Amelia's Marvelous Marketing Blog

Culture is like a dropping an Alka-seltzer into a glass – you don’t see it, but somehow it does something.

-Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Culture – that all elusive quality of a nation, is indeed so invisible that it seldom gets noticed in ordinary day-to-day activities. And yet it affects our world so drastically that marketers have to pay detailed attention to it when they develop their strategies.

Being in a ‘new’ culture (although similar in its Western orientation) has made me aware of the differences in cultural sensitivities and ideas. It has also shown me that it’s often the small things like colour that affect the way we respond to marketing stimuli. One such quirk that shocked me at first was the colour of Cream Soda. In South Africa the colour is violently green, whereas here it is pink! When I did some research online I found out that its flavour is also subtly different- it is meant to have a rose taste (unlike traditional Cream sodas which are meant to taste like vanilla ice-cream). Cream Soda mixed drinks are infamously named “Green Ambulances” by South African students due to the (undoubtedly untrue) belief that Cream Soda assists in hangover recovery.

So now you might be wondering why I care enough to write about ‘pop’ (what we call fizzy drink). It is because colours, along with other images, symbols and numbers do not always translate across cultures. 
In some cultures there are lucky colours, such as red in China and unlucky colours, such as black in Japan. Marketers have to be incredibly vigilant when operating across borders. Take another example of MacDonalds. I’ve seen a number of blue and yellow MacDonald franchises here, whereas in South Africa the bigger, redder and more garish the better. Due to the income disparity between the continents of Africa and North America, adverts in the former tend to focus on different stimuli. Red, marketers have shown, appeals to a lower income bracket, whereas blue I assume might be deemed more ‘tasteful’ by a wealthier nation. Our textbook says that the restaurant chain is spending $828 million on remodelling 1280 European outlets (p194). This is because McDonalds has found that Europeans prefer a “sit-down” experience to a take out one. McDonald’s restaurants are starting to feature cafe lattes, dark leather upholstery and comfortable sitting areas rather than the older unappealing decor.

The marketing world is full of cross-cultural blunders. One that I found hysterical was Ford’s introduction of the ‘Pinto’ in Brazil. After seeing sales fail, the company quickly realized that this was due to the fact that Brazilians did not want to be seen driving a car meaning ‘tiny male genitals’.

HELLO FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN (also enemies, people of the world, and city-slickers)….

So here we are, at the start of new year… in September! How very strange… you see, I am on exchange from the Southern Hemisphere where new years start in January!

Marketing, what does it mean to me? I think often and long about what Tamar said in our first lecture; that marketing is not only the 4 P Mix (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) but also the way life itself works. It was such a relevant and obvious thing to me but no-one had said it in its entirety and with such clarity: and so I realized, this exchange will be successful if I “market” myself correctly. Now don’t get me wrong, I mean not that I must sell myself in any way, but rather that I have a clean page to “be” or “portray” myself in any way I want. This idea of personal branding hit me so strongly that I stopped listening (only for a brief second, don’t worry) and suddenly realized what the thought was that had been nagging me at the back of my mind: at home I have become a product of my society (family, friends, education, government, etc), which I feel is in the correct place (what’s the saying, home is where the heart is or something?) and the distribution of my talents spread only so far as my nuclear world (or comfort zone). I value myself based on this product (my price) and I believe I know who I am.

Now, well… now, not so much. My ‘personal package’ has no loyal customers (or friends). But what it does have is a HUGE new target market (Sauder Students beware, Amelia is coming for you!). I can be who I want to be in many ways which are not possible at home. Who would believe me when I told them I gained another invaluable life lesson from class, and this time not from the lecturer but from an iClicker question! But its true, and the insight was this: successful companies are those that combine market opportunities with their company’s core strengths. From a personal perspective this means I can be successful by marketing myself in any new ways I wish, however (and this is a big however) these new ways should be in line with my core strengths (if you want to know more about me read the ‘about’ section at the top of the page).

So now most evenings before bed I think about how I marketed myself in the day, and how it made me feel. I think this is an incredibly valuable way of looking at life, one which I hope not to lose when I return home in December. I look forward to exploring my immediate environment here in Comm 296 as well as the Macro-ness of Canada and its wide variety of beauty, resources and Maple Syrup (its an in-joke if you didn’t get it).

Hopefully the lessons Canada has to offer are not lost-in-translation on me… as they are in this YouTube video. It makes me laugh even after many years of watching it and I recommend it to anyone, no matter what level of stress or sense of humour you possess.