How Do You Decide What to Localise and What Not to Localise When You Communicate Change in Asia Pacific?
Rule #1: Localise the Key Messages But Do Not Change Them
The main change messages must be kept consistent and this will be the request and expectation from your global or Asia Pacific headquarters as well. Therefore please do not change the key messages. However, you should localise the proof points or supporting statements by customising it. If the key message cannot be made relevant for the local target audience, they will not receive it.
For example, a global key message could be that the merging of two sister companies worldwide will bring “synergises” and a more “holistic offering” to both the employees and customers in the Asia Pacific region. While this key message will remain the same for all countries, what exactly “synergies” and “holistic offering” mean should be explained in local terms for each country because they might all have a different meaning in every country.
Therefore your task is to bring the global key message to your local target audiences by localising it but not by changing the key message itself in anyway. So please always stick to the key message, especially the key words used in the message.
Rule #2: Adopt Your HQ’s Message Content As Much as Possible
In an ideal world, your global or Asia Pacific HQ will offer you a comprehensive suite of ready-to-use communication content in English and in various formats. However they will not customise it for your markets unless there was a prior alignment on this.
Therefore you can expect a certain amount of thinking and reworking on the content and formats to fit your local requirements. So please spent the time to understand the content, clarify doubts and try to leverage your HQ’s content as much as possible and add local content where needed. Content localisation is a very important part of the entire change communication campaign and is essentially the core of the campaign.
Please keep in mind that you don’t want to change everything in the content and in some cases you will also not receive an endorsement to do so. Therefore leave the key messages and main content intact and only support to add local contexts and examples.
Rule #3: Do Not Break Your Company’s Corporate Communication Rules
Global companies have strict corporate identities and corporate communication policies which they enforce in all their sites and offices around the globe. These guidelines are quite comprehensive and covers all possible ways in which the company and its brands can be presented and communicated to the employees, customers and the media.
For example, it lists down very clearly all the fonts it uses, the type and sizes, the colour schemes, the design guidelines for emails, letters, posters, websites etc, photo directives for images and may also include guidelines to talk to the press and to interact with social media and more.
Normally your colleagues in your local communication departments are the guardians of these corporate rules. If they do not exist at a local level, then they will surely exist at an Asia Pacific level or at a global level. And in most cases, an advertising agency on a retainer (long-term service contract) will also be the gatekeepers and advisors for this corporate design guidelines. Also in most cases, they would have been probably the ones who created them in the first place.
But Generally Speaking “Corporate-Speak” Does not Inspire Change!
I have headed corporate communications functions before and therefore appreciate why multinational corporations value corporate communication and design rules. These rules are there to ensure that the company develops strong brands and a sustainable corporate reputation in the markets that they operate. This contributes to its brand equity which helps the company to weather through public relations crises such as product recalls, financial scandals, class actions etc.
However, I have to say that during my later roles in change management, I realised early that you need a slightly different voice than the standard “corporate-speak” language if you want to roll-out a really powerful change management campaign. I am confident that standard, plain and often cold and distant corporate communication writing and speaking style is not going to win the hearts and minds of people – especially during periods of change. I will write more about this in the chapter on communication later.
However, I believe a middle way can be found where really exciting change communication campaigns can be created and delivered without breaking any major corporate communication guidelines in your company. However, in all cases, I would recommend a clear and open dialogue with your communication department to find the middle ground.
Rule #4: Localise According to the Change Impacts
Heavy Localisation Needs More Time, More Money and More Manpower
To take an entire change communication package from your HQ and to completely localise it will need a substantial amount of resources in terms of time, money and manpower. However you may be able to use a strategic approach to decide what to customise and what to leave alone by thinking about the change impact the different types of communication activities bring.
To start with, I would recommend having thorough discussions with your leadership, your communication department, your project team and your external agency to align a list of activities that is to be customised. You want to avoid a situation where you took up too much customisation efforts onto your shoulders and on the other hand you also want to ensure that you did not fail to localise the ones that had the biggest change impacts.
As a ground rule, try to run the change communication campaign as much as possible in your local language, wherever possible, instead of dabbling in two languages. This is the best way but its easier said than done.
In most multinational corporations, its common to find foreigners and locals working together in the Asia Pacific region. In such cases, you need to offer the campaign bilingually but please focus more in delivering local content to the majority of the target audience that will feel the change impact more. You can about them in terms of “primary audience” and “secondary audience”. We will talk more about this in the chapter on target audience later.
