Cross-border brand strategy 跨境品牌战略

Your product travels. Your brand doesn't.

I direct marketing for European companies expanding into Asia, and for Asian brands arriving in Europe. Senior direction at part-time cost — with sourcing, content and supplier access attached.

The problem 问题

A brand is a set of signals. Signals don't cross borders intact.

The product that sells out in Milan sits untouched in Shanghai. The Asian brand with better specifications and a lower price still loses to a European competitor. It is almost never the product.

GOING EAST

You exported the brand, not just the goods

Same visuals, same story, same tone that works perfectly at home — translated, not adapted. Asian buyers read a different set of cues, and the ones you are sending say nothing to them.

ARRIVING WEST

Strong product, distrusted presentation

European buyers decide in seconds, on signals most incoming brands do not know they are sending. Price and specification do not recover a first impression.

EITHER DIRECTION

Nobody is actually directing it

An agency executes, someone junior posts, a distributor improvises. Everyone is busy and nobody owns the decision — so the strategy becomes whatever the loudest supplier suggested.

Core services 核心服务

Three ways in, depending on how far along you are.

A director-level marketing hire costs around €70,000 a year plus contributions, plus six months to find out whether you hired the right person. This is the same seniority, without the payroll and without the risk. Most companies begin with the €750 Direction Session and decide from there.

Market Assessment

市场评估
€2,500One-off · 3 weeks
  • Positioning and channel audit
  • Competitor teardown in the target market
  • Where your current spend is leaking
  • 12-month plan with priorities and budget
  • Presented to your leadership team

Fractional Marketing Director

兼职营销总监
€2,500–4,000Per month · 6 month minimum
  • Two to three days a month, scheduled in advance
  • Strategy owned, not merely advised
  • Agencies and suppliers briefed and held to account
  • Budget allocation and monthly KPI reporting
  • Present at leadership meetings
  • Your internal team coached, not replaced

Market Entry Programme

市场进入
€12,000–20,0006-month programme
  • Positioning built for the target market
  • Partner, distributor and supplier selection
  • Brand and content adapted, not translated
  • Launch plan and channel setup
  • On-the-ground verification in China
Add-on services 附加服务

Available inside any programme or booked on their own. Quoted separately, on top of the core budget.

Sourcing & supplier selection

Finding, screening and verifying Chinese manufacturers for your category. Factory visits in person, samples, quotations, and the compliance groundwork before you commit.

Deal scouting in China

Products, licences and partnerships that genuinely fit your business — filtered against your market, your margins and your customers, not against what a trader wants to move.

Video & photography

Product and campaign content produced to a European standard. Concept, direction, shooting and edit — or direction of your existing agency, if you already have one.

Social media management

Channel strategy, calendar, community and creator programmes across Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Built and run, not only briefed.

Nothing here is a template.

Every programme is built from scratch around your company — your market, your capacity and what you can realistically spend. No copy-paste strategy, no recycled deck with your logo on the cover, no package you have to grow into before it fits.

Start with a single session. If it is useful, we go further. If it is not, you have lost an afternoon and a fixed fee — nothing else.

Start here
€750
Direction Session · one-off

Three hours together, on site or online. Where you are, what is holding it back, and what to do first — followed by a written action plan within five working days.

No commitment beyond the session. Fee credited against a larger programme if you continue within 60 days.

Who you are hiring 关于我

Ten years on both sides of a line most people only read about.

I run marketing inside a European automotive group with sixteen brands — three of them Chinese manufacturers entering the Italian market. That work is the reason I know exactly how an Asian brand looks to a European buyer, and why the gap is so rarely about the product itself.

On the other side, I hold direct factory and supplier relationships across Guangdong, built over years rather than pulled from a directory, and I am on the ground there regularly. Verification in person, not a PDF from a trading company.

My training is specialised where this work actually happens: Creation and Brand Management with LVMH, Digital Marketing at the University of Maryland and Social Media Marketing at Northwestern University.

I am an art director as well as a strategist. That means I do not only tell an agency what to do — I can tell whether what came back is any good, which is the part most consultants quietly hand back to the client.

Based
Como / Milan, Italy
Experience
10 years — marketing, brand & art direction
Education
BSc Economics
MSc Brand Management & Digital Marketing
Specialisations
Creation & Brand Management — LVMH
Digital Marketing — University of Maryland
Social Media Marketing — Northwestern University
Sectors
Automotive & mobility
Fashion & lifestyle
Design & furniture
Consumer goods, home & living
Technology & electronics
B2B & manufacturing
Corridor
Europe ⇄ China, both directions
Working mode
On site in Northern Italy,
or fully remote worldwide
Languages
Italian · English
How I work with you 合作方式

Clear terms, in writing, before anything begins.

TRANSPARENCY

No hidden fees, no commissions you cannot see

Scope, price and deliverables agreed in writing and signed before work starts. Supplier quotations shown to you at source. If I earn a fee from a third party, you are told what it is.

MEETINGS

In person or online — your choice

Face to face across Northern Italy, or fully remote by video from anywhere. Clients outside Italy work with me entirely online, and it changes nothing about how the work runs.

COMMITMENT

Start small, scale when it earns it

Begin with a paid assessment rather than a long contract. Monthly engagements end with thirty days' notice. No lock-in, no penalty, no reason to stay if it is not working.

Where it applies 实践

The work looks like this.

Multi-brand portfolio

Sixteen brands, one market

Marketing direction across a European automotive group, including the Italian launch positioning for three Chinese manufacturers arriving in a market that had never heard of them.

Supply chain

Factories, not intermediaries

Direct relationships across Guangdong and beyond — sampling, supplier verification and compliance groundwork done in person, before a client wires a deposit.

Audience building

Zero to an engaged community

A consumer brand account built and run from nothing with no media budget — the same mechanics that make a launch work, tested at my own risk first.

Start here 联系

Thirty minutes, and you will know whether this is worth continuing.

No deck and no pitch. You describe where you are trying to go, I tell you what I would do first — and whether you actually need me for it.

Direct
m.camerin@hotmail.com
+39 340 466 9773

Availability
Two to three engagements
at any one time.

Working mode
On site in Northern Italy,
or fully remote worldwide.