Marketers are reaping the benefits of this process, swapping new ideas while shaping to their own needs concepts, strategies and techniques used by colleagues in far and distant lands -- borrowing a bit here, improving some there, rejecting what’s less likely to work.

The result is a rich and growing kaleidoscope of clever, imaginative campaigns that are engaging consumers and delighting the brand marketers of dozens of products all over the world. Some of the more imaginative of recent vintage:

Beer and Laughter in Poland

A summer-long traveling ‘Museum of Humor’ reinforced awareness for Zwiece, Poland’s number-one beer brand, among 18-to-45-year-old city residents in Warsaw, Krakov, Gdansk and Gliwice. Set up in town squares, the multi-unit spectacle showcased jokes, comedies, costumes and other memorabilia from Polish comedies in huge tents surrounded by open-air exhibits and interactive displays of film scenes. More than 107,000 people visited, with 50,000 attending the Zwiece cinema alone. Newspapers, radio and TV published and aired more than 300 news stories and feature articles.

Washing Dishes in Tel Aviv
To introduce its Fairy brand of dish-washing detergent and prove its claim that a little bit of it goes a long way, Procter & Gamble had its agency set up a dining room, kitchen and dozens of sinks on the Tel Aviv campus of Ben Gurion University and invite students to a free pasta-with-tomato-sauce dinner. Radio, TV and newspaper reporters, plus a Guinness Book of World Records auditing committee, showed up to witness the pasta being consumed and to watch volunteers wash more than 20,000 plates afterward with a single 16-ounce bottle, thereby earning Fairy a ton of free publicity and the participants a permanent spot in the GBWR.

Armor in Argentina
Volkswagen of Argentina marketed and sold via special-order directly from Germany an armored version of its Passat sedan – appropriately called the Protector – to a select group of Argentine business executives via a ‘stealth’ campaign that called for no publicity, no media advertising and no word-of-mouth. Taking their place was a high-quality, expensive-looking package of materials written in English – containing product features, color photos and physical specifications – which was hand-delivered by security-trained VW reps -- to a carefully selected, personally contacted database. This campaign was so discreet it was successfully completed before many people knew it arrived.   

Cancer Detection in Malaysia
“Feel This” was a two-word printed message on the back of a plain white envelope personally addressed and hand-delivered to married women with children in urban areas of Malaysia. Inside was a small seed that could be felt through the paper, and a message, signed by the Obstetric and Gynecological Society of Malaysia likening it to how a cancerous lump feels like in a breast exam. The note urged recipients to examine themselves -- a culturally sensitive topic in a Muslim country – and to call in for a check-up. From 1,000 mailers the response rate was 558. Campaign cost: 96 cents per recipient.

Getting Lite in Quebec
GPS is a commonplace now on cars, boats and planes. But in a beer can? Coors of Canada was late re-launching Coors Lite in Quebec. Looking for a concept that would quickly generate enough trial and awareness to carry through the summer and aiming at French –speaking twenty something males, the company produced ads and POP displays challenging 12- and 24-bottle case buyers to find three “tracker” bottles randomly seeded at the brewery. Satellites pinpointed the winners and a Coors Light VJ and camera crew put them on live TV. Results: a 49-percent year-to-year volume increase -- and a company in New Zealand got equally impressive results a year later with the same idea.

Men and Bodies in Australia
Unilever managed to launch, generate trial and achieve a three-percent sales increase for a line extension of its Lynx body deodorant by creating an imaginary airline (LynxJet) and getting thousands of young men across the country talking it up. Campaign ingredients were a Web site, a bevy of beautiful female models walking about downtown Sydney streets and a made-up organization called the Mile High Club, around which young men could weave – and brag to each other about their ‘conquests.’ Models flirted and gave out membership cards; boys flirted back and visited the site, passed the word and bought the body spray. Site visits totaled 25,000 and Mile High Club registrations topped 10,000.

Paris to London by Rail
EuroStar, the railway link between France and England via the English Channel Tunnel, leveraged the star power of “The DaVinci Code” with a worldwide online contest to generate awareness in – and to sell train tickets to – Paris and London as travel destinations in themselves. Grand prize: five years of luxury accommodation at the Ritz (Paris) and Claridge (London) hotels, £200,000 in spending money, £10,000 to spend at Harrod's (London) and Galleries Lafayette (Paris) and deluxe travel on Eurostar for life.

Other ingredients were a publicity-generating free trip for a Guinness World Record-breaking junket of 300 journalists, along with cast members, on the first-ever non-stop Eurostar run from London via Paris to the 2006 Cannes Film Festival for the grand opening of “The Code.” Results: 1.2 million online contest participants, a blockbuster movie opening, advance publicity in 70 countries and a 15-percent increase in advance bookings as Paris and London moved into first and second position on Eurostar’s Top 10 destinations list.

These case histories were selected for a number of reasons. The first was geographic and cultural diversity. One was ingenuity. Others were conceptual and strategic efficacy – in other words, how well they achieve their desired results. What they have in common, however, is a set of characteristics I like to call Best Practices.

One might also note that for all their novelty and ingenuity, not a single one took place in the United States. The point being that wherever a Best Practice originates, it’s an idea that because it is clear, broadly appealing, value-added and culturally relevant -- works better than just about anything so far for getting a marketing job done.

A marketing Best Practice is simply a concept, strategy or insight that has been demonstrably effective at achieving the desired outcome of a marketing campaign. Benchmarking, in turn, is the process of identifying the Best Practices of a campaign and adapting or improving them for one’s own marketing objectives.

Benchmarking a best practice is exemplified by the story of a young man named Dick Fosbury who revolutionized high-jumping in the 1968 Summer Olympics. He came up with a simple but revolutionary technique that later became known as the Fosbury Flop.

By going over the bar backward instead of head-first – in effect creating a brand-new Best Practice for the sport of high-jumping -- Fosbury managed to win the gold medal and set an Olympic record with a jump of 2.24 meters, or 7 ft 4 1/4 inches.

Ironically, had Fosbury followed the Best Practice up to that time -- going over head-first -- he would neither have won the event nor set a record. By coming up with an idea that built on what went before, he was able to set a mark that high jumpers have been benchmarking against ever since.

In marketing or high jumping, benchmarking best practices encourages us to do better by observing what others have been successful at – anywhere in the world -- and adapting or improving on that so we can raise the bar higher, one little notch at a time.

Kerry E. Smith is publisher of The Global Marketer, an online resource for case studies like the ones above.

If you enjoyed reading the case studies Kerry E. Smith highlighted in this article, then why not check out some others? The Global Marketer is extending our readers free access to the 'Campaign Pro-Files' section of their site for today only (August 6). Click here to access the case studies free of charge (a $295 value) until midnight EST.