Integrate them all together

Calumet Photographic’s strategy was to integrate the international retailers under one brand image, one website infrastructure, and one e-commerce engine. The challenge was we were dealing with three currencies (Euros, Pounds, USD) and four countries (Germany, The Netherlands, UK, US) with four languages (Dutch, German, US English, Queens English).

On top of that, the regions were not cooperative when it came to marketing strategies, and they all had siloed themselves into their respective corners. The US market attempted to mandate cooperation to add insult to injury, and no one was abiding by the mandate.

Calumet Photographic had expanded by acquisition. They were owned by a UK-based private equity firm that wanted to grow the business to a respectable size and sell it. But they needed to sell a collection that was integrated within one cohesive brand.

To accomplish the strategy, I ended up utilizing the leadership the UK market had shown. They had hired a local UK-based advertising agency. This agency had some experience working with international markets and would provide a wonderful resource to integrate the brand. Additionally, I located a German-based media company that had offices in the US and the UK. I was able to consolidate all media under one umbrella.

We then set out on the rebranding exercise. The customer for Calumet is the high-end professional photographer. With 35 locations internationally there were able to serve the professional community in each major metro area worldwide. The strategy leveraged the equity the high-end photographers had around the world. We would use their imagery and tell a success story about how they had grown their business. We did, however, need to modify what imagery each market would use. The European markets were much more tolerant of more edgy work, where the US market wanted to use much more conservative imagery. We had to be globally minded in our communication but locally sensitive in our executions. The contrast applied to imagery, training styles, and communication preferences.