Scaling global content without the mess: real talk from the front lines

Full transcript

Welcome and audience polls

Jacob Wheeler: Thank you everyone for joining today's webinar. I'm really excited to have you here, and we have a great panel to discuss and share a lot of insights with you. Today's session is all about scaling global content without the mess, and how modern teams like The Marketing Store are overcoming challenges like fragmented workflows, balancing speed with quality, and keeping brand consistency top of mind while localizing at scale. These are challenges a lot of us face, so I'm excited to see how you can take the learnings from the panel into your own organizations.

To quickly introduce who's in the room: I'm Jacob Wheeler, based in North Carolina in the US. I'm one of the lead enterprise CSMs at Lokalise, helping with onboarding and sharing best practices with our customers when they start using Lokalise, and I've been here for a little over four years.

We're also launching a poll. The first question is: do you use a CMS — a content management system — today? Second: do you use a localization technology platform today? And third: if you had to pick one, what's the hardest part about scaling global content for you and your organization? While you answer, a little housekeeping and the agenda for today's session: the panel discussion — how leading teams streamline localization, scale content, and collaborate with AI and smart workflows — will be the main part of today's content. Then our partner Storyblok will do a localization demo to give you an idea of how this workflow could come together, and we'll leave time at the end for Q&A. Throughout the discussion, if something comes to mind, please use the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom window rather than the comments, and our team will be moderating.

The poll has ended. For the first question — do you use a CMS today? — ninety-two percent, the majority, do use a CMS today. Do you use a TMS or some type of localization technology platform? Pretty split: about fifty-eight percent said yes and forty-two percent said no. And the hardest part about scaling global content? The clear winner is managing fragmented tools and processes — which definitely makes sense — followed by balancing speed and content quality, and proving the ROI of localization. So it will be great to understand from the panel how they're tackling what seems to be a very shared and common issue.

Meet the panel

Jacob Wheeler: Starting from left to right, we have Kris from Touchtribe. Kris is a Business Analyst at Touchtribe, where he helps brands translate complex digital ambitions into scalable, composable solutions. If you don't know Touchtribe, it's an Amsterdam-based digital commerce agency specializing in fast, secure platforms with headless, API-first technology to help brands modernize and scale. Kris, thanks so much for joining.

Kris Ekman: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Jacob Wheeler: Next, we have Mudit, Creative Technology Manager at The Marketing Store — and this is also fun for me because they're one of my personal customers, so it's awesome to collaborate in this way. At The Marketing Store, Mudit leads initiatives to improve marketing and creative operations through automation, integrations, and platform migrations. He helps global teams streamline processes and deliver content more efficiently. The Marketing Store is a global brand experience agency that helps consumer brands build stronger customer relationships through loyalty, promotions, digital experiences, and technology. Great to have you, Mudit.

Mudit Pruthi: Thank you so much, Jacob. Happy to be here.

Jacob Wheeler: Last but not least, we have Matt. Matt is a Solutions Engineer at our partner Storyblok. Storyblok is a headless CMS that enables teams to create, manage, and deliver content across channels with a visual editor and flexible, API-first architecture. Thanks so much, Matt.

Matthew Hughson: Thank you, Jacob.

Why localization and content management are strategic

Jacob Wheeler: The first question is for you, Mudit. When we talk about localization and content management, what do those actually mean in practice for a global team like The Marketing Store? And why, in your perspective, are they not just an operational thing you have to do but, more importantly, a strategic initiative?

Mudit Pruthi: Thanks, Jacob. For us at The Marketing Store, localization and content management aren't just operational, to your point — they're strategic levers that actually determine whether a global campaign is going to succeed or not. Think about a big program launching across thirty or more markets. Localization is not just about translations: it's about adapting copy for local regulations, making sure dates and currencies are correct, or even handling right-to-left layouts for languages like Arabic or Hebrew. The goal is that every market should experience the campaign as if it was created just for them, while still holding on to the global creative idea. And this is exactly why it has to be strategic: it keeps the brand consistent, reduces the risk of cultural or compliance missteps, and gives us speed and reusability — because once the system is in place, future campaigns are very easy to roll out. So while it may sound like an operational thing, it's actually the backbone of scaling content globally without losing control.

Jacob Wheeler: I'm sure a lot of folks in the audience today have to manage a vast amount of content and markets, so aligning on the strategic aspect of this work, and not just the operational, makes a lot of sense. Kris, adding on to this topic: Touchtribe works with companies navigating really complex global challenges. When you talk about localization and content management with those global customers, what does it mean for them, and why is it becoming so core to the digital strategy they need to implement?

