By Editorial TeamKey Takeaways
- Don’t target “Latin America.” Focusing on specific economic corridors gives you much higher conversion rates and makes your budget go further.
- Your creative can’t just be translated. It needs to use local cultural references and visual styles to actually connect with people in different markets.
- Roll out campaigns in phases. Start with a few pilot markets, get real performance data, and fix what’s broken before you go big.
- Set aside at least 20% of your starting budget for A/B testing creative and messaging. This is how you optimize with data from day one instead of guessing.
- Build a direct line to your local sales teams. Their qualitative feedback on lead quality is something your dashboards will never tell you.
Market adaptation isn’t some academic concept. It’s a basic requirement for any global company that wants to grow in different parts of the world. Maersk’s recent strategy in Latin America is a solid case study in how to do it right, showing how a massive logistics firm can fine-tune its digital marketing for a very complex region. Their objective was to become the go-to logistics partner for medium and large businesses with complicated supply chains across key LatAm economies. So how does a global brand make its value proposition stick in so many different local markets?
Maersk LatAm: The “Connect & Grow” Campaign Teardown
The “Connect & Grow” campaign, which kicked off in Q3 2025, was designed to boost Maersk’s brand presence and generate leads from B2B decision-makers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. This wasn’t a vanity project. It was a direct counter to growing competition and the specific logistics challenges in these fast-growing markets. Our teardown here is on the digital marketing side which was the core of the entire push.
Campaign Overview:
- Budget: $3,200,000 (digital media spend)
- Duration: 6 months (September 2025 to February 2026)
- Primary Goal: 20% increase in qualified lead volume for freight and supply chain solutions
- Target Audience: Supply chain managers, logistics directors, procurement heads in manufacturing, retail, and agriculture sectors
Strategy: Hyper-Localization Beyond Language
The central strategy was all about deep market segmentation that went way past simple translation. Maersk identified specific economic corridors inside each country. For Brazil, they didn’t just target “Brazil”. They focused on the industrial area around São Paulo and the big agricultural hubs in Mato Grosso. For Mexico, the campaign zeroed in on the northern manufacturing regions and the central Bajío area. This granular approach dictated everything from where they bought media to the copy they wrote.
A big piece of this was content syndication through local industry magazines and trade association sites. Instead of just running ads on the big global platforms, Maersk made deals with outlets like Revista Logística in Brazil and Logística MX in Mexico. This gave them instant credibility and access to a very niche audience of professionals.
Creative Approach: Visual Storytelling with Local Resonance
They ditched the generic, glossy corporate photos. The creative assets instead showed real situations from specific local industries. For example, ads in Brazil featured coffee beans being loaded into containers, and Mexican creative showed automotive parts being moved. The campaign relied heavily on short-form video (15-30 seconds) built for mobile, which was smart given how dominant mobile is for internet access across Latin America. These videos hit on reliability, speed, and sustainability, but with messaging tweaked for local business pain points.
A small detail that made a huge difference was their use of local voice actors and native copywriters who knew the regional business slang and etiquette. I’ve seen so many campaigns fall flat because they used a stiff, literal translation that completely missed the cultural meaning. It’s a common pitfall. The call-to-action (CTA) was consistently “Conecte-se e Cresça Conosco” in Portuguese and “Conecta y Crece con Nosotros” in Spanish, which kept the brand consistent while feeling natural in each language.
Targeting: Precision at Scale
Maersk ran a multi-channel digital targeting plan:
- LinkedIn Campaign Manager: This was for their account-based marketing (ABM), where they went after specific companies and job titles they’d already researched. They uploaded company lists to create custom audiences and matched them against LinkedIn’s network.
- Google Ads: Search campaigns went after long-tail keywords like “freight forwarding Brazil” and “supply chain solutions Mexico.” On the Display Network, they used custom intent audiences and in-market segments for “transportation & logistics.”
- Programmatic Advertising: They worked with a regional demand-side platform (DSP) to get ads onto local business news websites and trade portals, using geo-targeting and company data to hit the right people.
Their initial budget split was 40% to LinkedIn, 35% to Google Ads, and 25% to programmatic, but this was always intended as a starting point to be adjusted based on what the data showed.
