First Thought Leadership Essay

 

Brands are beginning to realise that global reach without cultural depth is a weakness. In an age shaped by AI, local identities and borderless media, the brands that truly travel well are not those that repeat the same message everywhere, but those built on human insight and local strength.

 

By Nick Rice

 

For decades, Apple has positioned itself as the champion of creatives… of the “crazy ones” who believe they can change the world… because, more often than not, they do.

 

That was precisely the ambition behind Crush, Apple’s 2024 campaign for the ultra-thin iPad Pro. The ad was designed to showcase a device capable of containing an entire universe of creative tools.

 

Instead, the image of a giant industrial press crushing musical instruments, paint, cameras, and sculptures into a single tablet failed to land as an elegant metaphor. In a world already uneasy about the impact technology is having on culture and creative livelihoods, the campaign felt less like a celebration of human creativity and more like a victory lap for technology.

 

The backlash was immediate and global. Apple did something it rarely does: it apologised and withdrew the advert.

 

A year later, Arc’teryx, the outdoor brand whose natural territory is the mountains, found itself facing a different kind of fracture. A campaign shot against what appeared to be a breathtaking natural backdrop turned out to have been filmed on sacred Indigenous land. Communities criticised the brand for treating a spiritual site as little more than a scenic location.

 

A second wave of criticism soon followed, as the brand’s responses in English and Chinese differed in tone and emphasis, raising uncomfortable questions about whether Arc’teryx took its responsibilities equally seriously across different markets.

 

This is not the story of a “bad” client or an inattentive agency. It is about the limits of a long-established model: a central team with a powerful global idea and an impressive production machine, working on the assumption that if a campaign looks premium and can be distributed everywhere, it will naturally belong anywhere.

 

It doesn’t.

 

And it never did.

 

Among the most memorable branding missteps of the past is KFC’s famous “Finger Lickin’ Good” slogan, which in China was famously mistranslated as an invitation to “eat your fingers.” Then there was Pepsi’s “Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation”, which in parts of Asia was interpreted as “bringing your ancestors back from the dead”—perhaps a slightly overambitious promise for a soft drink.

 

Where previous generations of global branding tended to stumble over language, today’s mistakes are more often emotional and cultural. Apple’s campaign didn’t mistranslate a slogan; it misread a global anxiety surrounding creativity, craftsmanship, and the relationship between humans and machines. Arc’teryx didn’t misunderstand its product; it misunderstood the meaning of place.

 

If we’re going to have a serious conversation about borderless brands, we need to move beyond laughing at mistranslated slogans and ask a more demanding question: what does it really mean for a brand to travel well?

 

What is a Borderless Brand?

 

Few people are better placed to answer that question than Eduardo Maruri, the Ecuadorian creative leader and former President and CEO of Grey Europe. With more than three decades in advertising—including senior leadership roles within WPP/Grey and as co-founder of Maruri Advertising—Eduardo has earned an extraordinary 166 Cannes Lions. Since June 2024, he has served as Global Creative Chair at Iris Worldwide.

 

For Eduardo, borderless brands are not the ones that shout the loudest in the greatest number of markets, but those whose meaning travels intact.

 

“To me, borderless brands are those with the ability to travel and connect organically with different audiences,” he says. “They’re brands you immediately recognise, relate to and connect with—brands whose values and purpose are instantly clear, wherever you encounter them.”

 

“Apple is a borderless brand, isn’t it? Coca-Cola and Nike are too. They’re not confined to a single country, language, or demographic. There simply aren’t that many brands capable of travelling so quickly and connecting so effortlessly.”

 

The key words here are values and connection. A brand becomes borderless when its meaning—its values and the role it plays in people’s lives—travels well, even if its execution changes. It isn’t borderless because it looks the same in every market; it’s borderless because its why remains recognisable everywhere, even when its how adapts from one place to another.