Kris Ekman: Thanks, Jacob. I really recognize what Mudit just mentioned — at Touchtribe we see the same challenges with our clients, and it shows just how critical localization and content management have become as a digital strategy. For our clients, it comes down to three core challenges. First, being authentically local: content has to feel like it was created for that specific audience, not just translated. It's about localizing imagery, adjusting the tone of voice, and making the global brand feel genuinely local in each market. Second, moving fast without breaking things: growing brands need to launch consistently across markets, but manual processes create a lot of bottlenecks, so we help our clients build robust workflows that maintain quality while accelerating time to market. And the third — probably the most important — is maintaining one source of truth. Without a centralized CMS, everything falls apart: every team is chasing which version they're on, fixing errors in pockets, dealing with inconsistencies. This can all be avoided when you have everything in the same place. That's why I think it's not a separate thing — it's core to the digital strategy of brands, and without it, global expansion just falls flat.

Jacob Wheeler: This definitely resonates with what we see at Lokalise across our customer base as well: the core tech stack needs to work and play nicely with all the other tools in the enterprise — the translation management system, the CMS, and all the different stakeholders.

Inside The Marketing Store's localization process

Jacob Wheeler: I think the audience would be really curious to learn what your localization and content management process looks like at The Marketing Store today, how you're doing it, and — a little more importantly — why you've set it up that way.

Mudit Pruthi: That's a great question. At a high level, our process involves a few steps. First, the accounts team kicks things off with clear requirements from the business and the client side. Then the creative and copy teams collaboratively produce designs and content in shared design tools. From there, the content management team sets up the project in Lokalise, and once the creative and copy teams are done with their designs, copy is pulled through automated integrations into Lokalise. Once we have the project structured, digital production comes into the picture and creates tasks for our translation partners. When we get those translations back from our partners, they're routed for internal and stakeholder review, and this cycle repeats until all translations and copy are finalized.

You may ask why we've set it up this way, and the answer is pretty simple: it keeps us fast, consistent, and reliable across different markets. It also ensures clear roles and seamless collaboration, because Lokalise acts like a one-stop shop — all collaboration, communication, and comments happen within Lokalise. There are built-in quality checks, and a process that essentially helps us scale from just a few markets to dozens, all while moving faster. To my earlier point, it means global work can actually feel local while staying efficient and manageable at scale.

Speed versus quality: escaping the manual mess

Jacob Wheeler: Being global is about staying authentic and local while protecting brand consistency, reducing risks across your different functions and content types, and — as Mudit and Kris both touched on — keeping a single source of truth for your content in one place, so quality stays consistent and increases over time. That's hopefully a good foundation for the deeper dive: balancing speed and quality, breaking silos, and using AI. Mudit, back to you on the speed-or-quality question that usually comes up — some deadline is in place, but your customers or end users really need a high-quality result. How do you balance that? And is that even the right question to ask?

Mudit Pruthi: That's a fantastic question, Jacob, because for us it actually used to feel like a trade-off. Our old setup was very, very manual. The content management team was responsible for setting up projects in Storyblok and SharePoint — imagine doing that across multiple systems and folders. And it's not just about setting up the project; it's also about making sure the right stakeholders have the right access, which used to take days, if not weeks. Then they'd send base language files for translation into thirty-plus markets using spreadsheets — hashtag "I love Excel". They tracked client comments and feedback offline in spreadsheets or email. And once translations came through, they copy-pasted them into Storyblok key by key. Imagine working on a global campaign that spans thirty-plus markets, collaborating offline with your translation partners, clients, and multiple stakeholders via all these different platforms. Communication is siloed, you're getting updates via email, there's no proper way of tracking anything — and time to market across regions was all over the place. At one point I'd be working with five markets, and the next day another five, which was not good for timelines. And the cycle repeated until all translations were finalized.

This created a lot of problems. The process was tedious and error-prone, with a constant need for offline, asynchronous back-and-forth between multiple stakeholders, so turnaround times stretched into days. And it wasn't just the translations — it was the admin part that took up so much of content management's time. There was also no way for us to reuse past translations. Imagine working on a global campaign with no way to even recognize that some of that content had already been translated before, so we could reuse those translations and save time and money. Content management literally had to go into SharePoint, look through all the spreadsheets used to translate those markets before, and locate the exact keys — again, very time-consuming. And sometimes we got incomplete translations, which forced the team to fill gaps just to meet client deadlines.

