There is a great new report on The American-Western European Values Gap, from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project conducted in the US, UK, France, Germany and Spain this Spring as part of a broader 23-nation poll.  It highlights several characteristics we mention in our book (Working with Americans) to help expanding organisations understand how these can impact them and which you shoul find helpful if you work with Europeans and/or Americans:

Views on International Engagement- the USA and Britain

About four-in-ten (39%) Americans say the U.S. should help other countries deal with their problems, while a narrow majority (52%) says the U.S. should deal with its own problems and let other countries deal with their problems as best they can. The British are nearly evenly divided; 45% say their country should help other countries deal with their problems and about the same number (48%) believe Britain should deal with its own problems. Last year, about the same number of Americans said their country should help other countries (45%) as said it should let other countries deal with their own problems (46%).

Cultural Superiority

About half of Americans (49%) agree with the statement, “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others;” in Britain only about a third or fewer (32% and 27%, respectively) think their culture is better than others. While opinions about cultural superiority have remained relatively stable over the years in the four Western European countries surveyed, Americans are now far less likely to say that their culture is better than others; six-in-ten Americans held this belief in 2002 and 55% did so in 2007. Belief in cultural superiority has declined among Americans across age, gender and education groups.

Individualism and the Role of the State

American opinions continue to differ considerably from those of Western Europeans when it comes to views of individualism and the role of the state. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) Americans believe it is more important for everyone to be free to pursue their life’s goals without interference from the state, while just 35% say it is more important for the state to play an active role in society so as to guarantee that nobody is in need. In contrast, 55% in Britain say the state should ensure that nobody is in need; about four-in-ten or fewer consider being free from state interference a higher priority. Asked if they agree that “success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control,” Americans again offer more individualistic views than those expressed by Western Europeans. Only 36% of Americans believe they have little control over their fate, compared with 41% in Britain.

Interestingly Pew, a not-for-profit, publishes these important business insights which I hope leaders take to heart; if not, their geographical expansions will result in lost money, time, brand equity and corporate reputations.

Allyson Stewart-Allen, founder, International Marketing Partners as interviewed by The Marketer blog.

Allyson, as a well-known UK- USA marketing expert, do you think brands can shore up a company’s share price? In a word… yes. And focusing on creating brands in tough times is the right time to do so.

Why bother creating brands at any time? They serve a number of purposes for the business but the main ones, I would argue as one who helps create them for companies, are… 1) to skew markets in your favour by creating products and services that customers want above all others in the category and 2) to secure loyalty, advocacy and subsequently cash flow through understanding and catering to those who value your products and services.

Brands are mostly constructed on customer perceptions and direct experiences with the branded product/service, as well as built on intangibles that influence those perceptions – intellectual properties (copyrights, patents, domain names, trademarks, designs), good corporate behaviour and having local knowledge.

Intellectual Properties

These IPs are legitimate assets which must be actively managed, while corporate diplomacy and conscience (less tangible but still corporate culture assets) are in the power and decisions of the brand owner’s leadership. Think about Apple’s designs, Coca-Cola’s bottle shape, Amazon’s pulling power – all of which are IPs being actively managed and defended.

Good Corporate Behaviour

You’re familiar with the recent stories of executives whose arguably autistic approach has undermined their brands, including Tony Hayward for BP, Irene Rosenfeld for Kraft and more recently Rupert Murdoch for News International.

Local Knowledge

Why has TopShop had so much success in the US while M&S hasn’t? What did they do differently that enhanced or undermined their brands? Simply it’s about brand travel – studying if and how brands can be transplanted and survive in a different clime. Ford has cracked it and many SMEs have, too, by being methodical and good listeners.

There are now many firms helping CEO’s and City analysts value brands on balance sheets to show there’s more than just IT and real estate to the way organisations create and extract value from their markets. These valuations do shore up share prices by using quantitative methods including:

• Economic income approach: where a brand is valued using one or more valuation methods that convert anticipated economic benefits into a present single amount using discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis
• Market comparable approach: where a brand is valued by comparison with similar assets which have been sold, for example using P/E ratios or turnover multiples.
• Cost approach: where a brand is valued using the sum of the individual costs or values of the brand assets and liabilities, for example the cost of building or recreating the brand.

Creating and maintaining brand assets is essential to every healthy business. You know as well as I do that those that don’t end up fighting in the trenches on “price” because they’ve not given customers a reason to differentiate. There’s no profit to be had in the price fight, which some, sadly, learn a little too late.

(source: http://business.blogs.cnn.com)

Following their hearing with Britain’s MP’s in London, Rupert Murdoch returned to craft an email to the 50,000 global staff across his empire, reprinted thanks to website Politico.   Clearly its speed of dissemination and purpose was to send a message that the leader has a plan, that things must change.  Ironically, as one of the world’s pre-eminent media and broadcasting companies, it’s a curious choice of medium considering its poor effectiveness in conveying emotion, empathy, voice or body language.  Surely to mobilize people requires some inspiring pictures instead of printed words?
Here’s my analysis for CNN during the Westminster hearing of the Murdochs, captured also by CNN.com:
On how the Murdochs came across: “If you look at all of the comments they made over the course of the past three hours, what comes out loud and clear to me are two executives who appear profoundly out of touch.”
On News International using private investigators: “Some of the statements that we heard earlier (from Rupert Murdoch) … “All news organizations use private investigators,” as if that legitimizes the practice. “No, I’m not responsible for the fiasco. I trusted people.” Well, excuse me, the chief executive of a company is responsible, so Mr. Murdoch, both Mr. Murdochs, need to own what has happened in their organization. The culture is clearly broken.”
On enforcing good corporate governance: “It’s one of the things that’s interesting about this situation — if you think about Mrs. Brooks’ history, she is born and bred within the stable of News International and so in terms of promulgating a culture that is abiding by these codes of ethics we’ve heard about countless times over the past few hours … there are processes, there are codes of conduct, there are rules but interestingly where has the enforcement actually been made to make sure those rules are actually abided by by senior leaders in this business and from what I’ve heard today I can’t actually say that the company is showing evidence of that.”
On whether they’ve contained the infection: “I think that there’s still many more weeks to run of this. It’s so monumental: the scale, the scope. They hope that by retiring the News of the World brand, that the infection has been contained. I believe it’s much more widespread – it perhaps is an industry-wide practice.
On whether the News Corp. can come back from the scandal: “They can come back from this but it will take 20 years, 20 years of good practice.”

One of the key reasons it’s so important for brand owners and developers to master the global/local dilemma is because the costs for those who haven’t are immeasurable.  For example, the costs to the brand’s and parent company’s reputation from market ignorance is tangible but often difficult to measure due to the time lags involved.  Similarly, the cash spent on campaign investments – above and below the line – are wasted when a company’s local execution is misaligned to the culture.

The lack of a global marketing strategy means the risks of off-message behaviour and executions are tremendous.  These inconsistencies we know undermine brand building, for which consistency is a prerequisite.  It also means the experience for customers across touch points is inconsistent, lowering their loyalty and thus lifetime value and revenue streams to the company.