Issue 2 - November 2008
Dynamic Publishing Makes Creating Localized Communications Easy
By Stephane Malagnac
French Communications Agency Textuel Meets the Client Challenge of a Major International Building-materials Group Operating in 77 Countries
International growth is the target for most small companies and is indeed essential in many industries if you want to compete and thrive in this global economy; however, international expansion brings many challenges, especially in terms of communication.
For example, how do you implement consistent, global communications that maintain your brand identity, values, and messaging while still allowing for local markets and cultures? Getting this balance wrong could cost you business because you’re not communicating effectively with a local market. It could also land you in deep legal water and damage your long-term brand.
Textuel is a French communications agency with a number of international clients. One particular client, a major building-materials group that operates in 77 countries, faced a particular challenge in how it could help each subsidiary develop local communications that incorporate appropriate national and cultural attributes without diluting the group’s corporate identity.
A Visual Identity for 77 Countries
The solution was provided by French IT supplier and content-management specialist Stepnet. Taking QuarkXPress Server as the underlying composition and rendering engine to ensure the high-fidelity design essential to Textuel, Stepnet developed a dynamic-publishing solution called Smart Content Server.
Thanks to its advanced Web interface, the solution enables Textuel’s international client to publish commercial, economic, and financial documentation — on demand — in any country using an automated and secure server. Textuel created what it calls “communication modules”, which are template designs and content that each subsidiary has access to online.
Using a browser-based editor, users can localize the visuals or text without modifying — or even being able to modify — the company’s corporate identity (including branding, logos, and messaging). The company’s communications department, based in France, regularly uses this tool to upload master documents in native QuarkXPress format to the server. Corporate subsidiaries can then access the server using a log-on name and password and retrieve the online versions of these documents, which they can modify for their local needs. When these modifications are saved, the dynamic-publishing solution automatically creates a document just for that specific subsidiary.
Because of the flexibility and control of the solution, the client’s corporate identity is locked down, but local subsidiaries have complete control over the rest of the content.
“Quark has traditionally been focused on the print media market and their experience, expertise, and reputation in this market is extremely important to our clients. However, Quark is also now going beyond print, providing enterprise-class solutions that address real needs within the publishing market. As a result, we can think of no better partner or technology to base our Smart Content Server on,” said Jean-Paul Rigal, Stepnet’s CEO.
“The dynamic-publishing tool that we developed with Stepnet perfectly matches our customer’s needs — international communications that conform to the group’s corporate identity and messaging,” said Gilles About, president of Textuel. “Thanks to this solution, all of our client’s subsidiaries have access to standard communications tools that they can adapt for local use via the Web. It’s a huge savings in terms of productivity for our client, and also for us, because as their agency we are free to focus on our real source of added value, which is our creativity.”
