• by David Moreno , July 28, 2025

We all live in the same scroll now. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube—these aren’t regional channels, they’re global theaters. And yet, too many brands are still speaking in fragmented voices, with different messages for different markets. That might’ve worked when media had borders. But today? Consumers are connected, their expectations seamless. Brands that don’t unify their story risk sounding confused—or worse, irrelevant.

Borderless marketing isn't about sameness. It’s about coherence.

When I talk about “borderless marketing,” I don’t mean ditching cultural nuance. I mean embracing brand consistency while respecting local relevance. The best global strategies start with universal human truths—emotions, values, behaviors—and flex from there.

Let’s be clear: coherence doesn’t mean erasing culture. As a Hispanic strategist working across North America and global markets, I’ve seen how culture often reveals the very truths that can scale globally. The job of a brand isn’t to mute those perspectives—it’s to amplify them in ways that stay emotionally and strategically consistent across every scroll, feed, or stream.

The risk of over-localizing is that you lose the thread. Customize too much, and you create brand fragmentation. Under-localize, and you lose relevance. The balance lies in anchoring to core brand meaning: what System1 calls “fluent devices” or recurring brand assets. Brands that commit to consistent creative codes are 4.8x more likely to deliver very large brand effects like awareness, trust, and salience.

The starting point is always people.

Whether you're in Buenos Aires or Boston, the fundamentals of marketing don’t change: We’re in the business of winning hearts to win minds. System1’s data shows ads with strong emotional pull are 10x more effective at driving long-term profitability. Yet, over 60% of B2B ads in the UK and 54% in the U.S. elicit no emotional response.

That’s not just a creative issue. It’s a media one. With programmatic and platform-first planning, we’ve prioritized short-term impressions over long-term equity. And in a scroll-based ecosystem, forgettable is fatal.

Strategy is your backbone. Insights are your compass.

A strong global strategy ensures coherence while giving room for local relevance. But it must be grounded in human insight—not just what people say, but what they feel and do.

This is where behavioral research and emerging tools like synthetic data can be powerful allies. Marketers are beginning to use “digital twins” to simulate customer behaviors, enabling brands to forecast responses across global markets before launch. It’s a promising direction, especially in regions where research access is limited.

Still, the best insights often come from being in the market, listening not just to words but to tone, rhythm and emotion.

Consistency compounds. Inconsistency costs.

Brands with strong creative consistency report up to 6x more profit growth and far better media efficiency, according to a five-year IPA Effectiveness study. Yet many brands keep chasing novelty over memory—forgetting that to be remembered, you must first be recognizable.

So, what should global brands do?

1.      Anchor in human truths—the emotional drivers that transcend cultures.

2.      Start global, flex local—not patchwork, but harmony.

3.      Use media to reinforce identity—not fragment it.

4.      Invest in brand codes—and use them consistently.

5.      Measure what matters—brand salience, business impact, not just clicks.

We live in a world where boundaries blur,  where a campaign launched in Amsterdam can spark conversations in Austin. In that world, marketing must be unified—not uniform, but unmistakably one brand.

Because in the same scroll, it’s the consistent stories that stick.