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We, your boss, and hopefully you want your company to nail localisation right from the start instead of desperately looking for localisation management consultants in a couple years from now. (There aren’t many, we must warn you, and they don’t have a magic framework for undoing path dependencies.)

What none of us wants is boring corporate training, incomprehensible jargon of localisation services providers, or sales pitches disguised as professional advice. So we thought, if we want someone to eat localisation for breakfast, we better give them something they would find appealing and can digest.

But first, we should find out more about what their breakfast is like. Just like Kellogg’s did before launching their new breakfast cereal brand in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. (Well, their creative agency did.)

Imagine two kids at the breakfast table who are playfully throwing chocolate-filled cereal pillows at each other. If you are thinking “How sweet!” (just like the agency folks were when ideating the launch campaign), “Stop this immediately and never do it again!” is what Saudi parents would tell those kids if that was happening in their home.

Because of their country’s harsh climate, Saudis know what food scarcity is, which is why they see food as something to respect, not to play with and throw on the floor. Luckily, the agency found it out before producing the campaign video and going ahead with the product launch. Because someone at the agency had another good idea – to validate the creative idea with someone based in the market, to see if it would travel across cultures. That’s a nice brand reputation save.