 

Yet even the world’s most borderless brands sometimes get it wrong. I ask Eduardo whether campaigns like Crush are seen inside major marketing agencies as catastrophic failures or simply as the inevitable consequence of a culture willing to take creative risks. He smiles.

 

“A friend of mine holds a senior position at Apple, so I know who made it and what happened,” he says. “Yes, but everyone makes mistakes—that’s only natural. In fact, I think making mistakes from time to time is a good sign because it means you’re willing to take risks. And sometimes a risk doesn’t pay off, but that simply shows your mindset is about pushing creativity forward and being bold.”

 

Then he offers a thought-provoking observation:

 

“If you haven’t made a single mistake in a hundred years—take Procter & Gamble, for example, with zero mistakes in the detergent category—then you’ve probably been playing it far too safe.”

 

In other words, risk isn’t the problem. The problem arises when risk becomes disconnected from reality—when a brand pursues a creative idea from within its own internal logic rather than through an active, attentive relationship with culture.

 

In Apple’s case, the internal metaphor—“all the creative tools you love, contained in a single device”—collided with an external reality in which people are genuinely anxious about the way technology is flattening the texture of human life. The campaign was produced for a global audience, but it wasn’t tuned to one. It was borderless in its execution, but not in its sensitivity.

 

Latin America Is Not One Market

 

If you want a quick reminder of how dangerous that disconnect can be, talk to Renato Espinoza. The Peruvian founder of Latam-digital has spent his career helping global brands navigate the unique realities of Latin American markets. Much of his work involves companies that treat the region as though it were a single room where everyone speaks the same way and laughs at the same jokes.

 

“A brand exists to respond to and satisfy a market need or desire,” he says. “One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned through both experience and education is that things and concepts don’t mean the same thing everywhere. That applies to abstract ideas like happiness, but also to concepts that play a fundamental role in people’s lives, such as security.”

 

Renato argues that Latin America should be understood not as a single “Hispanic market”, but as a network of identities and cultures converging across shared digital spaces.

 

“There’s no magic formula for succeeding across Latin America. If anything defines the region, it’s its diversity. Speaking the same language is often not enough—you also need to understand the same cultural codes and share the fears, aspirations and references of the people you’re trying to reach.”

 

And yet, the copy-and-paste instinct persists.

 

“It happens far more often than you might expect,” he explains. “A client runs a brilliant, successful campaign in Spain and then tries to replicate it exactly in Mexico, Argentina or Colombia—only to wonder why it fails to deliver the same results.”

 

Too often, Renato adds, agencies justify those failures by pointing to differences in technology adoption, “when in reality they haven’t even taken the time to update the most basic local terminology. Selling a chamarra in Mexico isn’t the same as selling a casaca in Peru.”

 

At that point, the border you’re crossing isn’t ideological—it’s lexical. If your “borderless” brand can’t even be bothered to use the right word for jacket, any talk of shared values begins to ring rather hollow.

 

When Global Loses to Local

 

Renato points to a case that perfectly illustrates what’s at stake when global brands underestimate the power of local connection. In 1999, Peru was the only market in the world where Coca-Cola wasn’t the market leader. The reason had a name, a colour, and a very distinctive taste: Inca Kola.

 

Inca Kola’s brand identity was deeply rooted in Peruvian culture. Its flavour felt unusual to outsiders but instantly familiar to local consumers. Its bright yellow colour was as iconic on the streets of Peru as Coca-Cola’s red and white branding is elsewhere in the world.

 

Unable to displace such a deeply entrenched competitor, Coca-Cola ultimately did the only thing it could: acquire the brand and attempt to expand it internationally.

 

“Had there been a more nuanced understanding of the market from the outset, could the outcome have been different? It’s difficult to say,” Renato reflects. “What this case clearly demonstrates, however, is the remarkable loyalty consumers can feel towards products and brands that genuinely reflect their cultural identity.”

