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Haris FajarRahmanto

Rabobank Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory, October 19, 2016

Cultural blunders –Maintaining brand’s heritage when entering a new market

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Lost in translation

• Clairol introduced “Mist Stick” curling iron in Germany –only to find out that “mist” is a German slang for manure

• American Motors launched its new car, the Matador, which means “killer” in Puerto Rico

• KFC translated “finger licking good” into Chinese which means “eat your fingers off”

• “Got Milk” campaign was translated in Mexico into “Are you lactating?”

• Now if only cultural blunders were that obvious...

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• Political issues

• Technological factors

• Economic factors

• Religion

• Time preferences

• Symbols

• Color

• Business practices & traditions

• Legal issues

• Ethical issues

• Unqualified partners

• Inappropriate marketing objectives

• Off-target

• Mismatched marketing mix

• Market intelligence

• Poor adaptation

• Communication

• Translation

Possible causes of marketing blunders

MACRO-ENVIRONMENT RELATED FACTORSSTRATEGY & MANAGEMENT RELATED FACTORS

Source: Dalgic& Heijblom(1996)

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Let’s walk in the shoes of a brand owner…

Brand Essence

Brand Personality

Product

Communication

Channel

Pricing

Packaging

Product formulation

Media

Creative materials

DesignMaterial

Format

FlavourAppearance

Raw material

Consumer insights

Product display

Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning

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… and the consumer

Source: Pearce & Cronen(1980) in West & Turner (2014)

Content

The raw data and information

received during communication

Episodes

Context in which people

act

Contract

Relationship boundaries

Life Script

Clusters of past and present episodes

Cultural patterns

Archetypes, broad images of world order

& a person’s relationship to that

order

Speech act

How a particular

communication should be

taken

Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory, Pearce &

Cronen(1980)

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Greetings

Hair styles

Hospitality

Housing

Hygiene

Incest taboos

Inheritance rules

Joking

Kin groups

Kinship nomenclature

Language

Law

Luck/superstitions

Magic

Marriage

Education

Eschatology

Ethics

Ethno-botany

Etiquette

Faith healing

Family feasting

Fire-making

Folklore

Food taboos

Funeral rites

Games

Gestures

Gift-giving

Government

Age-grading

Athletic sports

Bodily adornment

Calendar

Cleanliness training

Community organisation

Cooking

Co-operative labour

Cosmology

Courtship

Dancing

Decorative art

Divination

Division of labour

Dream interpretation

Cultural universals

Source: Murdock (1945)

Mealtimes

Medicine

Obstetrics

Penal sanctions

Personal names

Population policy

Postnatal care

Pregnancy usages

Property rights

Propitiation of supernatural beings

Puberty customs

Religious ritual

Residence rules

Sexual restrictions

Soul concepts

Status differentiation

Surgery

Tool-making

Trade

Visiting

Weather control

Weaving

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Case study: the semiotics of empty stomach in Indonesia

Source: company websites

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Rice is engrained into Indonesian culture

• Per capita consumption of rice in Indonesia is 134 kg/capita/year, 4th

highest in the world

• Different names of rice according to the growing/processing stages: padi, gabah, beras, nasi

• In Indonesia, snack is loosely defined as “anything that is not rice”. The prevailingadage is “you haven’t had any meal yet if you don’t eat rice”

• Myths & rituals related to rice:

• DewiSri, the rice goddess

• Various rice harvesting ritual & festival across local ethnicities

• Probably the only place where there is “One Day No Rice” policy!

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• Revival of local cuisine

• Balanced nutrition

• Food delivery

• East-Asian mania

• On-the-go

• Energy bars

• Rantangan(tiffin box)

• Communal eating

• Non-rice carbs

• 4 sehat5 sempurna(4 healthy, 5 perfect)

• Fasting

• Manganoramanganasalkumpul (togetherness above full stomach)

• Rice-based meals

• Fast food culture

• Instant expert

• Gorengan(fried snacks)

• Modern bakeries

• Liquid meal/hot cereals

FULFILL

SUSTAIN

Fulfilling the stomach: residual, dominant and emergent codes

EMERGENTRESIDUAL DOMINANT

Maintaining local wisdom & harmony

Pragmatic & practical solutions Wellness & explorationfrom to to

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Emotions –the universal language?

