Recently I attended the ‘Wings for Life World Run’, a charity fun-run for spinal cord injury research, and the event comes with a few twists. First of all, there is a moving finish line; once runners start off, they run as far as they can before a ‘catcher-car’ slowly takes off behind them at 15km an hour. Secondly, the run is a global event that simultaneously takes place in 34 locations across the world at 11am GMT – or as it was in Melbourne, 9pm Sunday 8^th May.

The event was a lot of fun to take part and it was interesting to see the implication and impact that a global scale can have on events and campaigns.

Wings for Life World Run has global partnerships with brands, as well as local partners for each city the event is taking place in. For Melbourne, given it was a night run, Led Lenser were a sponsor and donated head-torches to each runner as they departed along the course. While Puma is a global sponsor for the event, for places where the run was after dark, they could also spruik their reflective patterned high-vis t-shirts that each runner wore. Even if you couldn’t attend one of the 34 locations around the world for the run, you could download the app and join in wherever you were at 11am GMT with 130,732 other people worldwide.

This concept of global and localised strategy is not particularly new to companies, and there are many notable examples of how glocalisation can be executed. McDonalds is renowned for its globalised approach, but go into a store in Mumbai and you can order a Maharaja Mac, or pop into your local Maccas in Egypt and ask for a McArabia flatbread. On the other side of the coin, however, modifying your product to suit the local market isn’t without its hiccups. In 2012 Ikea released its catalogue in Saudi Arabia with one key edit – they had airbrushed out the women from their images. This understandably led to much public outcry; Ikea had definitely missed the mark on this one.

Looking at more recent glocalisation examples closer to home, Netflix has stated that they aim to produce original Australian content to be available on their streaming service. This is alongside the catalogue of already released Australian content available to view. US network Comedy Central has also just announced it is expanding its portfolio to Australia with a new ‘.com.au’ URL as well as a channel on FetchTV. It will feature Australian comedy troupe ‘Aunty Donna’ as the first locally commissioned act for the network.

This concept of tailoring content to the local market has a huge impact on a brand’s success, and has an important effect on how customers relate to that brand. The attention to detail in tweaking minor aspects of an event depending on it’s ‘glocal’ audience is important – for example, just being able to see your results in kilometres or miles for Wings for Life World Run makes a world of difference.

If you’d like to take part in the charity run for next year, just follow this link: http://www.wingsforlifeworldrun.com/

Written by James