But now, with Storyblok and Lokalise, we put our base content in Storyblok, where we can reuse content blocks — that's the great thing about using content blocks as opposed to data sources, which we did previously. Content automatically flows into Lokalise, where all translation and review happens centrally, so communication is not siloed and everyone sees the progress. Then, with the click of just one button, the approved translations flow back into Storyblok — there are absolutely no extra handoffs. And no discussion is complete without mentioning your developers, because you have to keep them in the loop: talking to them made us realize the content blocks API works much better than the data sources API, so it works better for everyone.

Jacob Wheeler: Amazing. A lot of different stakeholders, a lot of tedious, error-prone back-and-forth, feeling siloed, and developers involved too — I'm sure a lot of people can relate, either in their current situation or a past one. Thank you for sharing both your current setup and what you were doing before; it shows the transformation takes a lot of investment and cross-collaboration, but the brighter side is all the benefits you mentioned. Kris, a similar question for you: I'm sure many of your clients ask the same question about speed or quality. How do you navigate that conversation?

Kris Ekman: For sure. A lot of them — many of them — live where Mudit used to be, in a situation where you feel forced to pick between speed and quality because everything is disconnected: the tools, the processes, even the teams themselves. Your content is in one system, translation happens somewhere else, and review happens over email or in spreadsheets. And unfortunately, it's often up to the developers to bridge those gaps in between. That kind of fragmentation just slows everything down, and when deadlines loom, speed will often win at the expense of quality. It's not a good situation to be in.

Breaking down the silos

Jacob Wheeler: One of your comments was about being disconnected. How do so many global teams still end up working like these islands or silos, as Mudit was calling them? And how does Touchtribe help turn them around from their current situations?

Kris Ekman: Organizations often end up working in a way that's not really the way they want to, because each function has its own tools, its own timelines, its own priorities. Marketing might own the CMS, localization happens in spreadsheets with an agency or in a separate tool altogether, and developers are just tossed in between to make it work. No one has the real full picture, and collaboration turns into these small, fragmented handoffs.

We've seen it firsthand with our clients, and we've helped them with it. For example, we had a client with highly technical content scattered across the organization, with a lot of expertise sitting in different regional pockets. Translation was happening in isolation, and they had to choose between being fast or accurate — they couldn't have both. Our first step was not to push a solution on them, but to understand their current pain points: sitting down and conducting workshops and interviews with the global, local, and development teams together to create a clear picture of how scattered the process really was. That gave us full visibility into where it was breaking down. The next step was to design the ideal state: we reconfigured Storyblok to act as the place where content lived, and local teams got the freedom to create their own content and publish it to their region-specific audience — which took away a lot of chaotic workflows and ensured consistency. And the third step was to connect the dots: we architected a handoff between Storyblok and Lokalise to eliminate the manual, copy-paste, error-prone way of working, replacing it with a flow where you see the whole pipeline from creation to translation and back again to publishing — an automated, transparent pipeline, if you will.

Jacob Wheeler: There are certainly a lot of folks who could use a good partner, so having those very tangible steps of how you do that is hopefully a benefit to anyone in the audience looking for a partner today.

AI in localization: fast, but with a human in the loop

Jacob Wheeler: I'd like to stay on the speed and quality topic, but touching on AI. AI is now seen as an assistant, as a team member in our workflows, and it's becoming commonplace rather than a new thing. Mudit, I'm really curious how you've kept it from running wild with your brand, knowing The Marketing Store supports extremely reputable brands on a daily basis who really care about quality.

Mudit Pruthi: AI is such an interesting topic, Jacob — you and I have been chatting about AI for the past few months, especially for translations. Our approach was pretty simple: we went through multiple rounds of testing with Lokalise AI, feeding it different types of content and reviewing outputs. With the help of our teams, content management set up two different projects for us. The first project was a combination of previously translated content across different programs — we used translation memory as a benchmark to see how Lokalise AI would do. For the second project, we fed in the style guide, glossary, key descriptions, and extra instructions while creating the Lokalise AI task. Through multiple rounds of testing, we analyzed where AI worked well — common phrases, repeated structures — and where it struggled, which is what we actually wanted to focus on: cultural nuances, legal disclaimers, brand tone. After each iteration, we adjusted the processes and review steps to make sure AI supported the team without compromising quality, because it's about quality and speed at the same time.

What we concluded after multiple rounds of testing: AI is definitely fast — time to market is reduced by seven or eight business days — and it's definitely helpful for repetitive and standard translations. But it still needs human oversight, because some markets are easy to translate, whereas some markets need extra effort, and that's where human translators come into the picture. The key is to always, always, always stay in control: review, edit, and approve content before it goes live.

