With over 27 million members across 115 markets, UNiDAYS is a global platform for students and graduates to discover and explore brands, products, experiences, resources and ideas that help them step into the world beyond with confidence.
The Brief
Wanting to bring more local and cultural understanding to their international marketing campaigns, UNiDAYS teamed up with Managed Language as their main linguistic and transcreation partner. The scope of work focused on creative translation and cultural reviews of emails, paid social campaigns, and marketing messaging to be delivered in a range of file formats and languages with a maximum turn-around time of 3 days.
Our expert linguists needed to be able to match the language and tone of voice of UNiDAYS’ messaging, to appeal to their Gen-Z audience. The translated output had to be on trend, without resorting to clichés, while incorporating local cultural insights that would appeal to the student-focused target audience.
Due to the scope of the partnership, we’ve been able to provide UNiDAYS with a wide range of services, including cultural reviews, localization and transcreation. Opting for a selection of these linguistic services ensures the final output is not just translated into the local language, but the entire messaging is tailored to the regional audience and culture.
The Solution
From our roster of talented translators, we handpicked a linguistic team that is dedicated to UNiDAYS, allowing them to develop the know-how of tone of voice and insight into the company’s communication with clients. The project required the ML linguists to research the brands on the UNiDAYS platform and offer creative translation options and reasoning while adhering to the established tone of voice UNiDAYS required. Working closely with the localisation team at UNiDAYS, our linguists were able to be reactive and responsive, offering personalised recommendations and insightful advice on the copy, creative and cultural relevance.
Discovery
UNiDAYS required a range of BAU content to be delivered for their target markets on a daily basis, the copy included, across a wide variety of channels and media:
- Emails (newsletters and segmented/dedicated);
- Paid social campaigns;
- Ad hoc custom titles;
- Campaign messaging;
- Production – Partner descriptions + T&Cs;
- Customer support ad hoc stock responses;
- Site infrastructure (Product development) – using commercial language.
The languages requested were initially:
- German
- French
- Spanish
- Italian
- Dutch
- Norwegian
- Finnish
- Swedish
We now have dedicated linguists for 30 languages in total.
The Outcome
With our linguists’ unique understanding of the cultural and regional zeitgeist, we are able to present UNiDAYS with insightful yet creative transcreation variations that align with their Gen Z-focused tone of voice and brand messaging. The team is empowered to challenge and question the cultural relevance of the copy provided, whether that’s altering the messaging to suit local traditions or providing alternative suggestions for the promotional messaging.
Transcreation+
One main aspect of our work for UNiDAYS includes providing multiple creative translations for each line of text, alongside a “back translation” and rationale to help them make the final copy choice. Our transcreation+ service is specifically designed for the most important aspects of marketing copy: attention-grabbing headlines and compelling CTAs.
Our linguists will give detailed explanations as to why the translation provided will engage the target audience. For the annual Freshers campaign, which focuses on students starting university, UNiDAYS wanted to create a full-scale marketing campaign that engaged audiences in France and Germany. The overarching idea was to have a template, in this case “READY FOR…”, that could be adapted to highlight all the events over the summer to create excitement for students joining University.
The French version of the “READY FOR ANYTHING” headlines was given 4 different translations, along with the linguists’ rationale, to ensure UNiDAYS had creative and locally relevant options. As the partnership is a collaborative one, ML worked with them to find the best result, which ultimately was seen to be a mix of English and French to suit the promotion and youthful appeal of the app itself.
The linguists’ knowledge of the local market, and extensive audience research gives this type of copy a new appeal to the target audience, contributing to the overall success of the campaign.
Digging deeper into the local culture
Localisation: Christmas campaigns
One great example of the importance of local perspectives and how they can improve marketing output is from a recent German email campaign. The original English copy centred around stocking filler gifts, but given that German Christmas traditions don’t include stockings, our linguist recommended changing the headline from “SHOP STOCKING FILLERS” to “FÜR DIE KLEINEN PÄCKCHEN”, which means “for the small packages”. Although English readers may find this more confusing, this will resonate with the target German audience more effectively.
Cultural review: Diwali
We also provide cultural reviews and analysis when needed. For example, our India-based linguist was asked by UNiDAYS to provide some feedback relating to a Diwali-focused campaign. The result was a detailed explanation of the local celebrations, along with religious insight and valuable recommendations as to how UNiDAYS could, and should, approach a Diwali campaign. This included insights that influenced promotions, competitions and even product-specific advice.
The Results
Throughout this collaboration, Managed Language provides the all-important local information, feedback and reasoning that can make or break a campaign. Our ongoing partnership has shown that country-tailored content performs particularly well in contrast to unlocalised content.
UNiDAYS reports that the combination of local personalisation and cultural understanding leads to higher resonance with the audience and therefore stronger campaign performance overall.
UNiDAYS’ Localisation Lead, Claire Burgess, said “ML continually provides us with the highest standard of translation, cultural insights, and creative ingenuity, no matter how big, small, or challenging the project and source copy is.”
Empower your brand.
We are determined to make your brand look and sound like a local; empower you through multilingual content management and cultural awareness. We are more than your average translation solution for global businesses. Our services will help you build stronger relationships with your customers, turn cultural and linguistic challenges into business growth and expansion opportunities.
Using our services, you can communicate your brand message across channels consistently and in the most culturally appropriate way. Our clients are from various backgrounds and industries, one thing holds true for all the clients we serve: we will bring you international customers through local brand marketing.
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