Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures

How can you scale a brand globally while staying true to its core?

Brand Global, Adapt Local is a practical guide for mid-career marketing professionals who want to develop strategies that deliver impact in diverse markets. Written by global brand experts Katherine Melchior Ray and Nataly Kelly, it shares proven frameworks, examples, and actionable tools from world-leading companies including Nike, LVMH, Nestlé, Shiseido, Natura, and Marriott.

By exploring how top brands balance consistency with cultural adaptation, this book equips you to implement strategies that build credibility, strengthen audience connection, and optimize performance across regions. You will learn how to:
- Develop a global mindset that fuels innovation and market growth
- Apply cultural insight to create locally relevant brand strategies
- Interpret and act on international market data with precision
- Localize campaigns without losing your core brand identity

With detailed chapters and real-world examples, Brand Global, Adapt Local helps you apply strategic principles to achieve measurable results, elevate your professional profile and shape your career in international marketing.

Themes include: strategy, principles, cultural insight, brand localization, global marketing, career development

Katherine Melchior Ray lectures on international marketing and leadership at UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business. With twenty-five-years spent building the world's best consumer branding across continents, she brings expertise from her time as a senior executive at Nike, Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hyatt, Shiseido and Babbel. She has guest lectured at Stanford, Wharton, Brown and Portland State University.

She has been interviewed and featured on CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous media internationally. She also has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal in an article entitled, "Hyatt Executive Has a Spare Evening Gown in Her Bag," and was voted one of the "Most Compelling Women in the Travel Industry" by Premier Traveler magazine. She can be heard on various podcasts and blogs related to global marketing and leadership, culture and diversity, women's empowerment, and the future of work.

Nataly Kelly is Chief Marketing Officer at Zappi, based in Boston, MA. Previously she served at HubSpot as Vice President of Marketing, Vice President of International Operations and Strategy, and Vice President of Localization. Kelly also served as Chief Growth Officer and Vice President of Marketing for two other software start-ups in the MarTech space, and previously held the role of Chief Research Officer for CSA Research, where she oversaw the company's subscription-based market research practice.

She is a seasoned business leader, international business expert, and longtime Harvard Business Review contributor on topics of global business and international marketing. Her expertise has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, National Public Radio, and many other major media outlets.Kelly has served as an Adjunct Professor in the M.A. program in localization management at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. She was named a Remote Work Influencer in January 2022 by Remote, a Top 25 Content Marketers in Enterprise Software and Women Worth Watching in 2015, and Marketing Executive of the Year by Best in Biz, a 40 under 40 by Direct Marketing News, and a Stevies Women in Business in 2014.