Structuring Content Production for Henkel Across Ten Markets

Context

Henkel operates across more than 10 international markets with a portfolio of industrial and consumer products that require differentiated communication across audiences, from design engineers and plant managers to procurement and sales teams. The business had accumulated a substantial library of expert content produced by technical and marketing teams globally.

This content was thorough and well-researched. It was also largely static, formatted for print or internal use, and not structured for the demands of digital channels: multiple formats, multiple audiences, multiple markets, and the need to refresh and reuse efficiently over time.

What Changed

As Henkel’s digital footprint expanded across markets, the gap between available content and usable content became a structural constraint. The existing material could not be deployed across digital channels without significant reworking, and the volume required for sustained multi-market activity made case-by-case production economically unworkable.

Henkel needed a production partner with both the strategic understanding to determine which content should be transformed and how, and the operational capability to deliver at scale across languages and markets.

Envigo’s Responsibility

Envigo was responsible for designing the content transformation strategy, defining the production workflow, and executing the transformation and localisation of content across markets and asset types.

Envigo owned the decision-making framework for how source content was assessed, adapted, and routed to the appropriate format and channel. Envigo also owned the workflow infrastructure used for briefing, production, approval, and delivery.

Strategic Decisions

Decision 1: Build a transformation decision model before beginning production

Envigo observed that beginning production without a consistent framework would result in inconsistent output quality and inefficient use of source material. The decision was made to first define a classification model that determined, for any piece of source content, which target audience, platform, and asset type it should map to. This model governed every production decision that followed. The alternative, producing assets on an ad hoc request basis, was rejected because it would not have created a reusable or scalable system.

Decision 2: Design a multi-stage production workflow with localisation built in

The workflow was structured as a linear sequence: Brief, Extract, Template, Feedback, Deliver, Localise, Tag, and Reuse. Localisation was embedded as a stage within the workflow. This was chosen because content produced for one market frequently contained structural elements that could be adapted for others, and treating localisation as an afterthought would have increased both cost and turnaround time.

Decision 3: Use cloud-based tooling for briefing, approvals, and delivery

Given the number of markets, internal teams, and asset types involved, Envigo chose to centralise the briefing, feedback, and approval process through cloud-based workflow automation. This reduced the coordination overhead between Henkel’s internal stakeholders and Envigo’s production teams, and created a consistent audit trail for approvals. Managing this process through email or offline tools would have introduced version control problems at the volume being produced.

Decision 4: Build a content repository structured for reuse

Envigo designed the repository so that open files, tagged assets, and accessibility-compliant content were stored in a format that extended the useful life of each piece. This decision was driven by the recognition that production cost at scale is most efficiently managed when existing assets can be adapted rather than rebuilt from scratch. A delivery-only model, without structured archiving, would have required recreating source components repeatedly across markets.

System Design

The content transformation system was designed to function across an expanding range of markets and teams without requiring a structural rebuild each time scope increased. The classification model, workflow stages, and repository architecture were all built to accommodate new asset types, markets, and audience segments without disrupting the core production process.

The decision to embed localisation within the production workflow meant that market-specific adaptation could be completed at lower cost and with greater consistency than if it had been managed as a separate workstream. Over time, the repository grew in a way that reduced average production time per asset as reusable components accumulated.

Outcomes

Envigo produced more than 1,500 digital assets across the engagement, including 3D videos, infographics, CGIs, email campaigns, case studies, success stories, and sales training videos. Output was localised and deployed across more than 10 markets, including Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Japan, and China.

The engagement covered six internal teams at Henkel: marketing, web and content, social media, email, sales, and sales training. The association has continued for more than five years.

Scope Expansion

The engagement began with a focus on digital content transformation for marketing channels. As the workflow and repository matured, Envigo’s responsibility extended into content produced for internal sales and training teams. This included rebranded presentation materials, success story infographics, product application training videos, and 3D models used as visual references by field teams. The expansion reflected both confidence in the system Envigo had built and the recognition that the same framework could serve internal audiences as effectively as external ones.

Closing Reflection

Content at scale is an operational problem before it is a creative one. The quality of output over time depends less on individual asset decisions and more on whether the underlying system for how content is classified, produced, localised, and reused is structurally sound from the outset.