Local networks, distributors, and community leaders already have nuanced knowledge of the customer segments you’re trying to reach. For global FMCG brands, tapping into those established ecosystems is often the fastest, most cost-effective route to relevance. 

Local vendors can offer: 

• Immediate distribution reach 

• Cultural nuance 

• Understanding of local preferences 

• Insight into informal decision-making and local habits 

Collaborating with local influencers, community figures, and small businesses is helping global brands build trust and legitimacy in markets where they previously had no presence. 

Mom-and-pop retailers still dominate FMCG sales in emerging markets and are forecast to grow 7.6% annually through 2030. Unilever’s category-built partnerships focus on shared commercial goals, plus retailer education and support that directly lifts sales. Likewise, partnerships with key opinion leaders (KOLs) and regional celebrities reinforce brand messages authentically. 

Unilever’s grassroots distribution model is another example: the Shakti initiative trains local women as door-to-door brand ambassadors across India, using their existing community relationships to extend reach where traditional channels don’t operate. Meanwhile, Unilever’s cloud-based eB2B platform connects half a million retailers across Asia with distributors, sales teams, and real-time AI insights, supercharging local brand awareness and driving consistent on-the-ground sales. 

Every major FMCG company already holds years of competitive intelligence: performance over time, pricing decisions, product choices, category strategies, and campaign outcomes. When entering a new market, this existing knowledge can be repurposed to guide early experiments and shape your launch strategy. 

Benchmarking competitor activity reveals: 

• Where consumers are underserved 

• Gaps in product availability 

• Messaging that resonates 

• Categories where pricing elasticity is high or low 

• Where your brand can differentiate 

Haleon relies heavily on competitive analysis in emerging markets to understand local dynamics. Monitoring inventory availability helped uncover regions where Haleon products surged when competitor products ran out of stock. Post-COVID, Haleon also used competitor intelligence to understand how different markets viewed self-care and health choices based on cultural and pandemic experiences. 

This insight shapes product strategy, investment decisions, and local positioning, for example, offering single-sachet formats in Brazil for low-income consumers where price sensitivity is high. Ongoing benchmarking exercises help Haleon identify unmet needs and sustainably grow penetration in new regions. 

Many CPG brands begin with social listening when entering new territories. And while it’s a useful early indicator of public conversation, it comes with limitations: 

• It captures only public conversation, excluding private groups and “dark social” 

• It skews toward extreme sentiment 

• It rarely reflects mainstream behaviors 

• It misses nuance from consumers who don’t vocalize opinions online 

Social listening alone only shows part of the picture. To really understand how consumers are responding, brands need real-time behavioral data, not just public conversation. That’s where always-on connections make the biggest difference. With Delineate’s real-time brand tracking and campaign tracking, insights teams can see how consumers are reacting to messages, creative, and category shifts as they happen, day by day and over the long term. This continuous data stream gives context to online signals, helping brands distinguish between short-lived spikes and meaningful changes in sentiment or behavior. 

Kimberly-Clark did this at scale, combining CRM data, website behavior, organic search trends, online reviews, and social tracking across Korea, Singapore, and India. The brand identified discussion themes and consumer questions that varied significantly by region, enabling teams to craft hyper-relevant content and campaigns. 

Real-time social signals also helped Kimberly-Clark test messaging, refine subject lines, optimize creative, and personalize recommendations. Predictive analytics layered onto behavioral and sentiment data enabled the brand to identify patterns that could be replicated across similar markets, accelerating content testing cycles and improving conversion rates quickly. 

• Archive learnings in a searchable database accessible across functions. 

• Give analysts stop / go authority within predefined guardrails. 

• Capture where data prevents bad decisions, not just where it leads to good ones. 

Educating New Consumers on the Value of Your Brand & Products 

In many emerging markets, consumers may be encountering certain product categories for the first time. Education becomes the most powerful brand awareness lever, helping audiences understand the category, the product, and its role in everyday life. 

Educational content: 

• Removes barriers to trial 

• Builds trust and credibility 

• Aligns your brand with the “first experience” of the category 

• Enables more confident consumer decision-making 

Existing data from similar markets can reveal how consumers first adopt new product types, what questions they ask, and which use cases require the most explanation. 

Kraft Heinz uses this educational approach extensively. Before entering new regions, the company analyzes existing data to determine the most profitable product lineup for launch. Then it crafts campaigns focused on category penetration through education, showing how ketchup, mayonnaise or sauces can be integrated into everyday meals across Asia. 

Small-scale experiments revealed how consumers were using Kraft Heinz products in emerging markets, helping teams refine messaging quickly and adapt creative to cultural norms. 

Most insights leaders now manage an overwhelming number of data sources: campaign performance, brand tracking, CRM, ecommerce, digital analytics, social listening, retail intelligence, and more. The challenge isn’t lack of data; it’s lack of connection. 

AI is increasingly being used to make sense of disconnected datasets and create a unified consumer view without commissioning new research. 

CMI teams are using AI to combine: 

• Structured data (performance metrics, CRM, ecommerce behavior) 

• Unstructured data (social posts, search intent, reviews) 

• Always-on tracking data 

• Campaign analytics 

This creates real-time intelligence: sentiment analysis, topic detection, emerging attitude shifts, predictive demand models, and localized insights for new markets. 

Nestlé is a standout example. Their AI-powered Customer Data Platform integrates data across 20 brands, creating a unified business intelligence hub. Automated forecasting highlights potential new product concepts and campaign ideas. Teams can test creative, refine strategy, and launch products faster, all using data they already own. 

When brand and campaign tracking is structured for integration, it becomes an immediate input for AI models, improving predictive accuracy across markets without adding new research. 

Emerging markets often share behavioral patterns with other regions where you already have rich data. Always-on tracking helps insights teams apply learnings from one market to another, giving brands an informed head start. 

When daily brand and campaign data is available, teams can: 

• Understand trends as they form 

• See how quickly messages land 

• Track category shifts in real time 

• Optimize creative and spend as performance changes 

• Identify new audiences emerging faster than annual studies can track 

Coca-Cola is leading the field here. By combining data from 300 brands and 100 sources, they track 2,000 experiences and measure campaign performance globally. This allows learnings from 40 always-on markets to be applied to smaller or newer regions. 

The result: faster optimization, smarter investment, and a more confident launch strategy backed by data instead of assumptions. 

Always-on tracking gives insights teams the agility required in new markets, connecting consumer perception with business outcomes and guiding decisions on the ground. 

Brand and campaign tracking is one of the fastest routes to success in any new market. With Delineate’s always-on tracking, brands get live, accurate daily data on new consumer segments, with instant visibility into what’s working and what needs to change. 

You can launch your brand or product in new markets backed by robust daily sampling, applied intelligence from similar regions, and a real-time understanding of how consumers are responding. 

Launch faster. Learn continuously. Grow smarter. 

See how Delineate can help you enter emerging markets with confidence.