 

There’s an irony here. One of the world’s most famous borderless brands found its limits not in another global competitor, but in a soft drink whose strength was almost entirely local. Global consistency proved no match for cultural intimacy.

 

From Translation to Transformation

 

For brands with genuine global ambitions, the first step is recognising that a borderless identity is not a matter of translation—it’s a practice of transformation.

 

You can’t take a global idea and simply translate the slogan. That’s how we ended up with KFC’s cannibalistic tagline and Pepsi apparently promising to bring the dead back to life. It’s also how we end up with generic “global” campaigns that could have been shot anywhere and, in a very literal sense, end up speaking to nowhere.

 

The more sophisticated model demands something far more ambitious. It asks brands to co-create locally, not merely adapt. It asks them to solve problems with people, rather than simply market to them.

 

A recent example of this shift is H&M in Amsterdam: same logo, different conversation. When H&M reopened its flagship store in Amsterdam in 2024, it didn’t simply install a few bicycle racks and call it a local adaptation. Instead, the store became something of a laboratory for exploring how a global fashion retailer could respond to a city increasingly shaped by sustainability and circularity.

 

Yes, the logo on the façade remained the same. But inside, the proposition had changed: repair services, rental options, carefully curated local brands and a narrative explicitly built around Amsterdam’s rhythms and environmental priorities.

 

It was unmistakably H&M, yet the conversation it sought to join in that city—helping people participate in fashion with less waste—was carefully tuned to local attitudes. Global framework, local soul. Not a Dutch dubbing of a Swedish script, but a scene rewritten together.

 

When I ask Eduardo what advice he would give to a CMO seeking to build a more borderless brand without losing its identity, he goes straight to the underlying principle.

 

“Find a human insight that is undeniable to every human being in the world. Then build on that insight.”

 

If your global idea is rooted in something universally recognisable—the joy of small victories, the desire to belong, the fear of being left behind—local teams can interpret that truth in culturally specific ways without compromising the brand.

 

But that requires brands to do two things they often find difficult: listen deeply and share power.

 

Local People, Real Authority

 

“Use local people to create your campaigns,” Eduardo says, almost surprised that he still has to repeat this in 2026. “Don’t use Americans to create a campaign for Argentina. British humour isn’t the same as American humour, and American humour isn’t the same as Latin American humour. If you work with local teams, you’ve already solved 90% of the problem. It sounds obvious, and yet people keep getting it wrong.”

 

Renato agrees, although he’s quick to point out that hiring local talent is necessary—but not sufficient.

 

“The most important factor is having people who genuinely understand and share the culture a brand wants to engage with” he explains. “The challenge is that you also need people who truly live and breathe the brand as if it were their own. Finding that balance is, to a large extent, the responsibility of agencies.”

He is particularly wary of a trend he sees all too often: young professionals managing more than ten clients simultaneously, equipped with generic playbooks and AI tools but given very little time to truly immerse themselves in each brand.

 

“At the same time, the relentless race to produce more content and the growing influence of AI tools often work against these principles. When agencies hire talented young professionals but assign them ten or more clients at once, maintaining that balance becomes incredibly difficult.”

 

Perhaps Renato’s most elegant description of the role these people should play comes from Quechua: Chakaruna.

“Chakaruna means ‘bridge person’—someone who connects different worlds.”

Borderless brands depend on Chakaruna figures: people capable of looking in two directions at once—towards the heart of a culture and back towards the DNA of a brand.

 

Borderless Personal Brands

 

Corporate brands aren’t the only ones facing this challenge. In a media landscape where CEOs, founders, and senior executives are increasingly expected to have a visible public profile, the question of what makes a borderless brand applies just as much to individuals.

 

Marina Byezhanova has built her career around this very idea. As co-founder of the global personal branding agency Brand of a Leader, Marina is based in Canada and works across 12 countries, helping founders and Generation X executives articulate who they are—and express that identity in a way that travels.

 

For her, the starting point is deceptively simple.

