For over a year, I’ve been interviewing content marketing executives at global enterprises about the challenges and opportunities they face when trying to scale up single-country or regional content marketing efforts to take them worldwide. (We’ve also been helping several brands build the strategies to make this happen.)

Today my company Kaleido Insights publishes this new research on global content strategy that outlines the challenges organizations face trying to scale and at the same time, coordinate content initiatives beyond borders.  The report also looks at global content strategy best practices across people, processes, and technology.

For now, let’s focus on the primary challenges facing global content operations.

Decentralized and/or Multiple Content Strategies

It’s not that large global enterprises lack content strategy. Nearly all the enterprises we formally interviewed with for this report have a content strategy in place. Instead, the challenge is implementation; it can be a battle for hearts and minds as well as for budget and executive buy-in. “Strategy is a piece of paper,” laments one senior executive.

Challenges facing existing content strategies are myriad as they are frustrating. Adoption of these strategies, from executive buy-in to far-flung staff is frequently cited. Strategy exists for some content initiatives, such
as social media, but not others, such as the company website. Adoption by business units is another near- universal problem. One large global brand, for example, has differing formal strategies in various global regions; the company’s challenge is cohesively tying these together.

Conversely, one global enterprise has a top-down global strategy that can be tone deaf when it comes to regional adoption. Leaders select global marketing and branding elements with little regards for how images or ideas might translate across cultures and borders.

Case in Point: Naming conventions and regional semantics matter. An enterprise’s US headquarters acquired rights to NFL brand assets for a global marketing campaign, oblivious to the fact that “football” means something very different in the USA than it does in every other country on the planet. When creative assets were sent to foreign offices, marketing staff were flummoxed, not to mention bereft of content assets.

Proximity impacts a country or region’s content needs. “Global” content doesn’t always fulfill what a locality requires, nor is it as relevant as local news, events or cultural issues that are geographically closer.

Additional content strategy challenges include:


• Confusing individual campaign strategy for an overarching content strategy


• Scaling content strategy across different regions and business units


• Diverse regional content strategies with no overarching global coordination


• Adoption of content strategy across the enterprise


• Channel strategy, as the ecosystem broadens and audience/algorithms are ever-changing.

• Creating “global anchor” content that can be modified by diverse groups


• Customer experience, particularly as related to emerging technologies and related changes in consumer behaviors.


• The ability to implement the voice of the customer at the core of content strategy initiatives.

• Having too many metrics


• Measuring the wrong things

All these challenges are just the tip of the iceberg. The accompanying chart illustrates more specific hurdles related to people, processes and technology. This are much more deeply discussed in the research, which also addresses the very real ways organizations such as Visa, 3M, Bosch, Save the Children, Cisco and IBM are addressing them.

Please read the report and let me know what you think.

I couldn't be more pleased or proud to announce the launch of Kaleido Insights today.

This new boutique research advisory firm is the brainchild of myself and three of the most brilliant, incisive, and generous collaborators I've ever had the pleasure to work with: Jaimy Szymanski, Jeremiah Owyang, and Jessica Groopman. Together we've co-authored dozens of research reports and collaborated on countless client engagements. Now, we're getting the band back together with a new methodology for looking at how businesses can thrive in an atomosphere of unrelenting tech disruption.

Our first Kaleido research report is available on our new website.

Hello world! We look forward to working with you. 

Our press release follows:

New Research and Advisory Firm Kaleido Insights Launches with Release of Original Research to Help Corporate Leaders Act On Technology Trends Shaping the Future

Three Macrotrends Impacting the Journey to 2030: Super Humans, Fluid Organizations, and Enlightened Ecosystems now available

San Francisco, CA and New York, NY -(MARKETWIRED) -- Kaleido Insights, a new boutique research and advisory firm, announces its launch today. Founded by four of the nation’s top analysts, the firm focuses on helping corporate leaders around the world transform the “kaleidoscope” of technological disruption into clear, actionable strategies. In conjunction with the firm’s launch, Three Macrotrends Impacting the Journey to 2030, a collaborative research report authored by founding partners Jaimy Szymanski,  Jeremiah Owyang, Jessica Groopman and Rebecca Lieb, is also released.  

