a picture of him.

As fluid and uncertain as it has become (thanks in part to companies shedding full-time employment opportunities faster than A-Rod is shedding fans), the career landscape isn't really a landscape anymore. Its more like a wormhole where traditional job search conventions go in and something entirely different emerges.

Some claim that we are now looking at a 24-hour workplace, but I think it goes beyond that. Thanks to the web, the workplace isn't even a real place anymore; it's been replaced by the nowhere-in-particular of cyberspace.

The question now is: How do you go about looking for a job in the anytime/anywhere world of work in which the internet is your office, a solid web presence your resume, and what you do (your specialization) matters more than where you do it (your geographic location)?

I'll tell you this: it's not easy. Where once you could focus the bulk of your networking attention on the city you call home, now you could potentially be working for a client in Kuala Lumpur on a project that needs to be delivered next day to Sao Paulo (their time), while your toast gets cold in Idaho. See? It's complicated!

We've been responding to this brave new wormhole by shifting around the way we work. Our agents are now focusing less on covering a specific geographical beat than they are on mastering a particular area of specialization. It's technically possible for a web agent in Seattle to find a web designer in Montreal to work for a client in Dallas, so why shouldn't we make exactly that happen?

Obviously [BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION WARNING!], one way to look for gigs (or talent, for that matter) in the anytime/anywhere world is to partner with an organization capable of being anywhere/anytime (I can recommend one if you're curious). But what I'm dying to know is, how are YOU doing it (without the aforementioned, nameless organization)? Have you been able to shift your mind and efforts successfully into the de-spatialized, temporally fluid workplace? Do you work in a certain specialty rather than a certain place? Does your client list span the globe while you, uh, butter your toast in Idaho?

To put it another way, do you now or have you ever worked for someone you have never met in person who lives in a place you've never visited? How did you make that happen? I gotta to know! Talk to me!

OK. I knew that Aquent had several offices in Greater China, but, frankly, I get so focused on the things I'm doing right here in my own reality tunnel that it sort of slipped my mind. That is, until the friendly robotic spiders at Google reminded me with an alert announcing that Aquent had appointed a new manager for Beijing.

First of all, congratulations, Douglas MacDonald, whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting. Second of all, it's a given that we're going to "act locally," though we are also capable of acting globally (the web is "worldwide" after all), but how are we supposed to "think globally"?

Do you work or have you worked for a global organization? How did you maintain a sense of your globalness? On the other hand, did you need to? If you don't interact with your colleagues in Malaysia or Praque, do you have to keep them in mind?

Thanks to Google, I was alerted to an Aquent reference on a blog called, "Give, Get, Take, and Have." I don't know much about it, but, astonishingly, "This blog has often been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean." Go figure!

Anyway, the (possibly Canadian) author of this blog posted a link to an Aquent mini-site called, "The Business of Touch," which provides the world with annotated animations illustrating the proper mode of greeting people in a variety of countries from India to Czechoslovakia.

To that blogger, I say, "Thanks for sharing this with your readership!"

To everyone else I say, "If you or someone close to you is going to be meeting anyone in or from another country, please consult 'The Business of Touch' in order to avoid a potentially unpleasant and/or embarrassing international incident."

Image Courtesy of s.lowrie.

I saw this video on DeanHunt.com. Well, actually, Dean posted a slightly earlier version of it. The one below dates from June 2007:

The main point seems to be that the world is bigger, more connected, and changing faster than we realize. It's interesting in part because it illustrates at least one of the points it is trying to make: originally created for a presentation to 150 people, the various versions have collectively been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube.

There are a lot of thought-provoking tidbits in here and I encourage you to find them for yourself. To save you a fraction of time, I'll share these two with you:

- By 2013, supercomputers will exceed the computational capacity of the human brain;
- By 2049, a $1000 computer's capacity will exceed that of the human race.

As the authors point out, it is very difficult to predict what will happen between the first date and the second. One reason for this unpredictability is something Vernor Vinge dubbed, "The Singularity," way back in 1993. As he wrote then, "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."

In other words, once an intelligence greater than our own appears on Earth, the possible futures ensuing become as unknowable as the events occurring beyond the event horizon of a black hole.

Action Item: During your next job interview, ask the interviewer what plans the company has for The Singularity and the need to serve super-intelligent customers.