Source: Plutchik, Wikicommons

12

Finding the cultural tensions: delivering happiness and optimism

Coke “reason to believe” adv

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But emotions should be translated across cultures

Coke “reason to believe” Indonesia

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Affect Valuation Theory: Cultural factors shape how people ideally want to feel more than how they actually feel

Source: Tsai

1. People’s physiological responses to emotional events are similar across cultures, but culture influences people’s facial expressive behavior

2. People suppress their emotions across cultures, but culture influences the consequences of suppression for psychological well being

3. People feel good during positive events, but culture influences whether people feel bad during positive events

4. People want to feel good across cultures, but culture influences the specific good states people want to feel (their “ideal affect’)

5. People base their happiness on similar factor across cultures, but culture influences the weight placed on each factor

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Multimodality approach: translating the cultural insights into relevant codes

Source: Andersen & Boeriis, 2012

• Multimodality is a theory of communication and social semiotics

• Brands create meaning by communicating through multi modes that a culture recognizes –visual, gustatory, spoken, gesture, pose, font choice and color, etc. and interactions between them

• Separate modes constitute a complex, inseparable whole

• Meanings always relate to specific societies and their cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those cultures

• In short, multimodality approach enables us to design a brand that considers all elements as a meaning-making tools

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How Oreo brilliantly responded to ‘heaty’ & cooling food culture in China

17

Maintaining brand heritage: how far should the brand owner go?

Brand Essence

Brand Personality

Product

Communication

Channel

Pricing

Packaging

Product formulation

Media

Creative materials

DesignMaterial

Format

FlavourAppearance

Raw material

Consumer insights

Product display

Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning

18

Key takeaways

• Cultural blunders happen when the brand element(s) contradicts with the prevailing culture

• Cultural blunders may occur at various phases of strategy development and implementation

• Some cultural blunders are not so obvious hence it is hard to detect when the blunder happens

• Emotions are universal across culture, however culture also shapes how people transmit emotions

• To maintain brand heritage, marketer should evaluate and adjust the brand’s modality to fit the consumer’s cultural context

Terimakasih!

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Sources

Andersen, Thomas Hestbaek& Morten Boeriis, “Semiotic Cereals”, http://www.sdu.dk/~/media/Files/Om_SDU/Institutter/ISK/Forskningspublikationer/OWPLC/Nr29/Thomas%20Hestbaek%20Andersen%20%20%20Morten%20Boeriis.ashx

Burton, Neel, “What Are Basic Emotions”, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201601/what-are-basic-emotions

Dalgic, Tevfik& Ruud Heijblom(1996), “Educator Insights: International Marketing Blunders Revisited –Some Lessons for Managers”, Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 4, No. 1

Murdock, George P. (1945), “The Common Denominator of Cultures” in The Science of Man in the World Crisis, Ralph Linton (ed.). New York: Columbia University Press

Precourt, Geoffrey (2012), “Coca Cola on cultural insight: Turning social tensions into a global marketing program”, WARC, http://content.warc.com/read-coca-cola-on-cultural-insight-from-warc

Tsai, Jeanne, “The Cultural Shaping of Emotion (And Other Feelings)”, http://psychology.stanford.edu/~tsailab/PDF/Culture and Emotion Chapter.pdf

West, Richard & Lynn H. Turner (2014), “Introducing Communication Theory”, McGraw-Hill International Edition

http://adage.com/article/global-news/6-cringeworthy-blunders-brands-china/294017/

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/the-20-worst-brand-translations-of-all-time.html

http://www.bolabanget.com/reader.php?id=141883185

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-news/industries/marketing-to-china-oreos-chinese-twist/

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