“There is so much pressure on today’s leaders to stay ahead of the ‘next big thing’ that is set to disrupt their business model, and it can be hard for them to see the potential implications of multi-faceted consumer, enterprise and ecosystem trends,” said Owyang. “That’s where Kaleido Insights comes in. We help them distill what matters now, and in the future, amidst the chaos.”

Kaleido Insights offers rigorous, best-in-class research and strategic advisory services to innovation leaders across industries and functions. This includes the C-Suite and those charged with leading innovation, future planning, M&A and analyst relations functions.

Working with Fortune 500 businesses, technology leaders and start-ups, and nonprofit organizations, Kaleido Insights guides strategy development across:

• Customer experience (CX) and digital transformation

• Product and service automation

• Data- and ecosystem-driven business models

• Marketing, content, and media

• Organizational change and readiness

“In addition to our boutique status and access to founding partner advisory, our research-based approach sets us apart,” says Lieb. “We don’t just give opinions; we’re a proven team with original research at our foundation. That’s incredibly valuable to business leaders looking to differentiate. A first glimpse of it is revealed in the flagship research we deliver together today.”

What Makes Kaleido Insights Valuable and Unique?

• Deep partner coverage expertise is varied, yet connected. This offers clients a rich combination of research advisory across key trends shaping their worlds.

• Research is currently open to the public for free download. Kaleido supports transparent, open models.

• Primary research takes both a human and technology perspective.

• Leadership is diverse and equal: Kaleido is a partnership of seasoned analysts that reflects increasingly diverse leadership at today’s best organizations.

• Advisory model is grounded in rigorous original research. This provides organizational leaders with the ability to trust the authenticity of Kaleido’s research and advisory that they count on.

• Their actionable, outcome-focused mission enables organizations to foresee, decipher and act on technological disruption with agility. Kaleido’s original research, trend analysis, corporate leadership network, and pragmatic recommendations focus on providing leaders with what they need to create and execute strategies to adapt to the consumer, business model, and ecosystem impacts of disruptive technologies.  

Three Macrotrends Impacting the Journey to 2030, Kaleido Insights’ introductory research report, sets the stage for a series of additional reports under development. “It’s easy to go write about the next bright shiny object. Instead, our research agenda reflects the most important impacts you may have yet to identify for your customers, your business, and your ecosystem––from the market’s most disruptive technologies,” explains Groopman.

About Three Macrotrends Impacting the Journey to 2030

Three Macrotrends Impacting the Journey to 2030 identifies Super Humans, Fluid Organizations and Enlightened Ecosystems as three trends transforming modern society, culture and business. The report introduces these trends to readers and provides insights into the technologies that enable the journey, followed by recommendations on how organizations can create a clear vision for innovation.  

The Three Macrotrends Impacting the Journey to 2030 report can be immediately accessed directly from Kaleido Insights’ new website. Over the coming months, Kaleido Insights’ analysts will also be sharing and discussing the report with the organizational leaders at several private events and third-party forums.

“We want to hear directly from corporate leaders and change agents at these events. What are their challenges, and what impacts are they feeling from the three research trends we’ve identified?” says Szymanski. “Our client needs ultimately drive our research vision, and we want to create as many opportunities for collaboration as possible.”

Those interested in speaking to a founding partner, learning more about Kaleido Insights and/or securing a spot at one of their Q4 events should contact info@kaleidoinsights.com.

About Kaleido Insight

Kaleido Insights is a boutique research and advisory firm that focuses on transforming the “kaleidoscope” of technological disruption into clear, actionable strategies for innovation. Its four founding partners are analysts with deep expertise, guiding clients to envision clear impacts on their future business models; customer experience design; marketing; content strategies; and product automation roadmaps.  

By constantly keeping pulse on how humans, businesses, and ecosystems are impacted by technological change, Kaleido helps organizations find sanity and strategy in chaos. Kaleido advisory relationships, speeches, webinars, and workshops are grounded in research rigor and impact analysis. Its analysts also utilize quantitative survey panels, forecast development, investment analysis, ethnography, qualitative research interviews and secondary research approaches.