Jacob Wheeler: It's been fun to walk with you on the journey of your AI testing and iteration and see where you are today. For us, we see the improvements in the base models, but Lokalise is also coming out with personalized models that you can spin up yourselves — so stay tuned for that from the product side. And we don't see humans just being removed overnight, at least not for all translations or all language pairs. Having that human in the loop and that partner there is still really vital, especially to give feedback into the AI system. Kris, from the Touchtribe standpoint, where do you see AI? I'm sure that's always top of mind with your clients.

Kris Ekman: Definitely. The biggest barrier we see is not technical — it's probably a trust thing. Legal teams, for instance, are rightfully cautious about AI handling their content, especially in regulated industries where one mistranslated clause can create liability. So instead of throwing AI at everything, we use a pilot approach: start small with low-risk content like product descriptions and FAQs, while anything legal, contractual, or highly regulated stays in human-only workflows for now. That gives those teams a chance to see how AI works without having to fully commit to it.

The pattern we're seeing, though, is the human-in-the-loop, human-plus-AI operating model, where AI takes care of the volume — standard product descriptions, repetitive support content — and the human experts focus on what actually needs expertise: legal precision, cultural nuances, making sure the brand voice feels right in each market. I think the brands that get this balance right are scaling much, much faster than those stuck doing everything manually. And they actually improve quality, because their human experts aren't burned out by repetitive tasks — you can use their expertise where it matters. Our role as an agency is changing as well: we, along with other translation agencies, used to just manage projects. Instead, we're now designing intelligent workflows where AI and humans complement each other, while we still stay in the driver's seat and maintain oversight. So it's really exciting times.

Words of wisdom for going global

Jacob Wheeler: Before we switch gears to Matt for the demo, a quick hot seat — thirty seconds each, Mudit and then Kris. If you had one final word of wisdom, what would you share with first-time folks wanting to take their content global?

Mudit Pruthi: I was actually chatting about this with one of my friends a couple of weeks ago, and they mentioned one thing that really stuck with me: be iterative, not incremental. Don't try to perfect everything on day one. Start small, learn fast, improve as you go. And build feedback loops — involve all stakeholders early and let the processes evolve. That way you're not just checking random boxes on a checklist; you're actually creating a system that will help you scale at a later point.

Kris Ekman: Lokalise and Storyblok are game changers. If you get the systems right and set up correctly, they're so powerful — but they do need a clear story. Define your vision first, find your brand voice, and the tools will make that brand voice go far.

Live demo: the Lokalise + Storyblok integration

Jacob Wheeler: Great words of wisdom to wrap up this section — thank you both. Next we have the demo, which I'm sure people are most interested in, to see a little under the hood. Matt, take it away.

Matthew Hughson: I love those words of wisdom. What we're really talking about here is creating high-quality content and getting it up on the screen as fast as possible so that everyone can enjoy it. And I totally agree with Kris: Storyblok and Lokalise together are a total game changer — I second that motion. So here we go: I'm ready to show you Storyblok. Most of you in the audience have a CMS — if it's not Storyblok, I think you're going to love this as well. And for the one person in the poll who doesn't have a CMS, I'm hoping by the end of this you'll be jumping on the Storyblok wagon.

What you see here is a live representation of my website. I can click on it and go straight to the exact area I want to edit. What you've probably seen in some other CMSs is a form-field view — at Storyblok, we always take a visual-first approach. When I click on something, it brings me to the exact point. I can move blocks around — those are just the customized components your developers have built — and as I move things around, the rendering happens in real time.

Collaboration is at the core of everything we do — keeping that human in the loop, exactly what Mudit was saying. There are a few ways we can collaborate: through workflows and automation, where I can trigger content into drafting, but also through discussions. I used to be that front-end developer waiting for tickets, and I would dread getting low-context tickets like "hey, can you translate this?" — what am I translating? Having that context directly in the app really helps. I click on a comment, it brings me to that exact point, and I can translate it. If I switch over to our French version, I can see it's not translated — and this is where the power of the demo comes in.

Adding Lokalise is simple: go to the Storyblok App Store — it's available directly there and it's super easy to connect. It takes a couple of seconds; all you have to do is get your token out of Storyblok. Once it's connected, in Lokalise I go into the webinar demo project and into the content management section. In seconds, I can pull in the imported content — I was on the About page, and I can even use search, which is really handy — and pull all the selected content from Storyblok into a queue, then view that activity once the process is completed.