 

“Borderless brands are fundamentally about portability. When your brand is built around who you are at your core, it travels. When it’s built around what you do or the company you lead, it tends to stay behind the moment you step into a different context.”

 

She sees this pattern repeatedly among her clients.

 

“The executives with the greatest global impact are those who have done the deeper work of identifying the values, perspectives, and formative experiences that are genuinely their own, rather than borrowing them from their industry or their job title. Those things are portable. A founder who built their career in Dubai can walk into a boardroom in Toronto and remain unmistakably themselves, because who they are isn’t dependent on where they are.”

 

By contrast, she says, “the leaders who struggle the most are almost always those who have defined themselves entirely through their role or the name of their company. The moment they enter a new market, consider a career change, or speak to an audience unfamiliar with their organisation, they suddenly feel invisible.”

 

If you want to build a borderless personal brand, start by building one that would survive both a change of country and a change in your email signature.

 

Consistency vs. Performance

 

One of the most delicate tensions facing any global brand—whether corporate or personal—is the balance between consistency and adaptation. Marina often sees leaders getting both extremes wrong.

 

“The biggest mistake leaders make is confusing consistency with rigidity,” she says. “A strong personal brand has a consistent core, but the expression of that core should naturally evolve depending on who’s in the room. That’s good communication—not a diluted brand.”

 

She has seen clients deliver the same perfectly polished narrative across multiple continents, only to discover that what sounds confident and compelling in New York can come across as surprisingly tone-deaf in Singapore.

 

The opposite mistake is just as common: over-adaptation.

 

“Leaders who abandon their brand entirely when they enter a new cultural context become so focused on fitting in that they lose sight of who they really are. They overcorrect, performing the version of themselves they believe the audience wants to see. What comes across isn’t cultural sensitivity—it’s inauthenticity. And no culture responds well to a leader who is clearly playing a role.”

 

The leaders who travel well understand which parts of their identity are non-negotiable and where they have room to adapt. That clarity is just as valuable for a CMO signing off on a global campaign as it is for a CEO stepping onto a stage halfway around the world.

 

Corporate Brand vs. Leadership Brand

 

According to Marina, organisations often make a fundamental strategic mistake: they start with the corporate brand and then try to shape their leaders around it.

 

“The instinct is to fit leaders into the corporate brand, hand them approved talking points, and ask them to become an extension of the company’s messaging. That approach creates spokespersons, not thought leaders—and global audiences recognise the difference almost immediately.”

 

A more effective approach, she argues, is to start with the leader.

“What are this leader’s genuine values, perspectives and areas of conviction? Then ask where those naturally intersect with what the organisation stands for. That intersection is where a leader can be authentically themselves while also serving as a credible ambassador for the brand.”

Marina adds:

“The organisations that do this well give their senior leaders genuine space to develop a point of view. They trust that a leader with a strong, visible and authentic personal brand builds far more trust for the organisation than someone who is perfectly aligned with the messaging but ultimately forgettable.”

In multi-regional organisations, she believes that consistency should exist at the level of values, not messaging.

“If leaders in Singapore and London both believe in the same foundational principles, their content can look completely different and speak to entirely different audiences while still representing one coherent global brand.”

In its own way, that’s a perfect definition of what a borderless brand should be: consistent in its principles, adaptable in its expression.

 

Appropriation, Shortcuts, and Genuine Curiosity

 

Both Eduardo and Marina warn against treating culture as a shortcut. That inevitably raises a difficult question: where is the line between drawing respectful inspiration from a local culture and simply using it as decorative material?

 

For Eduardo, the warning signs are clear.

“If it feels overly stereotyped or overly scripted at any point, you’re probably going to offend someone. If you’re adapting a global brand for a specific market, make sure you don’t touch on sensitive issues, prejudices or stereotypes in your attempt to fit in.”

Marina sees the boundary somewhat differently.

