There Are Smart People Outside the United States, Too

Working in an advertising agency with offices across Asia and Australia, we work with several multinational companies (MNCs). These multinationals have strong office networks across the region and believe Asia will drive their future growth. "The pivot to Asia," in Obama's words, is a real conversation happening in MNC boardrooms.

The Pivot to Asia Is Real — But Execution Often Isn't

Most of these companies have billions of dollars in revenue, though most of it is still derived from the United States. Often, they're listed entities where share price and profit growth sit at the core of a CEO's KPIs, and often, that growth continues to come from the US, or a handful of markets outside it.

When we work with Heads of Marketing or Business Unit heads in these other countries, though, we're almost always asked to localise an international strategy that already worked — usually in the US or another developed market. Sometimes the tactics are translated. Very often, they lack local insight, which makes it genuinely difficult to craft a growth strategy and campaign that actually delivers a return on investment.

The Core Problem Is Trust

Fundamentally, this comes down to trust. Regional heads for these brands are very often based out of Europe, Dubai, Singapore, or the US, meaning control over a given country's P&L, in any mature sense, doesn't sit with the local entity. Most strategy calls get made remotely, based on numbers alone.

The trust in local leadership is missing. At some point, these multinationals need to trust the smart people they've actually hired in local markets. Those people exist.

Case in Point: A Global Software Company Stuck in Neutral

A giant global software product business we work with has run into exactly this problem. They're ambitious, well-capitalised, and genuinely sharp about growth in the US. In India, though, strategy is controlled by leaders based out of the US. Four years into trying to build a base in the market, they've seen no serious growth, and are about to retreat entirely.

The Other Side: How Amazon Got It Right in India

There's a contrasting example, too. Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon's India head would join the "S-Team" — the company's senior leadership group — though only after proving himself capable of growing the business to a certain level first. Even so, it's a real recognition of the importance of senior leadership in a "glocal" (global-local) context. A large part of Amazon's success in India comes from genuinely localising its global values and strengths, facilitated by strong local leadership empowered to act.

The Takeaway for MNCs Expanding into Asia

If multinationals want to succeed in growing Asian markets, appointing strong local leadership isn't enough on its own. They need to back that leadership with real authority. Transferring a square peg to fit a round hole doesn't work.