Cultural Marketing 2.0

This week, I was contacted by a gentleman in Bangkok, Thailand about working with his company to develop their branding strategy. While I’ve worked with international clients before, I’m hesitant about taking this project because my knowledge of Thai culture stops after ordering Pad Thai in a restaurant.

If you’re marketing to any group, you have to know that group’s culture. And cultural barriers in marketing are difficult to work through. We’ve all heard the old cross-cultural marketing and advertising tales such as these:

• The Chevy Nova failed in the Hispanic market because Nova means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish…
• “Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation” means “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave” in Chinese…
• Gerber baby food with a picture of a smiling baby on the label didn’t sell at all in parts of Africa. The reason? Because of the high number of illiterate Africans, African companies put pictures of what’s in the jar on the label…

The problem is that all these stories are not true. (Chevy Nova) (Pepsi ancestor) (baby food)

But here is something that is true about marketing to other cultures. Because of super segmentation, targeting of markets and the rise of a million niches in the Long Tail, marketing blunders similar to these will actually happen. And they will happen within the United States and within markets that you THINK you know. Companies will initially have no idea why the marketing isn’t working.

You can see it happening now. We’ve all seen several examples of a new corporate blog rising up, attempting to contribute, and immediately being seen as an imposter or wannabe by the residents of the blogosphere. The company can’t figure out why they’ve been rejected. It’s because they don’t understand the culture.

Following the success of entertainment models such as The Last Temptation of Christ and the Left Behind of books as well as the recent upswing of red-state politics, Hollywood saw an open market opportunity. However, with offerings such as The Book of Daniel and The DaVinci Code, Hollywood has wound up deeply offending and insulting the market that they’re trying to reach. At the core, it’s because they really don’t understand the nuances of that culture.

The cultural nuances…those are what makes a culture unique…not the big things. The nuances are also the things that are the hardest to replicate and communicate with outsiders.

If you’ve always thought cultural influences were something that just international marketers had to worry about, get ready. You’re going to start having to think about those cultural issues in marketing not just with different ethnic groups, but with the person who looks just like you that lives across the street.

tags:: international marketing – ethnic marketing – blogosphere – evangelicals – marketing – long tail – Web2.0