• Ad Age, Monday, June 15, 2009 10:45 AM

There's no perfect way to run a global marketing operation, according to Paul Polman, who has worked as a senior executive at Procter & Gamble, Nestlé and Unilever in recent years. "The model you apply is really a function of the business you're in," he tells Jack Neff. "You have to be careful."

Polman admires the way Unilever CMO Simon Clift shares best practices around the world, but he sees a difference between sharing knowledge and trying to force a single global direction on every market. "It doesn't serve anything to have a standard product globally and not win anywhere," he says. He admits to making that mistake himself when he ran the global laundry business at P&G -- and to learning from it.

Neff's piece also explores Wal-Mart's move into global marketing, how global marketing executives are best developed and how to handle media across borders.

Read the whole story at Ad Age »