Once we started our comms plan for Day 1, the day of the public announcement of the acquisition, we had the challenge of the languages. Which languages should the assets (letters, social streams, newsletter and web contents, etc.) be localised to? Both companies are international and act in more than 50 countries around the globe.
So we decided to go with more than one language… and we ended up with 11 languages! Specifically: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Korean, Japanese and Russian.
Choice of the languages is dictated by existing presence and business potentiality of the territory for our specific field (Energy and Automation). So it might change, sector by sector.
The recommendation for critical communications as an acquisition could represent is always to go with several languages. This is what I call “reaching the last mile”. We are closer to the customers if we speak the same language.