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Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures
Building global brands provides companies with access to new markets, new opportunities and new ideas that can stimulate innovation and diversify revenue streams. However, with new opportunities comes additional challenges that marketers need to navigate in order to build an international brand.
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. Learn how to develop this global mindset and how to build this into your marketing strategy from some of the world's leading global brands such as Nike, LVMH, Nestlé, Shiseido, Natura and Marriott. This book explores the challenges these brands faced across international markets and how they balance remaining true to their brand values with creating local resonance.
Covering everything from how applying cultural understanding to interpreting data delivers exceptional consumer insight to how you can localize campaigns without losing the core brand identity, this book delivers all you need to know about scaling a brand globally packed full of powerful insight from leading marketers.
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. Learn how to develop this global mindset and how to build this into your marketing strategy from some of the world's leading global brands such as Nike, LVMH, Nestlé, Shiseido, Natura and Marriott. This book explores the challenges these brands faced across international markets and how they balance remaining true to their brand values with creating local resonance.
Covering everything from how applying cultural understanding to interpreting data delivers exceptional consumer insight to how you can localize campaigns without losing the core brand identity, this book delivers all you need to know about scaling a brand globally packed full of powerful insight from leading marketers.
296 pages, Paperback
Published June 24, 2025
7 people are currently reading
16 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 17, 2025
In an industry where new books often promise to redefine global strategy, Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures doesn’t try to impress with jargon or frameworks alone. Instead, it offers something more valuable: real perspective.
Katherine Melchior Ray and Nataly Kelly write from deep personal and professional experience. These aren’t consultants theorizing from the sidelines. They have lived the challenges of building global brands, from the factory floor to the C-suite — across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. And that shows. Their stories about parenting across cultures, launching products in unfamiliar markets, or persuading skeptical stakeholders give the book its authority and warmth.
Structured into four clear parts, the book walks readers through the essentials of marketing and branding, then moves into deeper territory: cross-cultural communication, value creation across cultures, and the often-overlooked work of building and managing international teams. Each chapter is loaded with brand examples — from Starbucks and Shiseido to Nike and Nestlé — and supported by frameworks that are accessible without being overly simplified.
What’s refreshing is that this isn’t a book about localization as a technical process. It is about localization as a mindset, one that marketers need if they hope to resonate across borders. For those of us who live at the intersection of language, culture, and commerce, that is a message worth reinforcing.
Readers looking for deep dives into large language models, machine translation quality estimation, or artificial intelligence localization workflows will not find them here. That is not the book’s lane, and that is perfectly fine. Brand Global, Adapt Local serves as a bridge between marketing and localization, between strategy and empathy, and between global ambition and local relevance.
For localization professionals, the book is a useful resource for helping cross-functional teams grasp the nuances that matter. For marketers, it is an invitation to look beyond headquarters-centric playbooks and listen more closely to what the world is saying.
As we move through a period of recalibration in the language industry, where automation and buyer expectations are shifting fast, this book reminds us that the core challenge remains the same. Communicating across cultures still requires thought, respect, and context.
Katherine Melchior Ray and Nataly Kelly write from deep personal and professional experience. These aren’t consultants theorizing from the sidelines. They have lived the challenges of building global brands, from the factory floor to the C-suite — across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. And that shows. Their stories about parenting across cultures, launching products in unfamiliar markets, or persuading skeptical stakeholders give the book its authority and warmth.
Structured into four clear parts, the book walks readers through the essentials of marketing and branding, then moves into deeper territory: cross-cultural communication, value creation across cultures, and the often-overlooked work of building and managing international teams. Each chapter is loaded with brand examples — from Starbucks and Shiseido to Nike and Nestlé — and supported by frameworks that are accessible without being overly simplified.
What’s refreshing is that this isn’t a book about localization as a technical process. It is about localization as a mindset, one that marketers need if they hope to resonate across borders. For those of us who live at the intersection of language, culture, and commerce, that is a message worth reinforcing.
Readers looking for deep dives into large language models, machine translation quality estimation, or artificial intelligence localization workflows will not find them here. That is not the book’s lane, and that is perfectly fine. Brand Global, Adapt Local serves as a bridge between marketing and localization, between strategy and empathy, and between global ambition and local relevance.
For localization professionals, the book is a useful resource for helping cross-functional teams grasp the nuances that matter. For marketers, it is an invitation to look beyond headquarters-centric playbooks and listen more closely to what the world is saying.
As we move through a period of recalibration in the language industry, where automation and buyer expectations are shifting fast, this book reminds us that the core challenge remains the same. Communicating across cultures still requires thought, respect, and context.
August 11, 2025
I loved this book. This is easily one of the best books I’ve read. The authors weave together their personal and professional experiences with case studies and anecdotes, making it a read that’s as engaging as it is insightful.
I’m deeply interested in cultural nuances, and this book gave me so many examples of brands that adapted successfully (and those that didn’t) while staying true to their core. It’s already sparked ideas I’ve started applying to my own work.
REALLY recommend for anyone working in brand, marketing, international teams, business, or founders themselves.
I’m deeply interested in cultural nuances, and this book gave me so many examples of brands that adapted successfully (and those that didn’t) while staying true to their core. It’s already sparked ideas I’ve started applying to my own work.
REALLY recommend for anyone working in brand, marketing, international teams, business, or founders themselves.
November 1, 2025
Interesting book plan development from personal journeys, to mobility in the C-Suite, the book gives a fresh overview on multicultural marketing approach and how it's deeply important nowadays.
February 11, 2026
loved all the anecdotes and practical tips for how to be a global marketer
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews