It will not be long before very large
sections of the world population be-
come difficult to attract. In their roles
as consumers, citizens, workers, deci-
sion makers, policy makers, investors
etc people will look carefully at what
brands have to offer them. They will
often have little time or mind space for
decisions and they will choose those
brands that clearly offer them the
most value; and their demands for
value are increasing rapidly. How will
global brands cope with this demand?
How will they be able to con-
tinuously increase their value to fickle
stakeholders? How will they do that in
a world where people are becoming
more and more conscious of their
national, regional and local identities?

As a reaction to these above-
mentioned global developments, many
organisations have mainly been con-
cerned with improving their opera-
tional efficiencies. This may seem
obvious, considering the pricing pres-
sures they are under; however, it is

INTRODUCTION
Over the past decades, people around
the globe have become increasingly
discerning and have been offered much
more choice. This is due to three
factors that have worked both simul-
taneously and in tandem. The first is
that trade liberalisation and subsequent
global competition have increased the
supply of goods and services to con-
sumers and have driven down their
prices. The second is that people
around the world have, overall, be-
come richer, especially in places such as
China and India. The third is that,
due to increased competition, many
product life cycles have shortened
dramatically, which means that people
are offered new, innovative, novel and
better products and services all the
time. Just take the example of the
relentless advance of computer and
telecommunications technology, which
has transformed the way many people
live and work, and not just in rich
countries.

� HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005 395

Sicco van Gelder
Brand Meta,
Valschermkade 26, Amsterdam
1059CD, The Netherlands

Tel: �31 20 7173041
E-mail: sicco.van.gelder
@brand-meta.com

The new imperatives for global
branding: Strategy, creativity
and leadership
Received (in revised form): 31st January, 2005

SICCO VAN GELDER
runs a Netherlands-based global branding consultancy, Brand Meta (www.brand-meta.com). He is also the
co-founder of Placebrands Ltd, a firm dedicated to helping cities, regions and countries define their purpose and
achieve their full potential. He is the author of ‘Global Brand Strategy — Unlocking Brand Potential Across
Countries, Cultures and Markets’ (Kogan Page, 2003).

Abstract
This paper argues that the combination of strategy, creativity and leadership is going to be the key
to the success of global brands in the coming decade. It also states that one needs to understand
how these three disciplines interact, and specifically how this interaction may differ across the
markets where the brand is active.



will determine the competitiveness of
global brands in the coming decade. It
does not matter whether these brands
are products, services, NGOs, cor-
porates or places. All of them need to
build their global competitive ad-
vantages, and no advantage is more
powerful than a compelling brand. A
compelling global brand is one that
offers exceptional value to its various
stakeholders who have to live in very
different countries, under different cir-
cumstances, in different cultures and
often with different needs.

Strategy, creativity and leadership are
to a brand what fuel, heat and oxygen
are to a fire: reduce one and it flickers,
remove one entirely and it is extin-
guished. It is in the combination of
these three disciplines that the energy
of a brand rests. Interbrand’s list of top
brands for 2004 gives an indication of
the power of this trinity.1 Comparing
2003 and 2004, the biggest winners in
brand value increase are:

— Apple (+24%)
— Amazon.com (+22%)
— Yahoo (+17%)
— Samsung (+16%)
— HSBC (+15%).

These five are generally well regarded
for their vision, their ability to innovate
and the quality of their management.
As a result, they provide value to their
customers worldwide well over and
above what their rivals are capable of.
Now look at the biggest losers on this
list:

— Kodak (–33%)
— Nintendo (–21%)
— AOL (–18%)
— Nokia (–18%)
— Ford (–15%).

a supply-side solution that can jeop-
ardise their ability to compete in the
future. Unless they can find ways that
will persuade their customers to pay
more or buy more of their products
or services, they will only be in a race
to the bottom towards the lowest
price.

Some companies have decided to
slap their brands on products and
services developed, manufactured and
delivered by efficient third parties at
the expense of their own knowledge
base and at the expense of their own
brands that are slowly becoming mere
labels devoid of value. Other brands
have reacted by improving their offers
to their customers. For instance, Apple
has shown relentless innovation with
its iPod player, its iTunes music service
and recently with its affordable Mac
Mini. Toyota has been shown to
be one of the most innovative car
manufacturers with its highly suc-
cessful Prius hybrid car. Rituals, a
Unilever offshoot that is fast expand-
ing from its home base of the Nether-
lands into Belgium, Germany and the
UK, offers a combination of highly
stylised home and body care products
such as Lotus Stone laundry cleaning
tablets, Samurai Secret shaving gel
(with basil and ginger) and Carpe
Diem shampoo (with rice milk and
Sakura Cherry Blossom). Such ex-
amples show that global competitive-
ness is less about efficiency than about
creating new and inspiring value for
customers.

CREATING VALUE: THE
COMBINATION OF STRATEGY,
CREATIVITY AND LEADERSHIP
This paper argues that the combination
of strategy, creativity and leadership

396 � HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005

VAN GELDER



stakeholders must be offered an ex-
perience that is on brand. Leadership is
obviously key to these three types of
strategy, as the leadership creates them,
leads on their implementation and
aligns the entire workforce with them.
In addition, the leadership must them-
selves be seen to be acting on brand.

This is a fine process, yet one that
becomes useless unless at every step
sufficient doses of creativity are intro-
duced. How can a strategy be truly
compelling if it starts off with a boring
purpose for the brand? How can it
create value if the brand that is devised
lacks original thinking? How can the
brand truly delight consumers if no
creative thought has been applied to its
tangible and intangible manifestations?

Creativity
Creativity is about ideas. This can be
thinking in a different way about famil-
iar issues or even coming up with
absolutely new ideas. Creativity can
and must be applied throughout the
entire strategy process from the for-
mulation of a vision for the brand right
down to the design and delivery of its
products and services. This is what
Jeff Mauzy and Richard A. Harriman2

call systemic creativity. Nicholas Ind
and Cameron Watt3 argue that truly
creative organisations break down the
barriers within the organisation and
with the outside world and engage
all stakeholders in a continuous crea-
tive process. Creativity is therefore not
something that is limited to brainstorm
sessions, but rather a habit that is
imbedded in the organisation. This is a
task for the leadership: to encourage
ideas to be created throughout the
organisation. Its processes and innova-
tions will be built from those ideas.

These five have either lost their way
and are stuck in a product category that
is fading, or they have come up against
competition that can provide more
value to their customers. Although the
exact calculation of brand value is al-
ways open to discussion (there is always
the matter of the purpose for which a
brand is valued), this list does illustrate
the importance of getting the mixture
and balance of strategy, creativity and
leadership right.

Strategy, creativity and leadership
are examined separately below, before
looking at their combination and
before looking at them in a global
setting.

Strategy
There are three forms of strategy
that are pertinent to brands, namely
business strategy, brand strategy and
marketing strategy. The significance of
business strategy to branding is that it
determines the vision, purpose, objec-
tives, business model, resources, com-
petencies and motivations for the
brand. What the business strategy sets
out to achieve is turned into a value
proposition by the brand. Thus the
brand strategy deals with what makes
the brand unique, inspiring, believable,
trustworthy and likeable or even ad-
mirable. None of this is worth a thing
unless this translates well into the
brands’ products and services, and
their pricing, promotion, servicing and
delivery. Which is where the marketing
strategy comes in: to translate the brand
into a valuable stakeholder experience.
The brand functions as the organising
principle for the entire strategy process,
because it is the definition of the value
to be created for the organisation’s
stakeholders. In other words, the

� HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005 397

THE NEW IMPERATIVES FOR GLOBAL BRANDING



can take various forms, such as
public-private brand partnerships for
places, brand development partner-
ships, marketing partnerships and
product or service development
partnerships. Leading such partnerships
involves joint strategising, joint
development and joint implementa-
tion. This puts an added strain on the
leadership, because it involves
negotiating with partners (ie equals).
The brand that the partnership
develops and manages helps to keep it
on track, because it provides the
partnership with a clear guiding
purpose to fulfil.

The combination of strategy,
creativity and leadership
It is clear that strategy, creativity and
leadership all have an important part to
play in branding and vice versa. The
new leadership agenda has introduced
creativity into the mix where the focus
has so far been on strategy — devised
by the leadership and handed down to
the organisation. As indicated in the
previous paragraphs, strategy without
creativity and creativity without leader-
ship are not meaningful. However, it is
in their full combination that these
three become imperatives to the
branding process. If the links between
the three are strong, they reinforce,
inspire and interact with each other.
Traditionally, strategy, creativity and
leadership have been separated in
organisations, because it was felt that
these were processes suited to particular
departments, organisational levels or
even certain individuals. This has led
many corporations to develop uninspir-
ing brands or for their brands to lose
their lustre over time, such as GM,
Philips, Xerox and Coca–Cola. Some

Creativity is not the same as innova-
tion, which may be termed ‘applied
creativity’. Creativity is also not the
same as improvement, which may be
termed ‘routine creativity’. However,
both innovation and improvement re-
quire pure creativity to function. The
brand functions as the inspiration for
the creativity, it gives direction and
provides the parameters within which
the creativity must take place. In other
words, the creativity has to be on
brand.

But what is creativity worth if there
is no one to direct and encourage it? If
there are no structures within which it
can flourish? If there are no rewards (or
at least no penalties) for being crea-
tive?

Leadership
Leadership is about the ability to lead.
It is about creating the vision, struc-
tures, systems, trust and clarity that
inspire people in the organisation to
achieve its strategy and apply their
creativity to the things they do in their
work. Leading a brand entails set-
ting a context and a culture within
which employees live the brand and
stakeholders perceive the brand. In
other words, the employees’ behaviour
and demeanour must be recognisably
on brand.

Leadership is also about involving
employees in the planning and im-
plementation of the actions required
to fulfil the organisation’s vision. This
means inspiring the workforce to con-
tribute creatively to a common goal
and aligning their personal values to
those of the brand.

Increasingly, leadership involves
creating (temporary) partnerships with
other stakeholders of the brand. These

398 � HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005

VAN GELDER



innovating the business model and
the customer service rather than its
products. Dell saw early on that a
direct channel to its customers was the
way to go for mass-market computers,
which he coupled with the leanest
just-in-time production methods for
the entire industry. Dell, a very
demanding leader, inspires his people
to constantly improve the company’s
operations. For example, at its newest
US factory in Austin, Texas managers
view videotapes of its production
process to shave time off assembly.
Major computer components, such as
hard drives and CD players, have been
redesigned so as to snap into place
rather than screw.4 Yet the success of
the Dell model is not only due to its
management of inventory, its online
channels, its state of the art technology
and its affordable products. Other
computer brands are also good at this.
Dell’s success is largely because it
recognises that customers have increas-
ingly differing requirements for com-
puters. The Dell organisation is totally
geared to meeting these needs through
its ordering and customisation process,
delivery process and after-sales service.

But even old-fashioned giant con-
glomerates can learn to be nimble and
apply the disciplines across their or-
ganisations. Take the example of Sam-
sung. Samsung, an organisation that
is traditionally hierarchic and non-
transparent, has shown during the last
few years that it can be flexible and
innovative. Characteristically, the deci-
sion to switch from developing ‘me-
too’ consumer electronics products to
innovative ones was made by Sam-
sung Group Chair Lee Kun Hee in
1996. This decision has meant untying
Samsung managers from corporate
red tape and allowing them to use

even came a cropper, such as Polaroid.
Polaroid filed for bankruptcy in 2001
after missing the digital imaging
boat, because management banked
on its mainstay technology, instant
photography. Polaroid overestimated
the power of its brand as an icon of
cutting-edge imaging technology. Con-
sumers had no qualms about abandon-
ing Polaroid’s instant cameras for digital
cameras from Nikon, Canon and Sony.

It has generally been the young and
imaginative companies that tended not
to separate the disciplines, such as
Apple, Amazon, Dell, Dyson, eBay,
Virgin, Quiksilver, Red Bull and
Google. It probably came naturally to
their founders to appreciate the linkages
between strategy, creativity and leader-
ship, and to apply branding as the
guiding principle of all they do. Yet, the
kinds of brands and the way they
combine strategy, creativity and leader-
ship differ significantly. A comparison of
Apple and Dell illustrates this.

Apple is well known for its
industry-changing innovations and
designs, which are largely credited to
Steve Jobs, the company co-founder
and CEO. Jobs is a man with a vision
for his industry and, although reputedly
not always easy to get along with, he
has inspired his people to develop some
of the most iconic hardware and novel
software. Apple’s strength has been that
it has a clear idea of what people’s
experience of computers should be,
creatively applies its technological and
design expertise to just that, and
expands that practice to computer-
related consumer products. Apple’s
success relies on its ability to develop
cutting-edge products with almost
minimalist stylish designs.

Michael Dell also has a clear vision
of the same industry, but his is about

� HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005 399

THE NEW IMPERATIVES FOR GLOBAL BRANDING



management’s vision of the future of
the market may differ significantly
between countries. This has an im-
mediate impact on the organisation’s
future purpose. For example, Toyota’s
vision of a market for hybrid powered
cars is directly relevant to developed
markets where people are willing and
able to spend money on a ‘green’ car
and where environmental legislation
makes such cars almost inevitable. Such
a vision probably has little relevance to
fast developing markets such as China
and India. There Toyota’s vision is
probably more about the vast potential
of the market for regular cars with
rising consumer purchasing power, and
about the trade liberalisation and cor-
porate legislation that affect its abilities
to operate in those markets.

Business models may also differ
between markets, due to local cir-
cumstances. Some business models will
just not work in certain countries due
to matters such as low internet and
credit card penetrations, legislation
against direct selling (as is the case in
China), differing business hours (eg
very short shop opening hours in
Germany), differing technological stan-
dards (as is the case with mobile
telephones, and low levels of disposable
income. For example, in Japan, 7-
Eleven expanded its e-commerce offer-
ings with the launch of a website called
7dream.com. According to the com-
pany, 7dream.com shoppers can browse
through more than 100,000 items,
including music, flowers and photo-
graphic supplies, place their orders
online, then go to their local 7-Eleven
stores to pay for and collect their
purchases. It is unlikely that this would
be a viable business model in Europe or
the USA.

The brand strategy may also differ

all the resources under their own
roof.5 Mr Lee launched an effort to
focus the company on a new com-
petitive advantage: design innovation.
He committed $126m to develop a
global-design programme and he estab-
lished the company’s first-ever in-
house design school. Before long, the
company’s top designers, and in later
years, marketers and engineers, were
taking full-time classes six days a week
in fundamentals such as mechanical
engineering and marketing. Since Lee
embarked on what he calls a ‘design
revolution’, the company has more
than doubled the number of designers
in top-level management positions.6

Without doubt, Samsung is one of the
big branding success stories of the
past decade and shows how strategy,
creativity and leadership interact to
achieve this.

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR
GLOBAL BRANDING
Global branding is a complicated
matter that requires management to
understand the various internal and
external factors that affect their brand
as it stretches across the globe.7 Global
and international brands are affected
by differing structural, motivational
and cultural influences across the
countries (and sometimes even within
the countries) that they operate in. For
the purpose of this paper, the discus-
sion is limited to the influence that
these factors have on strategy, creativity
and leadership.

Global strategy
An organisation’s strategy can differ
significantly between markets because
of various local circumstances. Initially,

400 � HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005

VAN GELDER



of factors to take into account it is an
enormous achievement to be able to
create the greatest value for the brand’s
stakeholders in each and every market.
This paper will now examine creativity
in a global context.

Global creativity
Although creativity is lauded by
academics, consultants, business leaders
and politicians the world over, it is
actually not considered to be the same
thing in every society nor is it regarded
equally highly in every society. Culture
and education have a significant impact
on creativity in various parts of the
world.

In Europe, creativity is often con-
sidered to be limited to specific in-
dividuals, departments or organisations.
In addition, creativity is generally con-
fined to specific creative industries
or research and development func-
tions. Thus European brands are often
well known for their product design
and their marketing creativity, such as
Alessi, IKEA, Heineken, L’Oréal, Audi
and Prada. Technological and busi-
ness innovations are generally not the
strong points of European brands. Of
course there are notable exceptions
such as Airbus, Hennes & Maurits
and Virgin. The value of design to
European audiences has often been
underestimated by Japanese and US
brands. Japanese car makers have had
a tough time during the past decade
matching the reinvigorated European
brands (eg Renault and Alfa Romeo).
Perhaps their product quality was bet-
ter (only just), but their designs left
Europeans cold. US fashion brands
have also found it tough to com-
pete in the European marketplace. An
erstwhile venerable jeans brand such

between countries due to organisa-
tional issues, such as the business
strategy as discussed above, but also
due to local market influences. In each
market there are conventions, the
unwritten rules of the product and
service categories that can affect the
brand. There are structural conventions
— the way almost all players in the
market act — there are cultural
conventions — the things most people
believe and the way they behave to
one another — and there are motiva-
tional conventions — the way that
people commonly fulfil their needs.
For example, brands often unwittingly
carry the values of their country of
origin in them as part of their brand
identity, which can be entirely inap-
propriate to a host country. A typical
American social value such as equality
will be totally inappropriate in a
hierarchical society such as Indonesia.
That is why McDonald’s offers a
clear-up service in such countries
rather than letting its patrons dispose of
the remains of their meals themselves.

Finally, the marketing strategy may
differ between markets. This can be
due to a differing brand strategy, as
discussed above, but may also be due to
legal, religious, competitive, infrastruc-
ture, purchasing power and personnel
limitations imposed by a country.
Examples of this are lamb burgers in
India, the difficulties of efficiently
distributing wares into the Chinese
hinterland and the subsequent lack of
control of product shelf displays, and
the mini packs in which personal care
products are often sold in many
developing nations.

It is clear that all such factors should
force management to be highly crea-
tive when devising global or interna-
tional strategies. With such a multitude

� HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005 401

THE NEW IMPERATIVES FOR GLOBAL BRANDING



lean production total quality manage-
ment and continuous improvement.
Although these innovations led to an
almost worldwide quality revolution in
the 1980s, it did make Japanese brands
take their eyes off foreign consumers
who value other things apart from
quality and perfection. Arguably, the
most creative area of Japanese business
has been in what is commonly called
gadgets, such as DoCoMo’s i-mode
telephones, Sony’s Aibo robot dog and
the Tamagochi electronic pet. Most
Japanese gadgets are not much ap-
preciated beyond Japan’s shores.

The significance for global branding
of these differences in creativity not
only has to do with different con-
sumer preferences, but also with the
fact that global organisations employ
people with these differing mindsets. In
other words, the creativity of a Korean
employee is going to be quite different
from the kind of creativity one may
expect from an Italian employee and
different again from one in the USA.
This is a benefit when it comes to
localising the brand and fulfiling its
potential across markets, but it makes
the brand difficult to manage globally.
However, the example of Samsung
discussed in a previous paragraph shows
that culture is not a straitjacket and that
creativity can be encouraged by creat-
ing the right structures, atmosphere
and rewards for people in the en-
terprise. There follows an examination
of leadership in a global context.

Global leadership
Leading a global brand is about
providing direction, structure, inspira-
tion and opportunity to the people
who manage the brand in various
places around the world. Not only do

as Levi has not been able to respond
adequately to the marketing creativity
of Italy’s Diesel.

In the USA, technology, entertain-
ment and entrepreneurship are highly
regarded and it is no wonder that the
country has produced most creativity
in these very powerful areas. Think of
Microsoft, McDonald’s, Cisco, Pixar,
Charles Schwab, MTV and Accen-
ture. A lack of sensitivity to local
circumstances has sometimes played
havoc with US brands, especially when
they tried to forcefully challenge local
beliefs, values and customs. What was
considered creative or innovative at
home was not much appreciated else-
where. For example, Wal-Mart is
famous in the USA for its customer
service and its employee evangelism.
When Wal-Mart tried to duplicate
this in Germany, customers were
unimpressed by its meeters/greeters at
the doors. Worse still for the company
was that the German staff hid in the
toilets to avoid the morning Wal-Mart
cheer.8

East Asian countries, that have an
education system geared to rote learn-
ing and societal values of obedience
and respect for elders, do not en-
courage young people to stick their
necks out. A lot of stock is often placed
on to perfection. This is an aesthetic
need that in particular encompasses
many aspects of Japanese society, rang-
ing from manufacturing to sports and
from religion to food. Examples of
brands that cater to this need for per-
fection are Lexus automobiles (tag-line:
‘We pursue perfection, so you can
pursue living’) and Shiseido cosmetics
(the Shiseido ‘meme’: beauty and tech-
nology). In Japan, creativity in business
is often focused on process improve-
ments, such as just-in-time production,

402 � HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005

VAN GELDER



public–private partnerships. Strategy is
often stated in language about the
vision, purpose and ambition of the
organisation. This helps everyone
(employees, partners, communities etc)
understand what the organisation is
trying to achieve. For example, express
and logistics company TNT has a
vision called ‘Delivering More’ and a
subsequent mission that states ‘We lead
the industry by instilling pride in our
people, creating value for our
stakeholders and sharing responsibility
for our world’.12 Creativity is often
undertaken in R&D centres, which are
more and more connected with partner
R&D centres. For example, Philips and
Douwe Egberts jointly developed
the hugely successful Senseo coffee
machine by putting their knowledge of
electronics and coffee brewing to-
gether. The emphasis among European
brands is frequently on sharing and
the evolution of technologies and
knowledge.

In the USA, leadership may be
about driving an organisation to
achieve specific firm goals: eg increased
shareholder value, ROI and market
share. Strategy is often stated in terms
of growth, leadership (as in being
market leader) and financial results. For
example, HP talks about its corporate
objectives in the following or-
der: customer loyalty, profit, market
leadership, growth, employee com-
mitment, leadership capability and
global citizenship.13 The leadership of
creativity (and innovation) is often a
highly personalised matter among US
business leaders. It is about the personal
drive of people such as Bill
Gates, Phil Knight, Howard Schultz
and Jeff Bezos. Creativity for US
brands is generally about reinventing
the way people work, innovation

they themselves have different cultural
backgrounds, they also manage the
brand in environments that are often
unknown, if not alien, to global
management. It is essential that global
management realises this and under-
stands how these differences affect the
brand as it stretches across the globe.
On the one hand this means im-
plementing a common brand strategy
and management framework that takes
these matters into account and is
comparable across markets.9 On the
other hand it also means getting to
grips with how leadership differs in
various parts of the world.

In collectivist societies, such as
most Asian ones, leadership is about
managing groups rather than managing
individuals.10 This means that as a
manager it is more important to ensure
group performance rather than in-
dividual performance. This has an
effect on strategy and creativity, be-
cause in a collectivist society these
become group processes aimed at
achieving consensus. Voicing personal
opinions is considered bad behaviour.
Strategy is, therefore, often stated in
‘group language’. Hamel and Prahalad
quote a Nissan senior executive as
saying: ‘GM is a powerful company,
but they aren’t clearly directing that
power. If some [employees] turn left,
and some turn right, a company cannot
move forward.’11 Similarly, individual
creativity is not encouraged yet group
creativity is often found in the shape of
continuous improvement.

In Europe, leadership is often
about a multi-stakeholder environment
whereby management spends time and
energy trying to keep everyone on
board. Management is about various
kinds of partnership performance, such
as co-development, co-branding and

� HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005 403

THE NEW IMPERATIVES FOR GLOBAL BRANDING



ganisations to determine where they
are going, how to do so in novel and
valuable ways, and how to keep
everyone inspired and on track. The
best tool available to ensure this
happens is the brand, functioning as the
organisation’s guiding, inspiring and
organising principle.

References
(1) ‘The 100 Top Brands’, Businessweek, 2nd

August, 2004.
(2) Mauzy, J. and Harriman, R. A. (2003)

‘Creativity Inc., Building an Inventive
Organization’, Harvard Business School
Press, Boston, MA.

(3) Ind, N. and Watt, C. (2004) ‘Inspiration,
Capturing the Creative Potential of Your
Organization’, Palgrave, Basingstoke, UK.

(4) Fast Company (2004) ‘Living in Dell time’,
available at: www.fastcompany.com/
magazine/88/dell.html, November.

(5) ‘Samsung tries to snatch Sony’s crown’, Far
Eastern Economic Review, 10th October,
2002.

(6) Fast Company (2004) ‘Masters of design:
Kun-Hee Lee’, June.

(7) Van Gelder, S. (2003) ‘Global Brand
Strategy; Unlocking Brand Potential Across
Countries, Cultures and Markets’, Kogan
Page, London, UK.

(8) ‘Wal around the world’, The Economist, 8th
December, 2001.

(9) Van Gelder, ref. 7 above.
(10) Hofstede, G. (1991) ‘Cultures and

Organizations: Software of the Mind’,
McGraw-Hill, London, UK.

(11) Hamel, G. and Prahalad, C. K. (1994)
‘Competing for the Future’, Harvard
Business School Press, Boston, MA.

(12) tnt.com, accessed on 1st April, 2005.
(13) hp.com, accessed on 25th January, 2005.

breakthroughs and revolutionary tech-
nology.

The leaders of globally operating
companies need to be far more
culturally aware than ever before. They
need to understand what travels well
and what does not, and when and why
local adaptations to strategy, creativity
and leadership are required. This
requires not only an appreciation of
structural, cultural and motivational
differences between markets, but also a
clear understanding of how the or-
ganisation can best operate across
markets.

CONCLUSION
Getting the mix and balance between
strategy, creativity and leadership right,
across multiple markets, will be the
most crucial job of global and local
management in the years to come if
their brand’s flame is to burn brightly
and not to flicker or be altogether
extinguished. But, as this paper ex-
plains, it requires a thorough un-
derstanding of how these disciplines
actually work and, more importantly,
how they interact with one another in
structurally, culturally and motivation-
ally different settings. This is not some
intellectual game to be played by
people sitting at their desks in com-
pany, institutional and government
offices, but a contest for entire or-

404 � HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1479-1803 BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 12, NO. 5, 395–404 JUNE 2005

VAN GELDER