“The line lies in the relationship between the leader and the culture they’re drawing from. Someone who has lived, worked or studied deeply within a culture for years, built genuine relationships there and is expressing something they’ve truly internalised belongs to a completely different moral category from someone who simply received a briefing with a few cultural references to sprinkle into their opening remarks.”

She is particularly sceptical of treating local references as “a shortcut to likeability—a quick way to win people over.”

 

As Marina puts it, “The kind of trust and affinity that grows from a genuine relationship with a culture takes time to build.”

 

What unites both perspectives is the belief that there are no shortcuts to authentic connection. You can’t hack trust with a local proverb and a football reference.

 

AI: New Frontiers

 

After so much discussion about borders, there’s one force we haven’t yet mentioned—the one redrawing the map altogether: artificial intelligence.

 

When I ask Eduardo whether AI is transforming the creative process in advertising and branding, and whether designers, copywriters and art directors should be worried about the future of their jobs, his answer is unequivocal.

“Yes, they should.”

He continues:

“Anything that can be done repeatedly and routinely—community management, for example—will disappear. That’s why it’s already becoming very difficult to be a junior copywriter. Those jobs have largely gone.”

At the top of the creative pyramid, however, he’s more optimistic—for now.

“At the other end of the spectrum, where you find the truly exceptional creative minds, I don’t think there’s an immediate reason to worry,” he says. “Companies and brands still need someone capable of saying: this is the idea.”

Yet Eduardo’s deeper point has less to do with employment than with culture.

“I believe the countries that dominate AI—and at the moment that’s the United States and China—will inevitably shape the rest of the world. It’s similar to what happened with the internet. The internet was largely built in English, so the rest of the world had to adapt to English. That was a victory for the English language. AI is a language too—or perhaps something even bigger than a language—and it will define the next five or ten years of communication.”

This is no longer just about brands trying to cross borders. It’s about a new kind of border—one drawn by the very systems we use to write, design and communicate.

 

If the systems generating our supposedly “borderless” content have been trained disproportionately on Anglo-American and Chinese data, then the default global voice they produce may be far more culturally specific than it first appears. Fluent, polished… yet subtly shaped by a relatively narrow set of cultural assumptions.

 

This makes Chakaruna figures and strong local teams more important than ever.

 

Someone still needs to look at the output and ask:

“Does this sound like Lima? Lagos? Lyon? Or does it simply sound like the internet?”

What connects every voice in this essay is the same underlying idea: whether you’re building a brand or a personal reputation, the more specific and honest you are about who you are, the more naturally you’ll cross borders.

 

Marina offers the same advice to CEOs seeking to build personal brands that are borderless without becoming generic:

“Go deeper, not broader.”

The same principle applies to corporate brands. The flattest ideas travel easily because they offend no one—but neither do they move anyone.

 

The brands that cross borders and endure are built on universal human truths. The leaders who travel well are those whose specificity—their origins, convictions and voice—creates genuine connection.

 

The more authentic you are about who you are, the easier it becomes for others to see themselves in you.

 

The Future: From Exporting to Exchanging

 

We’re moving away from an era in which a global brand meant exporting a handful of Western narratives to the rest of the world, towards one in which meaning flows in multiple directions. Latin American markets such as Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia are already shaping regional language and digital culture.

 

Emerging economies like Peru and Chile sit at the intersection of strong local identities and rapid digital adoption. Meanwhile, leaders across the Gulf and South Asia are building hybrid brands that combine local values with global visibility.

 

And amid all this activity, a machine is learning—sentence by sentence—what we sound like.

The future we create will depend less on the technology itself than on what we collectively ask it to do.

 

Ultimately, borderless brands are not about looking and sounding the same everywhere. They are an invitation to do something far more demanding—and infinitely more interesting: to build brands whose meaning is strong enough to endure even as their expression evolves from Lima to London, from Dubai to Düsseldorf.

 

The challenge is to uncover human truths that can travel—and then to have the courage, and the humility, to let those truths be expressed in many different accents.