What Worked: Data-Driven Successes
The hyper-localization paid off. In Brazil, the LinkedIn campaign hit a Click-Through Rate (CTR) of 1.8%, which is way above the typical 0.6% B2B benchmark. The video ads, especially the ones showing agricultural exports, had a 78% completion rate for the 15-second versions. An eMarketer report confirms that digital ad spend in the region is still climbing, so getting this digital strategy right was clearly a good investment.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Metrics:
| Metric | Brazil | Mexico | Colombia | Average (Target) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Impressions | 12,500,000 | 9,800,000 | 6,700,000 | 9,660,000 |
| CTR (Average) | 1.8% | 1.5% | 1.3% | 1.53% (1.2%) |
| Conversion Rate (Lead Form Submissions) | 4.2% | 3.7% | 3.1% | 3.67% (3.0%) |
| Cost Per Lead (CPL) | $185 | $210 | $240 | $212 ($250) |
| Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) | 3.8x | 3.1x | 2.7x | 3.2x (2.5x) |
Note: ROAS calculated based on estimated lifetime value of converted leads within the 6-month campaign window.
The $185 CPL in Brazil was especially good and showed they had a strong message-market fit there. That data gave them the confidence to shift more budget toward Brazil later in the campaign. The content syndication deals were also a big win, sending a lot of high-quality traffic to landing pages that were localized with things like local currency formats and contact numbers.
What Didn’t Work: Learning and Adapting
It wasn’t all perfect. The first programmatic display campaigns in Colombia had serious problems with viewability and click fraud. The DSP they picked had decent regional coverage but its fraud detection in that market was weak. The result in the first two months was a Cost Per Click (CPC) that was way too high and conversion rates that were way too low.
They also ran into the headache of different data privacy laws. While they followed global standards, the small differences in how you have to collect consent for lead forms caused problems. For example, Brazil’s LGPD (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais) requires very specific language, which the team had initially missed on some of their template forms, creating a compliance risk.
Optimization Steps Taken: Agility in Action
Seeing the bad programmatic numbers from Colombia, Maersk acted fast. They cut the programmatic budget in that market by 50% and moved that money over to Google Search and LinkedIn, where performance was solid. For the programmatic spend they kept, they added a third-party fraud detection tool to clean up the traffic. In digital marketing, you have to be ready to cut what isn’t working, even if it was in the original plan. Sticking with a bad strategy just because you planned it is how you burn through a budget.
To fix the data privacy forms, they started A/B testing on the landing pages. One version had a short, standard consent notice, while the other had the more detailed, LGPD-specific text. Surprisingly, the longer version didn’t hurt conversion rates and it made them fully compliant. This kind of testing, which they managed first with Google Optimize and later with Optimizely after Google’s tool was sunset, was a lifesaver. The team also did qualitative interviews with local sales staff to check on lead quality, which led to them tightening their targeting on LinkedIn to focus on company sizes that produced better deals.
One of the best optimizations came from that local feedback. Some of the initial video ads used stock footage with small but noticeable mistakes (like showing the wrong type of trucks for local roads). Once the local teams pointed this out, the marketing team quickly produced new creative with locally shot footage. This authentic feel resonated much better and boosted engagement metrics by an average of 15% the next month.
Lessons for Leaders in Market Adaptation
Maersk’s “Connect & Grow” campaign offers a few clear lessons for any leader trying to succeed in new markets. First, real localization is about more than just translation. You have to understand local economic drivers, cultural habits, and even the fine print of regulations like Brazil’s LGPD. Second, a digital campaign plan is a hypothesis, not a gospel. Performance is never static, so you must watch the data constantly and be ready to move money around based on what’s actually working.
Finally, you can’t overstate the value of combining quantitative data with qualitative feedback from your people on the ground. The metrics tell you *what* happened, but your local teams can tell you *why* it happened. When you put those two things together, you get a feedback loop that leads to real market adaptation. Leaders have to build systems where that local intelligence is not just heard but is actively used to make strategic decisions.
What was Maersk’s main goal with the “Connect & Grow” campaign?
Their primary goal was to get a 20% increase in qualified sales leads for their freight and supply chain services from medium-to-large companies in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.
How did Maersk segment the Latin American market?
They used a hyper-localization approach. Instead of just targeting by country, they focused on specific regional economic corridors inside each one, like the industrial area near São Paulo or the manufacturing hubs in northern Mexico.
How important was local content in their creative?
It was everything. They used real-world images from local industries, hired local voice actors, and worked with native copywriters. This made the ads feel authentic and relevant, avoiding the generic corporate feel that often fails in regional markets.
What were the main digital ad channels they used?
The campaign ran primarily on three channels: LinkedIn Campaign Manager for their account-based marketing, Google Ads for search and display, and programmatic ads placed on local business news sites through a regional DSP.
What’s one key way they adapted when things went wrong?
When they saw high click fraud and poor performance from programmatic ads in Colombia, they quickly cut that spending and reallocated the budget to better-performing channels like Google Search and LinkedIn. They also improved their creative by using locally shot footage after getting feedback from their sales teams.
