Five Top Tips to Accelerate Transcreation for Life Sciences
Creating global content for localization doesn’t have to be a complex process. With the right tools, communication, and collaboration, you can reuse content in multiple regions while saving time and money. Here are top tips for a simple and successful way to localize content and manage your assets.
1. Communicate
Communicate with your agency from a strategic perspective and make it aware of your wider objectives. Be sure your agency knows upfront that it needs to build content in a way that it can be localized. And work with your agency on a “campaign toolkit” for your materials. What do your local teams need to reproduce your campaign in their markets? And if you’re not sure, ask the agency. The agency will tell you what source files are needed. Then use that knowledge to create a “bill of materials” for the agency to deliver against.
2. Contract
Make sure your agency is contractually obliged to provide you with all the deliverables to fulfill your localization needs. If your agency doesn’t know that the global materials will be localized, they won’t automatically deliver all of the assets. It should be agreed in your mutual contract on a bill of materials per job. Then make sure the agency delivers everything so you can create your campaign toolkit.
3. Collaborate
Change your working relationship with the agency, from a one-way command to a two-way collaboration. Use your agency’s expertise to agree what is needed to meet your localization requirements. This forms the basis of your bill of materials that you can use to ensure the agency fulfilled its obligations.
Very often there is an argument against this kind of collaborative approach because it is viewed as more expensive. Initially it may be the case that it is more expensive. But if you have a global campaign in 50 markets using the old process, you’re sending the money downstream and the local affiliates will end up spending more to recreate your content. By improving the process for global creation, you’re making it much easier for local markets to adapt the content, which saves time and money.
4. Cross-check
When your agency sends you the final deliverables, cross-check that you have everything you need for localization, as agreed at the outset. This should be easy if you have a bill of materials that details all of the source files and assets required for localization. Then you have your campaign toolkit ready to share with your local markets.
5. Catalogue
The final piece in the transcreation process is cataloguing. Make sure the assets are somewhere accessible for your local teams and also trackable and traceable at a global level. Stewardship of your assets can be assigned to someone within your agency role – that’s up to you. Either way, it’s an essential part of the process and a key step in ensuring a “single source of truth” for your campaign materials. This will help you to achieve your holy grail: consistent brand messaging across all of your territories.
See related blog Simplifying Transcreation for Brand Managers from David Bennett, VP of strategy for Veeva’s Commercial Vault platform in Europe.