I am generally bored by presentations, business, academic, or otherwise. I fidget, I doodle, and my comments or questions tend to fall into the "distracting/sometimes comedic" category. And while I've sat through my share of boring presentations, I will freely admit that I have likewise conducted some of my own. Moreover, I have known the searing pain and embarrassment of consciously doing so.

I've tried to play with the genre in order to liven things up. At academic conferences, I've eschewed the traditional reading approach and spoken ex tempore. In business contexts, I've used Godin-esque PowerPoints featuring provocative images and 5 words or less per slide, and I've even daringly presented without a PowerPointed net.

Still, I have yet to try Pecha Kucha. A Pecha Kucha Night is an event whereat designers present their ideas on design under rather strict limits: Each presenter gets 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. If you do the math, you'll realize that gives each presentation 400 seconds, or a little over six minutes.

The founders of PK Night, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture, realized that, if you "give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) ... you'll be trapped for hours." At the same time, they wanted to create "a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public." Incipit Pecha Kucha.

I'm loving the concept. Can you imagine a speaker telling you, "Yes, I'd be happy to present at your conference, but I refuse to speak for more than six and a half minutes"?

If that sounds like a dream come true, CALL ME! I would be happy to speak anywhere, on ANY SUBJECT, Pecha-Kucha-style. Even if I'm boring, the light at the end of the tunnel of boredom is coming atcha in twenty 20-second increments. So don't worry. It will be over soon.

Image Courtesy of Sam Takes Photos.

As part of the follow-up to webcast Aquent sponsored devoted to Seven Key Insights for Global Marketing and Brand Management, I called up Sarah Schuh who is general manager of Aquent's Multilingual Communications offering. Sarah has been working in the marketing translation and localization space for many years now and I thought she could help some of you out there with her experience and insights.

I recorded a podcast with Sarah and in our conversation she made one thing perfectly clear: when it comes to localization, translating copy from one language to the next is actually the easy part. Indeed, the real work happens well before any copy is handed over to the translators. That work involves clarification of your core marketing message, ensuring that this message meaningfully addresses a real audience in the target market, and planning for eventual localization when designing critical marketing instruments such as websites. There's nothing worse than having to add to the cost of translation the cost of redesigning your site to accommodate the expanded text produced by moving from English to, say, German.

To get down to the nitty gritty, you can hear the podcast by clicking on the device pictured below:

powered by ODEO

You can also download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.

Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:

01:08 - Does your target audience even exist in another market?
03:18 - It's not just words: How do your visual elements translate?
05:20 - Take localization into account when creating the original message
07:20 - Define the use of company terminology
10:00 - Plan for expansion of foreign text
12:08 - The investment in planning vs. The cost of getting it wrong
13:33 - What companies should look for in their localization partner
17:35 - The cause of localization disasters
20:39 - Is "success" just the absence of "disaster"?

Image courtesy of mmarchin.

(Note: I had to repost this entry without the Odeo player due to a technical glitch. If I can fix it I will. - Matt)

William Lunderman is VP of Global Strategic Brand Design at Colgate-Palmolive. He's thus far led quite an illustrious career as a designer and design leader for well-known brands like Revlon and iconic brands like Campbell's Soup. I invite you to listen to our conversation. I went into it assuming, somewhat naively, I admit, that globalization was all about localization and tailoring your products and messages to the world's varied environs. While that is certainly part of multi-national marketing execution, this sort of endless variation is not the essence of global brand strategy.

From a strategic standpoint, as I learned, the key is, on the contrary, honing in on the universal need addressed by your brand's promise. The trick then becomes effectively translating that promise into a culturally relevant consumer language. At least that's how I understood the sage words of Mr. William Lunderman when we spoke.

If you would like to hear what I heard, you can download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here (of course, if you just click on that link, it will play the file for you), or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.

Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:

00:50 - What is "Global Strategic Brand Design?"
04:32 - The Emotional Aspect of the Brand
07:41 - Thinking about Consumers on a Universal Level
09:55 - "Children like to play in their food"
10:41 - AXE - as a Brand
12:16 - Kellogg's and "Owning the Morning"
15:13 - Package as "Delivery Mechanism" of Brand Design
17:08 - The Current Consumer Language
19:55 - The Consumer's Perception of "The Best"
24:23 - Brands at Home and Home Brands
28:09 - Why We Move to New Brands
30:22 - Design Careers: When You Move to the Next Level
32:59 - "Obsolete yourself" - On Evolving and Avoiding Extinction

Image courtesy of 00dann.