New marketing structure for Europe

It’s a problem familiar to virtually every firm that has distribution agencies abroad: the same company products are sold throughout Europe, but the marketing activities, how the products are portrayed in the market and their pricing are different in each country. Every distribution agency has its own marketing and sales department, which likes to implement its creative ideas. The disadvantage is that the cost of this work in parallel is very high, but the output comparatively low.
Some companies in the sector have already tried to get to grips with this problem before by imposing a standard European line on their branches from above. But the success of this sledgehammer approach left a lot to be desired. Although the marketing departments of European head offices worked diligently to create uniform structures for all delivery countries, most distribution agencies simply ignored them, because they felt they were being ridden over roughshod by the head office, and did their own thing in terms of marketing as before.
Tetra has appointed two global marketing directors, German Koord Janssen (above) and Frenchman Bernard Verdu, who will be looking straight away to achieve closer cooperation on marketing issues with the branches in America and Asia.
Now Tetra wants to adopt a different approach, which seems to promise greater success. Only the strategic aspects of marketing, for example with regard to the portrayal of the brand and its pricing, are to follow a uniform pattern across Europe in future. This will be achieved by close cooperation between the newly created European marketing department, located in the German headquarters of Tetra in Melle, and the company’s sales arms in France, the UK and Italy. Trade marketing, on the other hand, will be realised differently as before in the individual agencies, to be able to take flexible account of variations in the individual markets.
“More financial resources will thus be freed in future that can be used for more concentrated trade marketing in the different countries”, an important advantage of the new marketing structure according to Tetra’s first European marketing director, Koord Janssen. It is by no means the intention to divest the distribution agencies of competence and responsibilities. As far as the standardisation of European marketing is concerned, Koord Janssen assumes that it will be implemented fairly gradually and “by no means over the heads of those involved”.
Tetra is striving for greater…