Once that's done, I go into the editor section and start translating the content — including with the Lokalise AI we were talking about before. I can translate individual keys with Lokalise AI and watch it add the translations right away, really quickly. When everything is ready, I go back to the content management section, select the components we pulled in from Storyblok, and use the export selection. That's really powerful, because it's just a click of a button — again, eliminating those errors and the copy-paste we talked about before. Back on the About page, you can see how quick that was: errorless, fast, and seamless, and it's on our screen. Then I resolve the comment to let the team know I'm done, change the workflow stage to the translation workflow, and send it off to the group.

I can also share a preview link — if you open it and switch to the French version, you can see it on your end. So now we're collaborating with people even outside of Storyblok. Why is this important? Sometimes you work with third-party agencies, or your C-level execs don't have time to go into the actual application, and you end up in screenshot hell. You don't have to worry about that anymore — with all of these tools working together collaboratively, you can stay in sync across different time zones. That's really the power of how these two tools work together.

Jacob Wheeler: Thank you so much, Matt, for that comprehensive and really helpful overview of the integration and, like you said, the power of the partnership — letting people manage their content in a really seamless and quick fashion.

Q&A

Jacob Wheeler: I know we're coming up on time, but let's move into some of the Q&A. We have a few questions, starting with the first one I see, from Molly.

Q: Is there a benefit to lumping together certain regions? For instance, if you're expanding your platform globally, is it better to focus on a set of five or so countries first and follow with more after those are set up as expected, or to do it all at once and fix things later?
Mudit Pruthi: That's a great question. I'm not sure if you're using a CMS at this point and what that CMS is, but in Lokalise it honestly doesn't matter, because when you create a translation task or review task for your translation partners, agencies, or clients, everything is real time. It happens fast, and communication isn't siloed. Say you're working on your first five markets — those markets might be easy to translate, with legal disclaimers and brand tone relatively easy to solve for, so translations and reviews for those languages might come in early, as opposed to Arabic, Hebrew, or Japanese, which are harder to deal with. You can create different tasks depending on your timelines, but honestly, if you're using a one-stop solution like Lokalise, it doesn't really matter if some markets come in early and some come in late, as long as you stick to your timeline. So it depends on your workflows, your timelines, and what CMS you're using.

Q: When we think of one single source of truth for content, how can we handle individual local content pieces that are relevant only for one or some countries, but not all?
Kris Ekman: I'll actually build on Molly's question first — the phased approach is really, really great. But once you've rolled something out, that's when it really starts. There's a lot of opportunity in the analytics within these systems: in both Lokalise and Storyblok, you can harness really valuable data that helps you spot patterns. For instance, you might see that a certain market is performing a lot stronger than another while the investment isn't there, so you can move funds into that market and win even more ground. The same goes for content: a certain piece of content that works really well in one market can be a signal to take it and move it to another market. This is exactly what these systems are good at — so the anonymous attendee will be happy to hear this isn't really one of the challenges. It's where the fun begins.
Matthew Hughson: There are a couple of ways to handle this, but one thing I'd really love to talk about is content referencing. The concept is that you build content once — say, a banner — and reference it in multiple places, like a global content hub. Then all you're really doing is making adjustments to it using the built-in tools — essentially a template where you're reusing your content more than once. It goes back to not reinventing the wheel every time: you just make the subtle changes that get you the calls to action and conversion rates you're looking for. And on generative engine optimization: the best thing you can do is cite your content as much as possible. When you're building high-quality, localized content, always cite it, so that generative engines pick that content up as well.

Closing remarks

Jacob Wheeler: I know we're a couple of minutes over, so I don't want to hold folks any longer. If we didn't get to your question, we will follow up afterwards, and the recording will be shared with those who joined and those who registered but couldn't join live. Hopefully a lot of today's content got people thinking about switching the conversation, like we did at the beginning — not just seeing localization as operational and something that has to be done, but as strategic to the core of the business and its global growth. We went into detail on how The Marketing Store, for example, changed a very siloed, very complex process into one that is automated, AI-driven, human-in-the-loop, and collaborative, using best-in-class tools with Lokalise and Storyblok — and how Touchtribe is helping align these initiatives for their clients as well. With that being said, thank you again for your participation, your questions, and your engagement. We look forward to working with you after this, if we don't work with you already — and feel free to follow and connect with us on LinkedIn. Have a great one, everyone.

Mudit Pruthi: Thank you so much, Jacob, and everybody. Bye.