Now, when you are faced with money, time or manpower constraints, you have to start thinking about making tradeoffs such that you can still deliver a change communication campaign that is customised and powerful but that does not burst your resources limits.
Less Localisation for Surface-Level Communication Activities
For example, awareness and reminder level communication activities such as posters, pop-ups, screen savers, banners, T-shirt designs can be left in English for example, assuming you have a small number of foreigners and that your majority is a local work force with non-native English proficency.
Or in another words, communication activities that offer only a surface level understanding need not be localised in a strong way. Imagine a poster with an image and a tagline. If you are hard-pressed for budget, I would suggest changing the image to look local and leaving the tagline in English. If you are really tight, then leave the image and tagline as how you received them. No change in the poster design.
More Localisation for Deep-Level Communication Activities
Whereas communication activities that are supposed to initiate open discussions and create a deep understanding of the change impact should be meticulously translated and localised.
Letters and speeches by the local leadership, Q&A sessions with topic experts, content websites, FAQs, guidelines for managers for team briefings etc should all be customised, meaning localised and translated. Local images should be used, rewrite interview scripts, reshoot videos, modify event concepts etc. You can and should, at this point in time include additional deep-level communication activities that you think is necessary for your local audience but was not recommended by your global offices initially.
Rule #5: Decide What to Localise In-House and What to Localise Using Your Agency
One of the biggest decisions to make would be to decide whether to execute the change communication campaign via your in-house resources or to outsource it. But in another way this decision is also quite easy to make as it depends if your management offers you resources and whether that is sufficient.
If you outsource all your campaign’s requirements, everything will be delivered on time and in a reasonable high quality manner for sure. But you would have lost a chance to fire-up your local people to rise-up to learn new skills, to bond together and more importantly to emerge as the driving force of your campaign. What you loose in perfection in some of the campaign tasks, you will gain many folds in terms of long-term engagement from your project teams.
What You Can Localise Using your Agency
Tasks that require professional knowledge and equipment, such as consultation on change management, communication and project management, agencies for press release writing and release, graphic designing, printing of posters, brochures etc, AV equipment for events etc. should of course be outsourced.
However, good and reputable consultancies will be expensive to hire but nevetheless I would still recommend hiring them because of their experience and expertise in their respective fields. However, if you face resource constraints, I would recommend asking these consultancies to offer you and your project team a training cum planning workshop instead. This is Plan B.
A group work activity in the training could be the development of a roll-out plan for your change communication campaign. Ideally a week of training on a few important areas in change management, another week on communication and another week on project management. I will go into detail in other chapters.
What You Can Localise Using Your In-House Resources
However I would recommend taking care of all non-essential activities using your in-house resources. For example, you can organise a recruitment campaign to bring together a group of volunteers, train and enable them to support your change campaign. I have experimented with this concept in a couple of occasions when I was faced with severe manpower shortages and found it to be a very valuable strategy, however with some limitations and risks which needs to be managed. I will write more about this in detail another chapter.
In today’s world, you can actually make a high quality video recording using your iPhone or any other good smartphone, edit it in iMovie with simple titling, transitions, sound tracks and broadcast it to the world from the arm chair of your home. With some training, I think a team inside your company can produce all the campaign videos you need. Therefore outsourcing the production of campaign videos would not be necessary. However, if you have budget – please, by all means outsource it.
Other tasks that you can manage in-house are all kinds of planning and preparations, trainings and briefings, translation and interpretations, creative concepts for posters, brochures, promotions and fun activities, website planning and development and event concept, logistics and management.
Best Practices & Tips
- Do not change the key messages, only change or add supporting local proof points and examples.
- Adopt the content from your HQ else you will be burdened with creating fresh content yourselves which can be extremely time absorbing.
- Do not break your company’s corporate communication rules which includes corporate identity and corporate designs. Respect it but find away to be creative by discussing with your communication department.
- Localising everything will need more time, more money and more manpower and will zap you completely of your energy.
- Therefore, be smart and practical what you want to localise. Localise those activities that create maximum change impact. The rest, leave them as they are.
- When faced with resource constraints, you can reduce your localisation for surface-level communication activities and maximise it for the deeper-level ones.
- Try to implement the change communication campaign as much as possible using your in house resources, supported by external agencies on areas where it really matters. This helps you to built your first batch of influencers in the process.
For Those In-Charge of Change 