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Going Global: How Red Sox Nation helped usher in a new era of website globalization

By David Aponovich, ISITE Design

The last place you'd expect to find a Global Business MVP is at Boston's Fenway Park, the longtime home of the Red Sox. But as we celebrate Opening Day 2007, take a peek behind Fenway's Green Monster to witness a powerful example of an old-school organization propelling itself into the global market – leveraging the web to succeed.

For nearly 100 years, the Red Sox worked hard to remain consistent with parochial Boston, alongside the cod, baked beans and Paul Revere's Midnight Ride. Through the decades, the closest the team ever came to operating a "global" business was hosting "Rhode Island Day" at the ballpark every summer.

Flash forward to today and something has changed. The city where the streets still echo with Paul Revere's cry of "The British are coming!" now anticipates the arrival of thousands of Japanese tourists, baseball fans and media representatives, to see what's suddenly become one of the most "global" teams in pro sports.

The change-agent here is the off-season signing of Japanese superstar pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka ("Dice-K" in Boston-ese) for $100 million, which mobilized millions of Japanese fans to adopt the Red Sox as their home team.

It's clear that Dice-K on the mound + the World Wide Web = a global marketing juggernaut poised to skyrocket. (This isn't unprecedented. The Mariners have Ichiro. The Rockets have Yao Ming. But the Red Sox are raising the stakes.)

The Web didn't cause this to happen, but it is evident the Web is the catalyst that plays a huge part in the successful wooing of Japanese baseball fans – and expanding the Red Sox brand around the world.

Web Globalization – Major League Baseball Style

A quick review of the Red Sox online finds a few, early examples of how an approach to web globalization – Major League Baseball style – is playing out on the web and making an impact on Red Sox Nation.

  • Endless coverage about Dice-K on the Sox site (not to mention the free web media from local, national and international press) and a Red Sox-sanctioned Fan Forum.
  • A pointer to a Japanese-language MLB-sanctioned site tailored to Japanese fans (via Major League Baseball's online media partner Yahoo!), with Dice-K front and center (There's a Spanish link, too.)
  • Access to live audio and video streams of Sox games so fans in Japan can watch and listen to Dice-K's games from their web browser
  • Every type of memorabilia for the newly minted Sox fans from Tokyo to Taunton, Mass., is available on the site – Dice-K jerseys, Red Sox caps and more
  • An independent blog that's all Dice-K, all the time (http://www.dicekboston.com)

Small World, Big Opportunity

Thanks to the Web, never before has the world been so small, so accessible – and so borderless, especially when it comes to tapping new markets, communicating information, and promoting a brand or product across oceans and time zones.

The Red Sox' smart marketers have discovered things that other companies need to quickly discover for themselves:

First, the Web has created a Perfect Storm, requiring an answer to the question, "How can it carry your business and brand into new markets, establish relationships with new customer, and tap into communities of interest?"

Second, Web technologies have become equally accessible today (both in cost and complexity) to small, mid-size, and enterprise organizations that have a vision to expand their business to a bigger stage.

Are you ready to make the leap?

With an estimated two-thirds of global Internet users speaking a language other than English, companies in the US and other primarily English-speaking markets need to consider the possibilities – even if you're not a GE, a Dell, or a billion-dollar baseball team.

To assist, ISITE Design offers this primer covering the landscape for tapping new markets based on language or location, as well as the tools and technologies we're using to help clients get there.

Speaking Multiple Languages on the Web: Shades of Gray

Our work with clients who aspire to build their brands across languages and countries has given us some insight into this growing trend. There are many things to consider when it comes to "globalizing" your website.

  • One Language to Many Languages: First off, you may not need to go out-of-country to find new customers or better serve your existing ones who speak different languages. Many organizations (municipal governments, colleges and universities, corporations and others) are creating multilingual sites to serve diverse visitors who speak Spanish, French and other languages, offering equal access to information and services and satisfying legal mandates around language where necessary.
  • Website Globalization: If your product or service appeals to customers beyond your borders, consider website globalization. Create related sites specific to a geography and a language in order to tap new markets, expand your sales footprint and serve a wider audience via the Web.
  • Act Global, Think Local: "Localization" indicates that you've taken additional time to address cultural or language differences: ensuring colloquial terms translate properly, swapping in/out culturally sensitive images, and customizing your product or marketing information to address sales strategies in local markets.

2007 Tools for Web Globalization: What to Expect

The good news is that technology tools have evolved to a point where it's easier than ever to adopt a global mindset to your business thanks to the Web. Software tools to manage and publish content, professional services for translation and localization, and global business advocates ready to help you navigate a world stage are abundantly accessible.

Content Management Tools are Merging. There's been a shift in the web tools market, which directly impacts any organization wanting a multilingual or global online presence. Traditional Content Management Systems (CMS) for the Web have matured to incorporate powerful features for creating, automating and publishing in multiple languages, and managing the specific elements of a multifaceted, global website (e.g. navigation, exporting structured content to translation providers, etc). These systems complement, and in some cases supplant, legacy "Global Content Management Systems" which have provided the platform for content creation, workflow automation, and global-specific functionality like translation memory (TM), which creates an evolving database of reusable terms and phrases to reduce translation costs, and terminology management to ensure consistency.

At the same time, vendors of software aimed at assisting the translation process are adding more CMS-like functionality, or partnering with CMS vendors to create a more "out of the box" and end-to-end solutions for running global websites. One harbinger of this shift: The upcoming Gilbane Conference on Content Management in San Francisco (April 10-12) has allied with LISA, the Localization Industry Standards Association, to produce unified track for content management and globalization issues. (ISITE Design is speaking on a panel.)

Results of a recent LISA survey of content and globalization professionals finds that more than half of respondents believe the divide between content creation and localization/globalization is disappearing - an indicator that more organizations are thinking beyond their source language and considering how to extend their voice on the web.

Lower cost, lower complexity: In case you haven't heard, it's easier than every to get your site's primary language under control – a critical requirement to take the next step to a multilingual site. CMS systems today offer robust features for handling content and websites (including support for global websites) for less money and with less complexity. CMS systems capable of handling a global/multilingual website can, be found starting around $10,000. The good news is this has opened up new opportunities for small- and mid-sized companies (not just the GE's and Dell's of the world) for whom technology costs and complexity was a barrier to initiating a global strategy.

Web-based translation management platforms: With any business process, efficiency and automation lead to cost savings and quicker time-to-market. Third-party, web-based translation services have emerged to streamline and automate the process of getting content into the hands of a capable human translator, and back again, while retaining a library of translation terms that can reduce the time involved in projects. Lionbridge, the 800-lb. gorilla in translation services, offers Freeway, a free, online service that allows any organization to access world-class translation and localizations services simply, over the web.

Go Global and Conqueror

While website globalization and localization can be a daunting task, today's evolving technology makes it easier than ever for small to mid-size companies to compete. But as with anything, website globalization requires a sound strategy upfront. If you ever feel the need for a helping hand, our fine folks would be happy to help. Call us anytime at 888-269-9103.

A famous Bostonian and Red Sox fan, the longtime Speaker of the U.S. House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neil, once coined that famous chestnut, "All politics is local." To which we amend to say, "All content CAN be local."